Posts Tagged ‘Over Comming Panic Attacks’

It has been a known information for many years that anxious parents can pass anxiety disorders on to their children.  Although this truth is well known, no one is prepared to say yes to this question "is anxiety inherited”.

But now, a new study by the scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Centre, came up with the conclusion that a family-based program where parents and children are being treated jointly, can reduce the symptoms and risks of anxiety amongst these children.

Each person can get fretful from time to time, but when the crisis starts taking over one’s life, the condition is then called anxiety disorder. It can be exceedingly stressful and inhibit people from living their lives fully. Some individuals with anxiety disorder may also have phobias and develop panic attacks.

For the study purposes, the Hopkins investigators looked at 40 children with the ages between 7 and 12 years. The children were not diagnosed with anxiety disorder themselves but all of them had at least one parent who was diagnosed with the condition.  What other proof do we really need to answer the question "is anxiety inherited".

Researchers randomly split the participants into two groups, with 20 of the children and their families taking part in an 8-week cognitive behavioural therapy program, while the other 20 were put on a waiting list and did not receive any treatment during the period of the study, but were offered therapy one year later.

The CBT program, which consisted of one-hour-long weekly sessions, was focusing on an development of problem-solving skills, instruction about anxiety disorder, as well as helped parents identify and change behaviours alleged to contribute to anxiety in the children.

The chief researcher of the study, Dr. Golda Ginsburg, PH.D., a child psychologist at Hopkins Children’s Centre and an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that according to the records gathered by the experts, the children of parents with an anxiety disorder are up to seven times more likely to develop the disorder themselves, and up to 65 per cent of kids who live with an anxious parent meet the criteria for anxiety disorder.

The results of the trial revealed that within a period of 12 months, 30 per cent of the children who did not participate in the program, had developed an anxiety disorder, compared to none of the children who were enrolled in the family based therapy. A 40 per cent decrease in anxiety symptoms in the year after the therapy program were independently reported by parents along with investigators who analyzed the behaviour of the kids and their parents. There was no fall of anxiety symptoms observed among children on the waiting list.

The parental behaviours adapted with therapy program included overprotection, excessive criticism and excessive expression of fear and anxiety in front of the kids. The program targeted childhood risk factors such as avoiding anxiety-provoking situations and anxious thoughts.

According to a recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, it is deterrence and not treatment, of childhood anxiety, that is of a primary importance, because anxiety disorders affect one in every 5 children in the United States, but very often are left unrecognized. If not addressed in time, the trouble can lead to depression, substance abuse and poor academic performance throughout childhood years and way into adulthood.

Results of the study will be published in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The study was funded by the US government’s National Institute of Mental Health.  So "is anxiety inherited", yes.  Can we change the pattern of behaviour yes!

Could it assist a few of us if we had the answer to this question “is anxiety inherited”?

I’m not positive.  It may help us come to terms with the fact that we suffer with anxiety.

Have you looked at your family history, parents, grandparents and maybe even further back?  Or have you grown up with a family member suffering from anxiety?

My mother suffered fairly badly with anxiety, chiefly when she was going all through the change.

  Her anxiety triggered her to become house bound, resulting in her leaving her job on health grounds.

I don’t recollect looking back at my younger days my mum suffering with anxiety.  But she did.  Just because I cannot recall it.  It does not denote that I did not pick up on it.

The predicament for me is, that since she  was suffering with anxiety, I may well of picked up that learnt behaviour, without truly knowing what it was.

So back to the big question “is anxiety inherited”, well it may not of been in my actual genes, but I could of learnt the anxiety behaviour from my mum.

I have had some great debates with friends on this subject.

Like how come I have anxiety and my three brothers and my sister do not suffer with anxiety.  For sure that would confirm that anxiety is not inherited.  Although on the other hand I have to have learnt it from somebody?

My anxiety has been labelled as “free floating anxiety”, so I do not know what I get anxious around, but I do know I have anxiety.  So understandably I must have learnt that behaviour from somewhere.

The reason this is so key to me is, I if I learnt this behaviour, then I can work on learning a fresh way of becoming.  I can work on the reality that this is the behaviour of my Mother and not me.  It was something that I picked up while I was growing up.  It does not belong to me; I borrowed it from my Mum.  I did not appreciate what I was picking up on.  But I picked up on the anxiety my mum was suffering from and stored it away ready for the right conditions to manifest in my life for it to happen and be part of my life.

