Which is better in Panic Attacks, Medications or Psychotherapy

Posted January 7th, 2010 by admin and filed in Anxiety
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Most researches promote that a 10-12 session therapy helps as much as medications against panic attacks.
This approach utilizes coaching as anxiety management techniques and usually works better than medications especially in terms or recurrence after final treatment.

Selecting a treatment is a doctors recommendation for the therapy regimen. In severe cases, therapy and medications are combined to get the best results. For infrequent attacks, one can try self-treatment but are usually not proven to work depending on ones capacity and discipline. If after a few internal self therapy sessions, one is still not panic free, then trying another method is usually beneficial.

It is known that most stringer medications give out a faster effect compared to behavioral therapies. The known disadvantages however include side effects and the return of panic attacks after the medication is terminated. In behavioral therapy, panic attacks rarely occur after full treatment and if they do, they are often less than with medication. There is also no risk of side effects. Known disadvantages include slow response to treatment in some individuals. They may also be expensive and time-consuming. Some people also are aware of the stigma attached to therapies especially in social circles.

For some people a CBT or cognitive-behavioral therapy is actually fun as they are allowed to relate with other people suffering from the same condition and are able to recognize the different patterns of a panic attack. Psychologically, the mind does its own effort to overcome a problem when it sees one from another persons point of view. This is more applicable to persons in the beginning stages of panic attack syndromes.

Therapists try very hard to develop confidence in their patience and point out where work is needed. They are also there to aid patients which is ultimately better as psychological assistance is provided. Freely talking about a problem also relieves tension and in a way helps alleviate patterns of disruptions in panic attacks.

For fast relief of panic attacks, some people prefer medications compared to therapies which promotes a longer effect in the treatment of panic attacks. Medication may be prescribed by doctors who, through the lack of other options and knowledge of non-chemical substance treatments believe that panic attacks or anxiety are chemical conditions that a magic pill can alleviate. Sometimes in desperation, and in some cases where anxiety can still be controlled, medications may aid but soon after its effects wear off, the risks of succumbing to another attach is very much anticipated. Other panic attacks brought about by agoraphobia and dependence require more than just plain medications in its treatment.

Studying the patient before prescribing the medications is very important. Knowing the occurrence of attacks, its frequency and its strengths is vital prior to medical prescription. Other psychologists and psychiatrists would require their patients to rely on therapy and use medications for a certain period of time to allow the body and the mind to treat itself after a period of normalcy provided by the meds in the intervals between attacks.

Common medications include antidepressants to treat the panic disorder which is effective and totally eliminates panic with little or no side effects. However, antidepressants are quite slow-acting and cannot be taken in large doses all at once. Sometimes, by the time the antidepressant effects are fully generated in the body, non-invasive therapy through counseling may have already taken effect and decreased panic attacks through the brains own adjustment with little therapy.

Valium group or benzodiazepines are fast-acting within the first hour of the first dose. The side-effect is it potential to promote addiction as the body gets used to the medication. Usually, continuous usage after a period of 2-3 weeks results to drug tolerance.
Some doctors would offer benzodiazepines for a few weeks while you’re trying to find an effective therapist. As soon as they are tapered off, the doctor assumes that one should be no worse when you stop than when you started. Some individuals can take medications for a few months, then stop, and remain free from panic attacks. Ideally, medications are discontinued after a specific goal is attained.

Four Cures for Social Phobia

Posted January 6th, 2010 by admin and filed in Anxiety
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Social phobias are more common than people may think. It can affect your life in small ways like avoiding certain roads, or in large ways, like avoiding entire social outings, all of which are done for one purpose: to prevent anxiety and panic attacks.

There are many ways to cure social phobia, but it depends on your commitment and desire to overcome social phobias. Here are a couple easy ways to ward off anxiety or panic attacks.

1. Medication: there are drugs that combat social phobia that either inhibit, block, or slows down your brain and nerves system. But these are drugs nonetheless and many doctors recommend using them as a temporary way to overcome social phobia.

2. Therapy: or more specifically, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Step by step therapy that uses positive thoughts reinforced through therapy, thus keeping your brain calm and happy in social settings.

3. Confidence: besides therapy there are ways to gain self-confidence as a social phobia cure. Doing an activity you are good or excel in while gradually surrounding yourself with more and more people is a good way to build up confidence. Focusing on the task at hand also takes away negative thoughts that might usually arise.

4. Meditation: quickness and shortness of breath is a common symptom of social phobia and panic attacks. Learning to meditate and control your breathing could eventually help you to control your breathing if you feel an anxiety or panic attack is coming.

