1.  Recognizing Fake Fear

Your mind plays a great part in not only initiating a panic attack but also sustaining one.  Once you begin to think about being in a stressful situation, it is quite possible for those thoughts to escalate into a full blown panic attack.  Avoiding panic attacks can be a matter of identifying and releasing fake fear thoughts.

One of the things that you can focus on doing is recognizing immediately when your mind is worried about a fake fear.  In other words, you already know that there is no real chance of the fear coming to reality.  Let’s say you are eating in a restaurant and all of a sudden start to panic that you are trapped or will be trapped.  It may take a few looks around, and some calm breathing, to realize that they are plenty of doors and that you could very easily walk out should you feel the need.

2.  Exercise Regularly

Exercise is very important for everyone’s overall health but it can be especially helpful to anyone dealing with routine panic attacks.  The first thing that exercise does is help you to release daily stress.  Whether it be work stress or personal stress, a good exercise routine can help to make you more relaxed.  Also, exercise helps the body to release certain hormones that cause you to be calm and peaceful.  Even if you have a super busy schedule, you should find time to fit in a few minutes per day of vigorous exercise as an easy solution to avoiding panic attacks.

3.  Be Prepared

Some panic attacks are caused by not being prepared or feeling that you are not properly prepared.  For example, let’s say you get panic attacks at times while driving long distances.  Ensuring that you are fully prepared before hitting the road can help in avoiding panic attacks later.  Doing things like mapping out your drive, making sure your cell phone is fully charged, and letting family or friends know what roads you will be on can all help to give you a peace of mind.

These are just a couple of quick tips that may help you in avoiding panic attacks.  You can get more help by visiting the main page of PanicAttackAlert.com.

The short and obvious answer: panic attacks are caused by high anxiety. But, what exactly is anxiety? Understanding how anxiety crops up will help you defeat panic attacks.

One of the biggest myths surrounding anxiety is that it is harmful and can lead to a number of various life-threatening conditions.

Definition of Anxiety

Anxiety is defined as a state of apprehension or fear resulting from the anticipation of a real or imagined threat, event, or situation. It is one of the most common human emotions experienced by people at some point in their lives.

However, most people who have never experienced a panic attack, or extreme anxiety, fail to realize the terrifying nature of the experience. Extreme dizziness, blurred vision, tingling and feelings of breathlessness—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

When these sensations occur and people do not understand why, they feel they have contracted an illness, or a serious mental condition. The threat of losing complete control seems very real and naturally very terrifying.

Fight/Flight Response: One of the root causes of panic attacks?

I am sure most of you have heard of the fight/flight response as an explanation for one of the root causes of panic attacks. Have you made the connection between this response and the unusual sensations you experience during and after a panic attack episode?

Anxiety is a response to a danger or threat. It is so named because all of its effects are aimed toward either fighting or fleeing from the danger. Thus, the sole purpose of anxiety is to protect the individual from harm. This may seem ironic given that you no doubt feel your anxiety is actually causing you great harm…perhaps the most significant of all the causes of panic attacks.

However, the anxiety that the fight/flight response created was vital in the daily survival of our ancient ancestors—when faced with some danger, an automatic response would take over that propelled them to take immediate action such as attack or run. Even in today’s hectic world, this is still a necessary mechanism. It comes in useful when you must respond to a real threat within a split second.

Anxiety is a built-in mechanism to protect us from danger. Interestingly, it is a mechanism that protects but does not harm—an important point that will be elaborated upon later.

The Physical Manifestations of a Panic Attack: Other pieces of the puzzle to understand the causes of panic attacks. Nervousness and Chemical Effects…

When confronted with danger, the brain sends signals to a section of the nervous system. It is this system that is responsible for gearing the body up for action and also calms the body down and restores equilibrium. To carry out these two vital functions, the autonomic nervous system has two subsections, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

Although I don’t want to become too “scientific,” having a basic understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system will help you understand the causes of panic attacks.

The sympathetic nervous system is the one we tend to know all too much about because it primes our body for action, readies us for the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic nervous system is the one we love dearly as it serves as our restoring system, which returns the body to its normal state.

When either of these systems is activated, they stimulate the whole body, which has an “all or nothing” effect. This explains why when a panic attack occurs, the individual often feels a number of different sensations throughout the body.

The sympathetic system is responsible for releasing the adrenaline from the adrenal glands on the kidneys. These are small glands located just above the kidneys. Less known, however, is that the adrenal glands also release adrenaline, which functions as the body’s chemical messengers to keep the activity going. When a panic attack begins, it does not switch off as easily as it is turned on. There is always a period of what would seem increased or continued anxiety, as these messengers travel throughout the body. Think of them as one of the physiological causes of panic attacks, if you will.

After a period of time, the parasympathetic nervous system gets called into action. Its role is to return the body to normal functioning once the perceived danger is gone. The parasympathetic system is the system we all know and love, because it returns us to a calm relaxed state.

When we engage in a coping strategy that we have learned, for example, a relaxation technique, we are in fact willing the parasympathetic nervous system into action. A good thing to remember is that this system will be brought into action at some stage whether we will it or not. The body cannot continue in an ever-increasing spiral of anxiety. It reaches a point where it simply must kick in, relaxing the body. This is one of the many built-in protection systems our bodies have for survival.

You can do your best with worrying thoughts, keeping the sympathetic nervous system going, but eventually