By Dr. Maurizio Capezzuto - www.psicologodiroma.com -
What is the Panic Attack?
A bolt from the blue. Suddenly and, for no apparent reason, a hurricane of sensations is unleashed: galloping palpitations, with the heart beating wildly, tremors, dyspnea, feeling of suffocation, pain in the chest, tingling or numbness in some body district, cold sweats,
Often the person who is affected tries to "manage" by implementing a series of protective behaviors (for example, begins to breathe very quickly), which in most cases worsen the situation by amplifying the sensations of panic (hyperventilation, for example, it can aggravate the feelings of vertigo, disorientation and confusion).
Recurring Panic Attacks
In the anguish of those suffering from panic attacks, there is always the reference to a terrible "first time" that leaves such a painful memory that it becomes, in itself, a continuous disturbance. Panic attacks are terrible experiences, which make one feel terribly bad, and which, in turn, cause anticipatory anxiety . Patients are willing to do anything to avoid finding themselves again.
Patients often live in fear that the panic attack may recur and implement preventive avoidance strategies, which tend to become so massive and pervasive that they progressively lead patients to avoid any novelty, any unexpected, every chance of life, with severe discomfort and unhappiness. Not infrequently, therefore, to the intense and persistent concern that the attack may recur, follows the avoidance of situations (such as, for example, crowded places, public transport, queues, etc.) in which help would not be available or from which would be difficult to get away in the event of an attack ( agoraphobia ).
Even a single attack can make the person aware of the signs of anxiety, leading her to develop a real fear of fear . It is important to underline that panic attacks after the first one, are often not so much a crisis of direct anxiety, but they are crises of fear that reactivate the anguish of that "first time". Fear of fear. A sort of "second degree fear". The fact is that the anguish of the "first time" is felt as "unbearable", as "unsustainable". So unbearable that sometimes I can't even think of it, but only to implicitly name it for hints ("I don't want that thing to happen anymore", "Thinking makes me feel bad").
This particular type of fear (known in the scientific literature with the English name of anxiety sensitivity) leads the individual to interpret as seriously threatening for his own physical or mental integrity the signs of neurovegetative activation (even those that are completely physiological) and therefore to react to them in an anxious way. The anxiety resulting from it in turn frightens the person, starting a real vicious circle that can lead in a short time to an attack. The fear of fear, together with the undesirable effects of protective behavior, is therefore largely responsible for the appearance of new panic attacks and, ultimately, for the development and maintenance of the disorder.
Origin of the Term
It is interesting to note how the experience of panic is intrinsically linked to the etymology of the term. The word "PANIC" derives from the name of the ancient Greek god Pan. The name Pan comes from the Greek "paein", to graze, but literally pan means "everything" because, according to Greek mythology, Pan was the spirit of all natural creatures and this meaning links it to the forest, to the abyss, to the deep. The abyss, in a psychological sense, corresponds to what is not known, what moves below our awareness, and in fact, panic feeds precisely on the mists that surround our mental functioning.
From the name Pan derives the term panic, in fact the god gets angry with those who disturb him, and emits terrifying screams causing fear in the disturber. Some stories tell us that Pan himself was seen escaping from the fear he provoked, just as the person suffering from panic attacks tries to escape from his fear.
Treatment
Unfortunately, not everyone knows that panic disorder, if properly treated through psychotherapy, leads to a remission of symptoms in about 90% of cases.