If left untreated, social phobia can take control of your life. Depression, panic disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder can disrupt relationships, work, and your personal life. Find a social phobia cure for you, because it’s out there and you deserve it.  There are many self-help programs that aim to reduce anxiety and lessen the effects of phobia. To learn more about the effectiveness of these programs, visit http://www.squidoo.com/fightpanicattacks and take control of your life.

The ABCs of Agoraphobia: Definition, Symptoms and Treatment

What is Agoraphobia?
This phobia is defined as ‘fear of being of an embarrassing situation’, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. However, this is fairly known as fear of public places where the embarrassing situation might happen. In the US alone, there is about 1 per cent of the whole population but in the UK, about 4 per cent has it. Thus, such is developed from panic attacks which then advance into full-blown agoraphobia.
What are the Symptoms?
Agoraphobia does not sound as familiar as other phobias, however, it is actually common. The symptoms are also fairly common, sometimes these are portrayed in movies. Perhaps, after hearing the symptoms, you would identify the phobia.
Some common symptoms include the fear of crowds and of public transport. Then, there is social withdrawal or isolation. The person tends to ‘hide’ from people, this even includes fear in their own neighborhoods. For some milder agoraphobics, they are still able to go out, but they would require being with another person. Lastly, a panic attack which is originally the usual cause of agoraphobia becomes a symptom.
What the Treatment Options are available?
There are many treatment options available for agoraphobia. These treatment options can range from some simple remedies up to therapies. One of the simplest ways of ‘treating’ agoraphobia is by controlling panic attacks. This is said to be the most important since this is the main reason why they do not like to go out. Simply put, if there are no panic attacks, then there is less likely to have any fearful embarrassing situations.
Another available option is a CBT or a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This psychotherapeutic approach works by keeping the anxiety level at a minimum. This helps by changing the person’s view of the fearful events they anticipate. One other approach is EFT or the Emotional Freedom Technique. This works by tapping the body’s points to change the negative emotional stresses. There is also the NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming which is commonly to place a ‘good’ pattern of behavior to follow.
There are also some alternative non-medical approaches like hypnosis and stress management. Hypnosis which uses the mind’s deep state to calm the person and then change the perspective of the fearful events is one treatment option. Stress management, on the other hand, identifies the stressors then provides a more viable option on handling the stress. In turn, when the stress is overcome then, it would be easier to remove all other fears.
Conclusion
In conclusion we hope this article has highlighted the numerous ways you can help yourself, and possibly also help somebody else who has agoraphobia.
We would recommend that you stick with natural therapies over drugs, drug’s only ever mask the symptoms and rarely ever deal with them head on.
Don’t get us wrong, drug’s do have a place and can help put a sufferers symptoms aside so they can attemtp to deal with the real issues with behavioural therapy or other methods. But they should never be relied on 100% as the sole cure.

Panic Attack Medications – Why You Don’t Need Them

Your doctor’s first line treatment for panic attack is usually drug-based medications. These work quite well for many people, but their downsides are that they treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, and, they do have many negative side effects. In addition they can be expensive, especially where they have to be used over a considerable period of time. Here, you’ll discover why you don’t need panic attack medications to succeed.

First, let’s consider how a panic attack occurs…

An attack normally occurs where a sufferer already has much higher-than-normal levels of anxiety. So when an everyday stressful event occurs, such as; shopping in a crowded supermarket, driving in the rush hour, etc., the additional stress pushes their overall anxiety up to such an intensity that a panic attack is triggered.

Nowadays, more and more folks are seeking to eliminate their attacks using totally natural remedies without the bad side effects of drug-based medications. Typical of these are; dizziness, nausea, disorientation, depression, fatigue, blurred vision, light headedness, memory loss, and, in some cases, dependency.

Nevertheless, drugs can be effective short term solutions and are widely prescribed. However, in many cases, after patients come off the drugs at the end of their course, the anxiety and their associated attacks can re-occur, because the root cause hasn’t been tackled.

Sufferers are then faced with the choice of going back on drugs where appropriate, or, using other non-drug therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Many prefer to go the therapy route, with CBT and others such as hypnosis, self-hypnosis, meditation, etc. There are also things like yoga, acupuncture and support groups etc.

The aforementioned can be looked upon as techniques to help you cope with, or manage, your general anxiety and panic attacks. But that’s all they do; help you cope. And drugs only help you with the symptoms. You want to get to the root of the problem and tackle that in order to get to a successful conclusion…

One of the key elements in arriving at a proper cessation of anxiety and panic attacks is your natural fear of having a panic attack. This can be a conscious or subconscious fear, but, either way, it can hold you back and is at the root of things.