For me “is anxiety inherited”, yes, as a learnt behaviour, not as something that is permanent in my life.

When an individual is overwhelmed due to the fact that they are not coping with panic and anxiety being part of their life.   It may often feel as though nothing can be accomplished to help end the symptoms  of a panic attack or even relieve the symptoms.

Although coping with panic and anxiety attacks are often horrendous, steps can be taken to stop the attacks. Even if you feel you cannot get rid of the attacks totally, wouldn’t it be good to  make the attacks less extreme, and in the process learn skills for coping with panic and anxiety attacks.

There are many things which will trigger a panic attack. Generally they’re caused by unresolved issues from the past, and other times they might have been caused by a very stressful or painful experience that happened more recently. Other times, the attacks will be because of not having the appropriate coping skills to effectively cope with life’s stresses.

If an individual is able to recognize the basis causes of the panic attacks, he/she will often have less attacks and will be in a position to get back to their normal life. Panic attacks will become very severe and develop into a problem referred to as agoraphobia, a concern of leaving the house, if not addressed properly. 

One of the first steps for coping with panic and anxiety is  to recognize the triggers that are causing your panic. The triggers will be anything from an animal, person, or a problem that needs to be corrected. Once these triggers have been recognized, the next steps to stopping a panic attack will be implemented .

Individuals who have  panic attacks can normally go through more than one, and can typically recognize the symptoms that show up at the beginning of an attack. This way, an individual can then help themselves by talking themselves through the attack, that can in turn keep them calmer during the attack. Upon a panic attack, applying the self talk technique, any individual can tell themselves they have gone through this within the past and survived, and can do it again. You may also want to learn to take nice, deliberate, deep breaths. Breathing gradually from your diaphragm will enable you to calm your body.

Besides these steps to stop panic attacks, when an attack is about to start, or is already beginning, there are plenty of alternative preventative measures that an individual can utilize. A lot  of folks that suffer from panic attacks are hard on themselves for experiencing them. They literally believe something isn’t right with them and do not understand what triggers these attacks.

It’s essential for panic attack victims to understand that the panic attacks are beyond their control. They also have to realize a higher self-concept. It’s essential for sufferers to ascertain reasonable goals for stopping their anxiety attacks, and cut back the incidence of attacks by limiting contact with the situations that cause them. Smoking, drinking alcohol, and caffeine ought to be eliminated or drastically reduced as a result of they also will set off panic attacks.

Hopefully some of what is written here may well go a long way toward helping you to help yourself in coping with panic and anxiety

The more you understand panic attacks the better prepared you will be to over coming panic attacks.

Therefore what are the most common physical symptoms that may happen to you during a panic attack.  You’ll begin to breathe more rapidly; your heart beat will speed up.  You’ll experience chest pain and maybe some dizziness and numbness.  You will start to sweat and go through the motion of hot and cold sweats.

So what could be behind the worry of a panic attack.  It’s typically a concern of dying or some impending catastrophe.  It’s always some type of dread or doom scenario or feeling. These feelings are caused as a result of a physical reaction that’s occurring in your body.

Adrenaline is the cause of this, our body’s naturally go into the flight or fight syndrome because of the amount of adrenaline that’s being pumped around our body.  Adrenaline offers our bodies the false feeling of danger therefore we react to that false sense of danger by going into a “Fight or Flight” scenario, which in turn can cause a panic attack.

We could help ourselves to over coming panic attacks by watching our diet.  Try to keep your caffeine levels low.  I used to drink a lot of tea, coffee and coke.  This amount of caffeine caused my heart to have palpitations.  Having palpitations used to send me into a panic attack and because my heart was pumping so hard i thought i was going to die from a heart attack.  Thus I cut out coffee and coke.  It really helped my palpitations, that in turn cut down my panic attacks.

For me the best approach to over coming panic attacks was when I really believed that it was my thoughts that caused the panic attacks.  I had been told that it was my thoughts that where inflicting my anxiety and panics.  However I struggled with that for years and years.  The concept that I used to be inflicting my very own living hell was very hard for me to understand.  However I took small steps to intercept my thought patterns.  Because we do have automatic thought patterns that run when we start to go into a panic attack that feed the panic.

So start to watch your thoughts when you start to go into a panic attack, the more conscious of your thoughts you are the more equipped you are to over coming panic attacks.