Can You Really Stop Panic Attacks? Yes.

This article appears courtesy of Jeff and further information can be found at his – website.

How bad are they? Do you feel like your mind is out of control? Do you feeling like running and hiding from yourself? Are you afraid that you are going insane?

Well, I've BEEN THERE!!! Now I am NOT THERE and I want to share with you how I did it. I'm not selling anything. I have had to relate my experiences SO MANY TIMES to friends and others needing help that I decided to put it out for everyone to read RIGHT HERE on this web site

This is an effective method for completely eliminating panic attacks. You may not like it or fully comprehend it (especially in the first reading). Nevertheless, I think that it will help you understand more about what is going on inside your head. I know this because it was inside MY head for so long. Understanding helps you get control

"Without fear of them they cannot exist"

These simple, rational words have so much truth to them! Your panic attacks are YOU being afraid of the way YOU feel. They represent the conflict of YOU being afraid of YOU! IF you didn't FEAR the "way" you feel, then you would have no more panic attacks. This is the answer in a nutshell (no pun, honest

First of all I want to acknowledge that I studied the writings of Dr. Claire Weekes (Australian physician and writer) for many years. She proposed a very rational method for conquering nervous stress, panic and agoraphobia. Using her principles I have completely overcome panic attacks and agoraphobia (still working on the stress part). I will explain how below. (LEGAL INFORMATION: I am a biological scientist. I am NOT a psychologist (although my sister is) nor trained in psychology. Therefore, I can make no claims or guarantees.) These are my experiences that I relate to you on this page and through them perhaps you will get some understanding of your own situation and help in dealing with your panic feelings

OK? Ready

In quick overview, to end a panic attack - an overwhelming feeling of fear - you have to pass to the other side (no this isn't some weird faith healing or new age crap) - the side of fearlessness. This works! I wish I could take you there by the hand myself but YOU have to do it. The trust in it working is something that goes against all aspects of our sense of survival and takes some time to really believe in. Yet IF you are experiencing a fear/panic attack I found the only way to beat it is to try to let the feeling be as worse as it wants to be. Let it be as bad as you can make it. And, because it truly IS a self-created fear, once you have made the desire to travel to the "OTHER side" of fear by letting it do its positively worse to you then ...there is NOTHING...nothing there. No fear. The other side is NO fear at all but a big smile. My moment of realization was a wonderful experience. It was THEN that I began to realize that these "out of control" feelings were over with!

Stress is the major instigator for panic feelings. Perhaps you had realized a certain level of stress that had exceeded your ability to release it. I say, "had" because probably the event that triggered these panic attacks is over with. There are many relaxation methods for lowering stress and all of them are beneficial. Understanding your stress and learning to manage it will always help you throughout your life. However, the panic attacks were probably the culmination of that initial stress event. I don't care WHAT or HOW you arrived at these feelings - you have them and you don't like them and you want to get rid of them! Right now it's not important that your mother was mean or your father ignored you or if you are a perfectionist, or obsessive, etc. I am not trivializing your situation. Panic attacks feed off of themselves. They are a common disorder that can trouble even the most intelligent or the strongest person. They are an entire entity all in themselves. These feelings seem so powerful and they scare you. But your mind is NOT going bananas, being lost or slipping away into insanity despite your fear or your past. You are only doing what seems natural...fighting them in trying to get control over them. Read on!

Probably you have suspected a myriad of potential illnesses and feared some significant health problem that your physician has not found or explained away as "nerves" or some other reference to your nervous system. If not, please visit your doctor and remove these questions! He/she may even prescribe anti-anxiety drugs that will help you to deal with your panic feelings. You may have developed a chemical imbalance that might respond favorably to medication. I tried several of them. I preferred to not use them because I didn't like the side-affects and stipulations for use. But for some sufferers medication is a godsend. However, in the absence of a real medical problem, you are, at present, afraid of the panic attacks themselves or simply put, AFRAID OF BEING AFRAID!