You see, your fear of another attack can be the very thing that causes that panic attack to occur. Try to look at it like this: your understandable fear builds on your already higher-than-normal general anxiety so that a normal, everyday stressful occurrence — that under normal circumstances you would take in your stride — can raise your overall anxiety level to such a height that an attack is triggered.

Look on this process as a ‘cycle of anxiety’ that can be described as; anxiety > panic attack > fear > raised anxiety > panic attack > fear > raised anxiety > and so on. You need to break this vicious cycle in order to prevent further panic attacks and cure your general anxiety.

Now, only you can break the cycle; drugs won’t do it and, even with the best therapies to help you, you’ll need a great deal of determination and a positive attitude to succeed. But there is a special technique that you can use called the ‘One Move’ technique that can help enormously.

To discover the simple ‘ONE MOVE’ technique that will eliminate your fear factor and so break your vicious cycle of anxiety at last, go here now http://eliminatepanicattacks.blogspot.com and prepare to get your old self back again.

Panic Away Review

Panic away is an online Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) program, a self-help course with ebook and audio CDs to help you control your mind and stop anxiety attacks. CBT is widely used to cure anxiety disorder, and this is a method to re-program your mind reaction to the trigger of anxiety attacks.To understand how it works, you first need to know the cause of your attack. Each and every panic attack is triggered by something that you worry or fear, such as fear of losing someone or something, worry of your own health condition and the fear of something or event.Only when you determine the cause, you can put your effort on solving the real problem. For example, if you fear of heart attacks, you will create a sense of worry and fear whenever you starts to feel your heart beating a bit faster, and that sense of worry will continue to feed into your mind whenever your heart starts to beat faster, and your mind will send more sense of fear that causes the heart to beat even faster, and the cycle begins to enlarge the sense of fear, until one day you start to have panic attacks.What is Panic AwayPanic away has powerful techniques that can instantly “turn off” the sense of extreme fear, and help you gain control of your mind and body. Over 30,000 patients has used these techniques and successfully recovered from anxiety disorder. However, I must warn you this before you jump into any kind of treatment, you need to be prepared before you can take advantage of this treatment, below are a list of things you should start first: 1. Be Positive – You need to be thinking and acting positive about any problems you faced; When something came up, instead of worrying and annoyed too much, you should face it and try to solve it, you will build confidence when you face your problems and solving it. 2. Don’t Stop Trying – Many people will give up easily and claimed the methods are not working. Don’t be that person; When someone tell you something will work, you should try it from different angle, especially other people has proved it working, you should find the correct way to make it work. 3. Don’t Be Afraid of Failing – There are only very few people will get things right at the first try, and you should not stop trying because of afraid you will fail. Failing is just a process of learning, at least you know that way is not going to work, so you can move on to try other ways! 4. Success Need Persistent – When you try something, you must be persistent enough to see the result; Don’t give up too early, you must try and try until you find the solution, and in the process of trying, persistent on the practice as shown in the panic away program and you will see result.When you are prepared, you will have a greater chance of success with the Panic Away program, and I know their program has an impressive success rate of 95%! Although I have some doubt about this figure, but I am pretty confidence in their method, especially the one move technique.

Is Panic away a scam? Is Panic away any good?

When ever time I saw someone claim that panic away treatment program is a scam, I can’t stop to laugh… Well, panic away is not a magic pill, but it works for most and majority of the people who suffered from generalized anxiety disorder and specific phobias. Few things I need to stress before discussing about panic away and it’s scam.

Click Here For A Surefire Way To Cure Panic Attacks For GoodJust like any other treatment program, you must have self confidence, or at least build up yourself confidence, believe you will be recovered and restore your life, one way or the other. Without confidence, any kind of treatment is just another SCAM! Support from family members and friends are extremely important during the recovery process of anxiety and depression, and yourself confidence will be restored much easier as compare to without support from your loved one.So, what is panic away? What does it do? To answer your question, I urge you signup a free mini course with panic away, you can find it here: Panic away mini course. The mini course will show you some very simple and yet powerful methods to counter anxiety and panic attacks; you can use it alone or combined with the panic away treatment program by Joe Barry. 1. Learn how panic attack build up. 2. Learn the fact that what you resist persists, learn the skill to fight panic attack effectively. 3. Learn the truth of panic attack, and the sensation of fear and panic, how panic attack can’t harm you in any way! 4. Learn the techniques to observe and label the sensation and thoughts, watch them flows through and move on. 5. Learn how to reduce anxious thoughts and panic attack with simple drinking water. 6. Learn the powerful skill of switching your focus from anxious mind to other part of your body. 7. Learn how to Keep yourself busy to reduce and relief your mind.I love this mini course, it gives much information about anxiety, the causes and triggers and how to deal with them. Although this mini course by Joe Barry is just a small part of what panic away treatment program will give you, I urge you sign up with them and start using these proven techniques to relieve yourself from panic attack.Let’s come back to the topic and discuss what panic away is really about… Panic away is an advanced Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) treatment program, improved version of many traditional CBT programs. Some of the techniques are widely used by many therapists today, and are proven by over 30,000 people to be effective against anxiety disorder and panic attack, I think the number already answered the question: Is panic away any good?Panic away is especially effective against the problems below: 1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder 2. Reduced Benzodiazepine symptoms and usage 3. Minimize or eliminate spontaneous panic attack 4. Eliminate the fear of losing controlYou can find more detail information about panic away at panic away review, see what are included and some testimonial resources.

