Anxiety Panic Disorder

This isn't a real pleasant subject but it's far easier to write and read about anxiety panic attacks than it is to experience them. A panic disorder is when you are subject to recurring severe anxiety panic attacks. A single panic attack can happen to almost anyone given the right - or rather, the wrong - circumstances, but the panic disorder is a recurrent assault on your life, not a single event.

Most literally, panic attacks are overwhelming feelings of terror that seem to come out of nowhere. No warning, no clear reason, no obvious threat. A massive overdose of the fight or flight response, a panic attack can be experienced as if your having a heart attack or about to die. The kinds of symptoms you may experience include:

- Feeling dizzy or as if you're going to pass out
- Tachycardia or accelerated heart beat
- Peripheral alterations in sensation such as numbness in your fingers
- Chest pains
- A sense of loss of control of yourself
- Difficulty with breathing
- Sudden sweating or feeling cold
-And of course, that feeling of extreme fear

First off, it's critically important to understand that panic disorder is not some kind of character flaw or weakness. The "just get over it" crew is way out of step with reality. There is now evidence that panic disorders may well be genetically based. Dr. Philibert, a professor at the College of medicine at the University of Iowa, has been developing a blood test measuring gene expression in lymphocytes which appears to allow a predictive differential diagnosis. Unfortunately, it is a fairly costly procedure but for those patients where it isn't clear that the proper diagnosis is panic disorder it could be a life saver.

What his research strongly indicates is that a significant underlying cause of panic disorder may be genetically based. At the very least, his work may help to reshape opinion in the medical community. Doctors who believe that panic disorder is some kind of character disorder - a weakness that can be overcome by just bucking up and coping - have done very little to help anyone with a panic disorder. Hopefully, some solid evidence that there are definite biological underpinnings, may wake a few of the fossils up.

Panic disorder often can lead people into becoming agoraphobic and hiding out in their home - or even in a single room. The inability to pin down any specific cause can lead to everything becoming frightening. Others may develop alcoholism through using alcohol excessively to blunt their responses.

The use of prescription medications often becomes a trap too. While anti-anxiety medications can reduce the incidence and severity of anxiety panic attacks, they come with their own risks which can include serious side effects and addiction.

Traditional psychotherapy has very little to offer anyone suffering from panic disorder since, for most, there is no real psychologically based link to the trigger events. Understanding your psyche may be rewarding for other reasons, but it's unlikely to be helpful with a true panic disorder. Training systems that work on a behavioral basis to teach means of breaking and side-stepping the panic response have been found helpful by thousands of people. Genetically based or not, we are organisms that are incredible learning machines and can gain an immense degree of control over any of our built-in reactions through the use of behavioral techniques.