I have to be blunt! There is no THING causing this (unless there is a specifically identified illness, situation or event like a wild animal attacking you). It's not a place or situation or thought...not that couch or that car or that room or that strange feeling in your eyes, stomach, head, arms, or that crowded place! Not a brain tumor, not cancer of anything! Only you! To think otherwise…to think that a certain room or situation CAUSES you to have the attacks...is false. Sure, I understand that when you are in a place or situation where you have felt these attacks before that you are aware of being there and fear THAT place or situation. BUT IT'S YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM being on a high state of alert. You must understand that it's coming from you! You also are exaggerating those strange feelings that you are having in your body into MAJOR significance. You are boxing in your life more and more by HIDING from these! It's NOT these places or situations or feelings, and I know that's hard to accept. But this is where you change your attitude from HIDING to "giving up"!

Once you apply the attitude, "I will let this feeling of fear be as worse as it wants to be, I don't care anymore", and let it happen, let yourself go towards it and begin to believe it (the prime objective), then the truth starts to comes out. You become a little less afraid. IT TAKES PRACTICE. (Research in treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder has demonstrated that persistent practice of skills such as these can result in measurable changes in brain function without medication.) As you begin to "pooh-pooh" these fear feelings and establish the attitude of non-caring more and more you get closer to the rationale about them. Eventually you will be ready for the time when you truly try to make it worse while having a panic attack - and THAT is a key moment! In order for you to take that step - the step of willingly wanting to have MORE panic - you have to finally trust that the fear is false and be sick and tired of these same attacks and the same feelings you recognize all too often. You might be afraid at this moment but you will be determined to never come back and go right to the panic and the fear and everything bad that you are afraid of! I could describe in detail what you probably imagine that to be :-). Like me you will have made it 100 times worse than it really is. It SEEMS horrible and terrifying but it isn't at all. What happens next surprises you! The whole panic house of cards collapses because you completely went into your fears without a doubt. The fears were based on themselves. The panic attacks are revealed as a vicious cycle! The panic suddenly ceases and you feel an immediate calm. Now you realize that you can do this every time. There is no "unknown" anymore. The inner conflict of BEING AFRAID OF YOURSELF is over with. You have passed through. This inner conflict, I think, is the reason why panic attacks remain inside us for so long. Your nervous system really doesn't like such a conflict.

I had these panic feelings on and off for 15 years and finally I realized that they never got worse - just built up and up to the same point. This was a point of fear that I SO dreaded experiencing that I would do ANYTHING to make them go away and avoid the places that seemed to induce them. But after 15 years - the same old feelings! I always wondered what was passed this, beyond this feeling of fear? But I was too afraid to go there. Or later on I would say, "I accept it" - but I really didn't. I was still fighting it. (Yet at the same time I WAS practicing "non-caring".)

What Dr. Weekes explained IS on this other side of fear? The other side is strength through understanding. An understanding that you want to LOSE the fight. THIS IS IMPORTANT: You cannot CONSCIOUSLY make a panic attack WORSE by yourself. It IS as worse as it gets. You have experienced the worst, yet you want to run away from it, wanting it to go away by thinking, "please, please go away...I am losing my mind, losing control, I'm going to die." This is completely incorrect! You have to turn the table and "approach" it with as much belief as you can muster in that moment of your fear and panic (only takes a tiny bit). Let it come all over you and do whatever it wants to AND EVENTUALLY (when you feel ready) TRY TO MAKE THE FEAR WORSE!!!! It's not possible.

One comment I always remember about being anxious/panicky was that you are 180 degrees away from losing your mind (i.e."crazy"). Crazy people usually have no clue they are crazy. Many attacks begin with worry about a feeling or sensation such as an increased heartbeat, tightened muscles, blurred vision, dizziness, headache or stomach upset. This feeling begins to remind you of past experiences. More anxiety ensues. Then the catastrophic thoughts about something being significantly WRONG with you take over. You, as an anxiety ridden, fearful, and perhaps perfectionist, are too much in control, TOO MINDFUL, convinced that THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU! NO there isn't! Everything you are feeling has a physical explanation or reason due to your nervous system being on "alert". You exaggerate your feelings by thinking that what is happening to you MUST be significant and you are ONLY FALLING DEEPER INTO INSANITY!

