It happens that the psyche is ill. It has its own “acute respiratory infections”, which have their form, exacerbations, and complications and develop into a chronic condition, a “mental disability”. Panic disorder is one of these “ARIs”. Talking about panic attacks is always complicated because it is one of the most “mysterious” of the human psyche states.
A panic state is an affect considered the primary force in a person’s inner world. Affect, as a mental state, is biochemical. Consequently, the panic state always precedes novelty or “unrecognizable” events, experiences, situations, etc., regardless of whether they are tinged with joy or sorrow.
A panic state, like any other mental state, contributes to releasing mental tension and is a conduit, a link between the inner world of a person and the outside world. However, this state can also be very distressing. For example, you are oppressed, and you remain silent, even supportive and approving of this attitude of oppression towards you, commenting “…it’s your fault”. Either you tolerate the deception for a long time, knowing the truth. And you think it will pass for you in vain.
As practice shows, it doesn’t. The bigger your “reservoir of patience”, the harsher its discharge can be. However, it’s no longer so much a panic condition. It’s a panic attack. A panic attack is an acute affect that affects the person, not finding an outlet “outside”, i.e. “hitting from within”. Panic attacks do not appear suddenly – they are a quite violent way out of accumulated inner tension.
The precursors of a panic attack are complicated to identify objectively; they always “hide”. They are defined by the emergence of internal states, reactions, experiences, and thoughts that are almost uncharacteristic of you in regular life. Panic attacks, being quite insidious, appear when there is no real reason for them. Everything in life is calm. The angriest and most hard events are experienced and behind you. And then, out of the blue: you feel an oppressive tension, which is frightening in its uncertainty and force; you experience a state of impending disaster and the terror of its inevitability, and everything is relatively calm in reality; you do not recognize the reasons for the subjectively felt horror and grief, which objectively do not exist; you have lost control of yourself because all the standard ‘life sensors’ are down; you are waiting for death, the waiting is exhausting; you have an incomprehensible activity of the mind, which, like a web, covers everything with thoughts that alternate with each other, but the expected liberation from the horror does not happen.
The body also plays its “part” in this “eerie whirl of affect”. The systems run high: the cardiovascular system (from tachycardia 150 beats per minute to bradycardia, heart “silent”); the respiratory system (choking, shortness of breath, respiratory failure); the gastrointestinal tract (cramps, colic, “congestion”, severe pain of unknown origin); the urinary-genital system (frequent urges, urinary-genital cramps with acute burning pains). If you have these symptoms, you have experienced a panic attack.
Panic attacks are a kind of “bounce-back” from difficult life circumstances, and it doesn’t matter whether you experienced them yesterday, a year ago, or ten years ago. Although a panic attack does not last more than 30 seconds, it can cause lasting damage. Do not believe those who predict they will ‘cure’ a panic attack in one or more sessions. It is impossible, just as it is impossible to do the following: there is no need to fight a panic attack. It must only be accepted and tolerated; there is no need to fear a panic attack – it is not insanity. It is a kind of outlet for a parasitizing, toxic affect for the person himself. There is no need to heal a panic attack with antidepressants, tranquillizers, or “Noophen” – these means only lubricate the condition. But they introduce the person to a tragic sense of doom without psychotherapy.
You must not ignore panic attacks – its insidiousness is that the duration of its effect on the psyche leads to neurosis, often acute psychotic states, existential vacuum and depression, phobias which literally “paralyse” a person and lead to “mental invalidation”; do not see it as evil – as practice shows, a panic attack is an act of “return” to oneself, but you can achieve this in psychotherapy.
There is no need to delude yourself that you can overcome a panic attack alone. It is a condition that requires quality support, in which you will gain life quality and the power always choose yourself.
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