Anxiety Attacks & Panic

What is an anxiety attack? An anxiety or panic attack is a specific set of symptoms that frequently occur in anxiety or panic disorder. These symptoms tend to be very physically uncomfortable and frequently involve the sudden onset of a racing heartbeat, feeling faint, shortness of breath, dizziness, numbness, chest pain, nausea, tingling in the fingers, trembling and not feeling connected to your body. The specific anxiety symptoms experienced will vary from person to person and situation to situation but most persist for 5 - 20 minutes.

An anxiety attack can be triggered by something specific such as large crowds of people, feeling stuck in a confined place, hearing intensely upsetting news, flying on a plane, speaking in public or being observed by others. It can also seemingly come out of the blue, with no trigger at all. Panic attacks that seem to come from nowhere are, in fact, frequently prompted by a subconscious brain process called neuroception - where the brain is always searching for possible threats without our awareness or permission - or because we have developed the ‘fear of fear.’

Although deeply uncomfortable and disruptive, panic attacks will not kill you or cause irreversible harm. Instead, panic attacks arise when the brain has identified something as a threat when it is actually not a threat at all. As research shows us, CBT Therapy and Mindfulness Therapy are very effective ways to rewire the way we think about threats and how to work through discomfort.