You are on the opposite side of insanity. You are TOO sane and seeking too much control in your moment of elevated tension and stress. (Cognitive Behavior Therapy teaches you to recognize this "catastrophisizing" of your feelings and substitute them with rational statements such as "It's only a temporary uneasiness or sensation that will pass soon.") Think of your panic attack as an emotional release because that's really what it is! But it's different than crying, for example, because you are also maintaining this emotional threshold by continuously being afraid of it. So finally giving up and letting the panic attack come on and eventually challenging it and trying to make it worse...brings you back to the center, where fear is manageable. By giving up control you get control. Funny how that works. Because at the moment of understanding the simple truth about your fear...comes control. My 15 years of phobia disappeared forever in less than a minute after completely and unequivocally giving up and challenging the panic feelings to become worse. It worked! I know it can never return to me, because I have won by letting myself lose the battle (which, in reality, was winning). I've been free of these feelings for over 5 years. In fact, I actually WANT them to come back to prove again and again that I know the answer. But, alas, they don't, they can't ...because I don't fear them and "fear" was their element. Without fear they don't exist.

You should understand and believe that your mind and body are solid and stable like a rock. When you "think" you will die or "lose it" from your anxious thoughts, all your body is doing is WAITING for you to quit the fight within so it can return to normal. That is the natural process inside you. Your body (which your mind is a part of) wants to return to a normal, unconflicted, lower tension state if you will let it! SO let yourself lose!!! Stop fighting the panic attacks and be willing to "die" from them if that is what you fear!!! Go ahead! You won't die. You have nothing to lose but fear itself (sorry, FDR)! But that is the attitude you must cultivate - to give up the fight and be willing to give it all up and go to wherever your feelings lead you and follow that lead to wherever it wants to go. Because then you will truly see that there is NO fight to be won or lost. Just a return to normality. Looking back now it seems so simple. I hope you can do this too! Every time you feel anxious and afraid of the unknown...you will know to let it go wherever it wants and abandon yourself to it. And that is how to eventually end it, and to control it.

As a side note: I have also noticed in others and myself that one's stomach is certainly a major reactor and a sometimes accelerator of your feelings. There isn't necessarily an ulcer involved but likely an irritable lining of the stomach from so many acid baths in reaction to the fear response and/or locking up of the digestive tract in general (small and large colon)...this from being on "alert" so long from general anxiety. People with anxiety are more than three times more likely to suffer nausea than other people, according to a report in the March/April 2002 issue of the journal General Hospital Psychiatry. If you feel that your gastrointestinal system might be overreacting (nausea, blah feeling, spasms, cramps, stomach pain, tickling) to your anxious feelings then I would recommend you check with a physician. A relaxed gastrointestinal system can do wonders for your mental attitude! If a dose of "pink" liquid gives you an immediate relief, then that is probably a good indicator.

I have to say it ONE MORE TIME. This abandonment to your fears is very hard to accept. In fact, I'll bet you will just try to passively "ride it out" thinking that that's as much as you can take! That's a good START! But the answer lies further ahead in the UNKNOWN! That place that seems too terrible to go to. Actively going TOWARDS your fear rather than shying away from it is an "unknown territory" and believe me it took 15 years before I did it. I spent the later years just "accepting" and "floating" which only was tolerating and avoiding. When you are ready, I hope you will go there. I passed through it and then it all became very clear and I was upset that I didn't do this earlier. I studied this method for years. All the logic and rationale POINTED to this:

-The fear inside you is self-created.

-The fear is OF a fear (the panic attacks themselves).

-Without fear of them they cannot exist.

-To lose fear you have to be completely willing (not WAITING...but WILLING AND WANTING to have the feelings without conditions) to have it at it's worst for however long it takes, in other words, NO HIDING.

-You have to go right towards it and be WILLING to have the worst experience of your life! You don't just SAY this to yourself, you have to BELIEVE it - 100% - and not care anymore to what happens to you!

Then POOF! There is nothing there. Your fears were all fed off of themselves like a vicious cycle. And you just stopped it!

JEFF (click this to email me with your comments or questions... I will try to respond)
Original Website: www.members.aol.com/jambeau1/panic.html