The most important thing I want to stress here is the physical vs mental / psychological aspect of a panic attack. Before I suffered from panic disorder myself, my presumptions about what it was were very wrong. Having mostly witnessed it on TV programmes and a few incidents among one or two friends I had always believed it to be a purely psychological encounter, all in the mind so to speak. This is however not quite the case, although a panic attack will be triggered by the mind, the experience itself is not simply a matter of your mind playing tricks on you.

The physical symptoms that occur are very real, whatever your symptoms are while having a panic attack, these are actually happening, your body is physically going through it. If you have never had a panic attack then you would probably never be able to understand just how frightening this can be or just how real it is.  Symptoms vary from person to person but in severe cases you can easily lose control. This almost happened to me once during my worst attack which was after ten years of suffering panic disorder. You can read about it in my panic attack story.

It’s important to have a clear understanding between the physical and psychological parts of anxiety. It is widely recognised by health organisations that a panic attack is purely a psychological phenomena and not a medical condition. This is without doubt very true in that it is your mind, or subconscious that triggers the anxiety attack. By observing my own anxiety disorder for many years I have absolutely no doubt that this is unquestionable. This doesn’t however deny the fact that the physical part is a very real occurrence. So what actually happens?

According to Charles Linden, a panic attack is brought on by severe anxiety when the body reacts to the flight or fight response, which in turn is brought on by a sudden release of adrenalin, or too much of it to be more specific. In other words your body is responding to a threat of danger and prepares itself to do whatever it would normally do in a life threatening situation, the release of adrenalin causes the muscles to tighten up, your breathing rate increases, blood pressure rises etc, all the things necessary to prepare your body to do what ever it would normally do when in danger.

The symptoms are real and physical, the only problem is it is happening when you are not in any kind of danger so your body is preparing for something that doesn’t actually happen. This naturally leads to you wondering what the hell is happening to you and you start to panic, thinking maybe you are having a heart attack or something. This immediate worry leads to more adrenalin released and the whole thing becomes self perpetuating. The panic attack itself ends up as a result of hyperventilating which causes a reduction of carbon dioxide in the blood. Controlling a panic attack can be done through correct breathing

This is a very basic explanation but what Charles Linden has to say about it is pretty much in line with the explanations found at Wikipedia and the NHS. There is no doubt that Charles has done his research, he is fast becoming the authority on the subject, the Linden Method has many endorsements from medical authority’s and is now being used by the NHS in the UK and other medical organisations around the world.

The Linden Method - Stop General Anxiety and Panic Attack Fast!

Filed under: Anxiety