ANTI-PANIC TIPS — Windows Live

选项 ▼
- 语言
- 简体中文
帮助


Tip#1	Remember: It won't kill you. You are not going crazy. No matter how much it feels like the worst fear of your life, it is a natural physiological response (fight or flight) your body needs to survive. The result depends on how you label the experience.

Tip#2	Your thoughts during and after a panic attack will tend to determine your sensitivities and triggers. Those thoughts will tend to be internally consistent with a false but understandable logic. "If you buy the premise, you buy the bit. "Johnny Carson"

Tip#3	Learning occurs by acting and by thinking about acting. Once we get into a panic syndrome, we think about panicking hundreds of times for every time we actually panic. This process keeps us anxious and afraid to try the "original" panic producing act.

Tip#4	Panic attacks make a person very "body aware." Go to a physician for a checkup but beware being labeled a hypochondriac. Yes, you really feel these symptoms but they are more likely the result of emotion and usually not a disease.

Tip#5	A number of physical sensations occur with a panic attack, most of them fear producing or upsetting. You cannot be tense and relaxed at the same time. Learn a method of relaxation and use it. Deep muscle relaxation is best as one can use it anywhere.

Tip#6	Use positive statements to yourself. The subconscious doesn't hear negatives well. Your body may hear "Don't be afraid" as a signal that danger is present. Say instead, "Relax" or "Be calm" and success is more likely.

Tip#7	We all behave "as if." As if our view of reality were the only true and correct one. Many views are possible and most are normal. Examine your views when you're in a relaxed and objective mood.

Tip#8	When we behave "as if," others cannot see what our thoughts are, and therefore don't know what our "as if" is. Most of us would rather hide our fear than ever admit it publicly.

Tip#9	Hiding or holding in our emotions or the show of the slightest sign of fear makes it even more difficult to "seem normal." Paradoxically, these efforts to hide our fear make the fear worse and more likely that we will reveal it to others.

Tip#10	During a panic or anxiety attack there is often a time dilation effect where it seems that time slows down and you'll never escape. One of my clients was helped by counting seconds at a stoplight which she was sure lasted five minutes. It was 45 seconds.

Tip#11	Anxious people often tend to be procrastinators. We avoid real problems by excuses and doing unnecessary things. "The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of our lives." George Carlin

Tip#12	Anxious people tend to be brighter than average and have high expectations for themselves. If your goal is 100% perfection, how can you ever do more than barely meet it and never feel like it has been a job well done?

Tip#13	Interestingly, one way of learning to relax is to deliberately tense all our muscles as much as possible, breathe deeply, then release breath and tension slowly at the same time. We recalibrate when we feel a large change between tension and relaxation.

Tip#14	Deep muscle relaxation is simply a longer, more thorough form of #13. Any relaxation is good but one appears less odd to others than if trying to do a full lotus position while driving or chanting during a business meeting.

Tip#15	Deep muscle relaxation can be done anywhere, once learned. This is especially handy because one can utilize it "partially" by relaxing all muscles not directly involved in the task you are doing.

Tip#16	Imagine you are waiting in a traffic jam. Do you need to clench your jaws, your upper leg muscles, your abdomen or your shoulders? No. Just enough to drive safely. You can relax by 50% or more and get to your destination in exactly the same time.

Tip#17	Several tips have suggested the idea that relaxation is not an all-or-none phenomenon. That's true in real-life situations. You play the percentages, relaxing as much as you can, and can often lower your stress or tension level below the panic threshold.

Tip#18	Anxiety and panic are relative to your current stress level. Ifyou have been relaxed and no new stressors added, it will take more to raise you to a panic level. If many stressors have occurred recently even a "tiny" event may trigger a panic.

Tip#19	Overall stress level builds and diminishes slowly and can result from apparently good or bad things. Marriage, divorce, death or loss, debt, losing or getting a better job, moving, etc., are all large stress producers and take up to two years to normalize.

Tip#20	Now that we have seen that stress builds and remits slowly and triggers to a panic can be large or small, it is much easier to accept that that we need to control stress levels in various ways. A "cure" for panic doesn't exist in the same way as a disease.

Tip#21	Control is a very important issue for most of us, especially those who are anxiety disordered. This does not mean being controlling of those around us but rather of being in control of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Tip#22	Hypnosis is sometimes used to work with anxiety and phobias and has its place. I prefer to use deep muscle relaxation with the client completely conscious and learning how to control strong feelings without losing touch with the world around them.

Tip#23	Now we have put together two basic principles of cognitive-begavioral therapy. The client learns how to think about their emotions and then to control the undesirable behavior produced by those emotions while in a conscious state.

Tip#24	As most of us want to feel in control of ourselves, cognitive-behavioral therapy tends to be readily accepted and even enjoyed by many people. Regaining control feels good.

Tip#25	Learning behavioral and emotional control is like other learning, difficult at first and then becoming habitual as we practice it. Again, this is a percentage sort of thing with one's success rate building with practice.

Tip#26	It is important to learn our own triggers and moods because the sooner in the buildup of stress or anxiety, the better able we will be able to make an effective calming response. Easier to deal with a small problem early than to stop a full panic attack.