How Do you Treat a Panic Attack?

Posted December 19th, 2009 by admin and filed in Anxiety
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You suddenly feel fear and anxiety. Your palms are clammy, there is tightness in your chest and you cannot breathe properly. “Am I having a heart attack?”, you say to yourself. Scary thoughts are racing through your mind and more you think about what is going on the more your fear grows.

If you have every suffered these frightening feelings then you may have had a panic attack. In the US, 3 to 6 million people will have some type of panic attack during their lifetime and many of these people suffer panic attacks on a regular basis. A panic attack can happen suddenly with no warning, anywhere, anytime – at work, home, even when a person is asleep.

A panic attack is an event in which the body’s “fight or flight” response is set off, often with no obvious stimulus or reason.

Why it Happens

Everyone experiences stress and for most people they are able to cope with it. However, for some people, the stress builds up in their body and a panic attack ensures. For many sufferers, the experience of the panic attack is so frightening that they begin to become afraid of another panic attack occurring, which raises the sufferers stress levels – and the panic attack cycle continues.

Panic attacks are considered by psychologists and psychiatrists as a potentially disabling but treatable condition.

Drug Treatments

There are a number of different ways that panic attacks can be treated. Medications are probably the most used intervention, with doctors usually prescribing antidepressants such as Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac.

Psychological Treatments

As far as psychological interventions is concerned, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is considered to be very effective in treating panic attacks. When undergoing CBT, patients are taught to recognize the thinking patterns that heighten their anxiety and stress. Therapy should be a long term process and if you take it seriously you are likely to see some great results. A combination of both approaches – medication and CBT – is often considered to be one of more the effective methods.

Programs from Former Panic Attack Sufferers

Not everyone however, finds that traditional treatments are the best method for treating their panic attacks. After being crippled with their problems and failing with drug treatments, several former sufferers of panic attacks have found ways to overcome their attacks without medications and have began to teach other people what they have learned. Typically, these courses are in the form of home study programs which people can use at home and incorporate in to their daily lives. The main advantage of these programs is that they are made by former sufferers of panic attacks and makes users feel like they are not alone with their symptoms and that someone finally understands what they are going through.

While panic attacks are a frightening experience, the key thing to know is that you are not alone and that they are a treatable. You should thoroughly research your treatment options, talk to your doctor and don’t get discouraged.

Depression, a Different Perspective

The most typical way it’s used to diagnose clinical depression is based on the symptoms. Unlike physical ailments, mental disorders are much more difficult to accurately diagnose as many of the symptoms are based on perceptions.

At issue is what determines the baseline measurement? Take for example to very common symptoms.

1. Feelings of overwhelming sadness or fear.

2. Fatigue or a loss of mental or physical energy.

If you consider society at large as the baseline measurement for the degree of sadness and fear, we have a problem. It’s no secret that least in today’s society there is very little true satisfaction in employment in many cases family life. This is very evident by the fact that we have such high rates of divorce, job hopping and an unwillingness to make or follow through on commitments. Using society at large can be dangerous. Remember that at one time most of society thought the world was flat.

Is it possible that those of us diagnosed with depression may simply have a different or even deeper understanding of the world and life in it? While many psychologists work to understand the symptoms and provide an accurate diagnosis of depression, getting to the root cause is much more difficult.

Is it possible that people with depression may have hypersensitivity to the world around them? Do they recognize the world is in serious shape and they are unable to adjust their internal integrity and need for justice. In a world where abuse of your fellow man can bring not only riches but recognition by society as “successful” it’s no surprise that sensitive and thinking people may exhibit the symptoms of depression.

Is it possible that some of us are depressed because we see the definition of success in society is more stuff that ends up having little or no value? Do depressed people recognize the inherent inequity of the larger rules in play and have no answer or solution? Mental health professionals may recognize these types of outlooks and their answer is often times to encourage a depressed person to recognize that they can’t fix everything.

