Hypnotherapy for Panic Attacks

Panic Attacks are a terrible problem that can destroy people’s lives. People usually have tried everything they can think of that is conventional (mainstream) to get help with their panic attacks, and only then do they look for more unconventional approaches like hypnotherapy. Below I will explain what panic attacks are, the symptoms, how you develop panic attacks and relevant statistics. Then I will go over the different treatments available and finally how hypnotherapy for panic attacks can help eliminate your panic attacks permanently.

What Is a Panic Attack?

A panic attack is a brief episode of intense anxiety, which causes physical sensations in the body. Some symptoms may include hot or cold flush, shaking, dizziness, and heart-racing, to name a few.

Panic attacks can occur frequently and without warning, with no real threat and with no clear trigger. They may even occur when you’re relaxed or asleep. Panic attacks can last from a few minutes to an hour. However, the physical and emotional effects of the attack may last for hours. Many people who have never had one mistake it for a heart attack.

Panic attacks are common. Up to 35% of the population experience a panic attack at some time in their lives. A panic attack can also be called an anxiety attack.

Some people may only ever experience it once, but lots of other people go on to experience many attacks over time. Frequent and prolonged panic attacks can be severely disabling. The person may choose to avoid a wide range of situations (such as leaving their home or being alone) for fear of experiencing an attack.

Symptoms of a Panic Attack

The signs and symptoms of a panic attack develop quickly and reach their peak within 10 minutes. They can last up to an hour, with most lasting 20 to 30 minutes. Panic attacks can happen anywhere and at any time without warning.

Emotional Symptoms of a panic attack can include:

Physical Symptoms of a panic attack can include:

What Are Emotions?

Emotions are made of two things: thoughts and thoughts are made up of images, colour, movies, sound, dialogue, and talking to ourselves and others in our heads. The second part of emotions is a physical sensation in our bodies. Sometimes people will say I have butterflies in my stomach to represent anxiety. They might get a tight chest when you get angry and hot in the face when embarrassed. People who have panic attacks have extreme physical sensations like sweating, shaking, dizziness, pins and needles, heart racing, burning, and many more.

During normal life when not having a panic attack most of the physical sensations in your body you are completely unaware of because they are so mild compared to a panic attack, they are the same sensations but much milder, you may be just present to the emotion and sometimes you’re not even present to them depending on the intensity of the emotion.

The reason why you are unaware of these sensations is because when they happen, they may be mild and over time you get used to them and eventually you can no longer feel it. It has become subconscious outside your conscious awareness. Think of wearing a watch for the first time. At first you can feel it all the time, then after two weeks of wearing a watch, you can no longer feel the watch. The sensation of it on your wrist has become subconscious.

So emotions are made up of thoughts and physical sensations in the body combined they form our emotions. When people have panic attacks, these emotions and physical sensations become very intense and leave our subconscious and enter our conscious awareness.

What Is a Panic Attack Made Of?

As I have described above in “What Are Emotions?” panic attacks are made up of thoughts usually the memory of a previous panic attack and the accompanying physical sensations like sweating, shaking, dizziness, pins and needles, heart racing, burning and many more. These physical sensations are really intense to the point the person having the panic attack cannot function or think of anything else. Many people, when having a panic attack for the first time, think they are having a heart attack and may seek medical help from a hospital emergency room.

How Do You Develop Panic Attacks?

People develop panic attacks in many ways it could be triggered by a highly stressful event, a person may be feeling a little sick or off a bit which may trigger off a panic attack, they may have this sick feeling when flying in a plane nothing happens on that flight but next one they have a panic attack. Sometimes people will be able to identify the trigger and other times they won’t.

Now some of these people will go on to have panic attacks on a frequent basis for a month or so, then they may stop for no reason and they are fine for many years. Then gradually here and there, they start to have panic attacks infrequently again, but they slowly become more regular and frequent. Other people may have panic attacks on a frequent basis, and it continues that way from the beginning. There is no one pattern to developing this problem.

Anchoring and Panic Attacks

Each time you have a panic attack you anchor (attach) both the emotions and physical sensations of the panic attack to the event of the panic attack which becomes a memory of the panic attack, so all those emotions and physical sensations get anchored to each memory of a panic attack and unfortunately you store all of that in your body. Over time, as you anchor more of the emotions and physical sensations from the panic attacks, it increases your general anxiety level. Think of it on a scale of 1 -10. As general anxiety increases, the intensity of the panic attacks will increase, as well as the frequency of the attacks.

Think of it this way what you focus on is what you get, so what you focus on is what you think about the most and what you think about the most is whatever has the most emotion attached to it, in our case, this is usually negative emotions. So this forms a loop, what you focus on is what you think about the most and what you think about the most is what has the most emotion attached to it and each time you focus on this you anchor more emotions and physical sensations, which means you focus on it more which means you think about it more which means you anchor more emotions and physical sensations to it, and around and around you go.

If You Have Panic Attacks on a Regular Basis You:

This Leads to the Following Behaviours

Persistent anxiety—Instead of feeling relaxed and like your normal self, you suffer from anxiety that stems from a fear of having another panic attack. This fear of panic attacks is present most of the time, and can be extremely disabling. And this constant focusing on the fear of having a panic attack actually brings them on because you're unintentionally focusing on a memory of having one which brings on a panic attack.

