Being able to recognize the signs of a panic attack is one of the best things anyone can do to control them.
Even though panic attacks are considered a psychological affliction, the signs and symptoms of a panic are actually mostly physical! This is because the brain is so powerful that it can send a person’s entire body into overdrive.
The earliest sign of an attack is actually something most people somehow miss until it gets really bad; their heart rate begins to speed up for no apparent reasons. This increase in speed, which many assume is just in relation to maybe a walk up the stairs or some other type of physical exertion, is actually known as a heart palpitation, where the heart is either starting to beat rapidly or beat extremely hard. This can also causes actual, physical pain in the chest area.
The reason this occurs is because, during a panic attack, the body convinces itself that it’s under some sort of threat and it reacts like it would if someone were in danger of dying. This means that blood inside the body starts pumping faster, causing the heart to beat harder. This can actually cause real problems if it’s not brought under control quickly.
Other symptoms of panic are dizziness or lightheadedness. With all that blood rushing everywhere it’s very common for someone to actually need to sit down or they may even collapse during a panic attack. Some people actually experience feelings of weakness and even end up fainting. And as a panic attack is one of the body’s more extreme reactions to stress, nausea is also a very common sign as well.
And then you have the psychological signs of a panic which in many ways are harder to deal with than the physical ones. Many people experience feelings of genuine terror or even some kind of impending doom, even if they are not physically threatened in any way. They may also experience the “fight or flight” response that urges people to get out of situations that can harm them.
With stress on the rise and the number of people who are starting to suffer from panic attacks rising, many people find themselves at a loss to understand that they, too, suffer from these debilitating attacks – and they don’t realize that they are because they don’t recognize the signs of a panic attack.