Although there are treatments, they assume the person diagnosed with depression is the one that is actually ill. If the root causes of depression are a recognition of our need for fairness, equity and justice, treatments may only change our mental perception at our own expense. This might explain why depression is a chronic condition that many fight their whole lives to control.

If at least somewhat accurate, people with depression are in mental combat with their own possibly deeper understanding of life and what they see throughout society. Wouldn’t it be interesting if between the depressed and nondepressed groups, we’ve unwisely identified the wrong ones as having a disorder.

This article offers a different perspective on identification of depression as a disorder or illness. Many of us apparently can manage the severity of the depressive symptoms because the great majority of us don’t seek help. If you’re suffering from depression and the symptoms are starting to be overwhelming, please get some help as quickly as possible. If you’re having thoughts of suicide or have simply given up, you need to get some help.

Don’t Let Social Anxiety Disorders Ruin your Career

Social anxiety disorder is a disorder that is based on excessive self-consciousness. This can manifest itself in a feeling of fear or dread of public situations like a doing a business presentation are speaking up in a meeting. The symptoms of social anxiety disorder, or social phobia, are very broad and can affect people in a variety of ways.

Some may be fine in public places like shopping, the supermarket or a mall but be very self-conscious if they need to interact with anyone. Social phobia is identified as having a persistent or chronic fear of doing or saying something that might be judged harshly and could result in embarrassment or humiliation. In more severe cases, this fear can keep someone from the human to human interaction necessary to advance one’s career, or even be successful in many school are educational situations.

It’s no secret that one of the best ways of moving up the corporate ladder is to make yourself visible to those in management above you. The most common way to gain this visibility is by volunteering for higher profile projects and assignments. This offers the opportunity to deliver regular reports to upper management and demonstrate not only project management skills but team leadership as well.

To the person suffering with social phobia however, the option to volunteer for a high profile project or assignment is simply not possible. While they may be mentally up to the challenge and possibly even the best person for the job, a social phobic can limit themselves by the need to remain out of the spotlight. This in turn, severely limits their visibility to management and can also limit career advancement potential.

Social Phobia Treatments

The good news is that there are many treatment options available to help control social phobias. The most successful treatment has been a combination of psychotherapy and medications. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective in treating many social anxiety disorders. This therapy focuses on control of a person’s own thoughts and how they react or behave in relation to that thought process. This allows someone suffering with social phobia to move past the fear and anxiety and be able to continue on with their lives. This does not mean that they are cured, only that the social phobia monster has been faced and controlled for a given situation.

Cognitive behavior therapy or CBT works to gradually deal with situations that are increasingly more fearful or complex. This offers the sufferer a way to develop the confidence to face situations and deal with the anxiety.

Don’t Let Social Anxiety Disorders Ruin your Career

Social anxiety disorder is a disorder that is based on excessive self-consciousness. This can manifest itself in a feeling of fear or dread of public situations like a doing a business presentation are speaking up in a meeting. The symptoms of social anxiety disorder, or social phobia, are very broad and can affect people in a variety of ways.

Some may be fine in public places like shopping, the supermarket or a mall but be very self-conscious if they need to interact with anyone. Social phobia is identified as having a persistent or chronic fear of doing or saying something that might be judged harshly and could result in embarrassment or humiliation. In more severe cases, this fear can keep someone from the human to human interaction necessary to advance one’s career, or even be successful in many school are educational situations.

It’s no secret that one of the best ways of moving up the corporate ladder is to make yourself visible to those in management above you. The most common way to gain this visibility is by volunteering for higher profile projects and assignments. This offers the opportunity to deliver regular reports to upper management and demonstrate not only project management skills but team leadership as well.

To the person suffering with social phobia however, the option to volunteer for a high profile project or assignment is simply not possible. While they may be mentally up to the challenge and possibly even the best person for the job, a social phobic can limit themselves by the need to remain out of the spotlight. This in turn, severely limits their visibility to management and can also limit career advancement potential.

Social Phobia Treatments

The good news is that there are many treatment options available to help control social phobias. The most successful treatment has been a combination of psychotherapy and medications. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to be effective in treating many social anxiety disorders. This therapy focuses on control of a person’s own thoughts and how they react or behave in relation to that thought process. This allows someone suffering with social phobia to move past the fear and anxiety and be able to continue on with their lives. This does not mean that they are cured, only that the social phobia monster has been faced and controlled for a given situation.

Cognitive behavior therapy or CBT works to gradually deal with situations that are increasingly more fearful or complex. This offers the sufferer a way to develop the confidence to face situations and deal with the anxiety.