Avoidance anxiety—You avoid certain situations or environments. You’re avoiding situations or locations where you experienced a previous panic attack. You avoid places where it’s difficult to escape if you have had a panic attack. In the extreme, this avoidance becomes agoraphobia.

There is a connection with major life transitions such as leaving school and entering the workplace, getting married, or having a baby. Severe stress, such as the death of a loved one, divorce, or job loss, can also trigger panic attacks.

Is It a Heart Attack or a Panic Attack?

Most of the symptoms of a panic attack are physical, and many times these symptoms are so severe that you may think you’re having a heart attack. Many people having panic attacks make repeated trips to the doctor or the emergency room to get treatment for what they believe is a life-threatening medical problem like a heart attack.

It is only after a barrage of tests that doctors will tell you that you’re having a panic attack and that you need to see your GP or a psychologist for help with the problem because there is no medical problem.

Statistics of Panic Attacks

Approximately 5% of people in Australia will experience a panic attack in their lifetime, with 2.6% experiencing panic attacks longer than a 12-month period. It’s estimated that slightly more women than men have panic disorder, which usually begins when people are in their early to mid-20s or in mid-life.

Although panic attacks can occur at any age, it is rare in older people and children.

Reference: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/anxiety/types-of-anxiety/panic-disorder

Hypnotherapy for Panic Attack Reviews

Medical Treatment Options

Treatment options for panic attacks can include:

Self-Help Suggestions

Suggestions on how to cope with a panic attack include:

No matter how powerless or out of control you may feel about your panic attacks, there are many things you can do to help yourself. The following self-help techniques can make a difference in helping you manage your panic attacks:

Learn about panic and anxiety – Simply knowing more about panic can go a long way toward relieving your distress. Read up on anxiety and panic attacks. You’ll learn that the sensations and feelings you have when you panic are normal.

Avoid smoking, alcohol, and caffeine – These can all provoke panic attacks in people who are susceptible. Also, be careful with medications that contain stimulants, such as diet pills and non-drowsy cold medications.

Learn how to control your breathing – Hyperventilation brings on many sensations (such as lightheadedness and tightness of the chest) that occur during a panic attack. Deep breathing can relieve the symptoms of panic attacks. By learning to control your breathing, you can calm yourself down when you begin to feel anxious.

Practice relaxation techniques – When practised regularly, activities such as yoga, meditation, and progressive muscle relaxation lower your anxiety levels. And not only do these relaxation practices promote relaxation, they lower your general anxiety levels, making it easier to cope with life and any panic attacks you may have.

Connect with family and friends – Symptoms of anxiety can become worse when you feel isolated, so maintain regular contact with friends and family. If you don’t have anyone one in your life, explore ways to meet new people and build friendships.

Exercise regularly – Exercise is a natural anxiety reliever, it burns off your anxiety, so do regular sessions. High-intensity aerobic activity works best for the relief of anxiety, like aerobics, spinning, running, etc. Lower intensity exercise can also help.

Get enough restful sleep. Insufficient or poor-quality sleep can make anxiety worse, so try to get seven to nine hours of restful sleep a night.

How to Eliminate Panic Attacks

So the only way possible to eliminate panic attacks is to remove or disconnect all emotions and physical sensations associated with your panic attacks.

Can you think of an acquaintance that you bump into now and then maybe you talk to them maybe you don’t maybe it’s someone you see on the train going to work, well you don’t have many emotions associated with them so you don’t think of them ever unless you see them and you don’t think of them much or for long. This is what will happen when we remove the emotions associated with panic attacks. You just will stop worrying about it.

So by removing the emotions and thoughts of panic attacks, we are effectively stopping you from having any of the thoughts or fears from crossing your mind, you will remember you used to have panic attacks but you just won’t be able to have a panic attacks anymore.

So as you can see, emotions are the cause and solution to your problem.

Remove Emotions Using Hypnotherapy for Panic Attacks?

Well, the only way I know we can achieve this is through using NLP and hypnosis for panic attacks, by removing the emotions associated with them. But be careful not all hypnotherapists practising panic attacks hypnotherapy know how to work with emotions and remove them.

Different Types of Hypnotherapy for Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Most hypnotherapy approaches don’t work to eliminate the panic attacks in this way. Most hypnotherapists work by introducing suggestions into your subconscious mind to change your thoughts and hence your behaviours, so it can work great with behaviour problems but not emotions. Unfortunately, most hypnotherapists are taught this behavioural suggestion type of hypnotherapy for anxiety and panic attacks.

As a Hypnotherapist, I was lucky to be taught by someone who knew how to work with emotions, and I have helped many people with all sorts of problems, including hypnotherapy for anxiety and panic attacks by removing anchored emotions from the panic attacks.

So we will remove all emotions and physical sensations that trigger the panic attacks.

Test at the End of My Hypnotherapy Panic Attacks Sessions

At the end of my hypnotherapy panic attacks sessions is a test, I get you to go back to all the times you can remember having a panic attack and you won’t be able to get any of the old emotions, and physical sensations from those memories. This means you will not automatically go into your old automatic emotions and behaviours from the past because we have broken the old patterns. This is how we know the hypnotherapy panic attacks session has worked.

These days I am seeing more and more people with this problem and helping them eliminate their panic attacks so they can have a more fulfilling life.