Anxiety and Panic Attacks In Emphysema ... - Mind Publications

Another lady who had asthma and also suffered from panic attacks explains how
she tells her asthma episode apart from a panic attack: “When I am having an asthma
attack, I forget how to breathe. I have to remind myself how to breathe. Then I know it’s
time to take my inhaler. I take a breath and slowly let it out. I take another breath and
slowly let it out. Soon, I begin to see some relief. When it is not my asthma, I feel jittery.
I can take a breath and let it out and I am still smothering. So I know it is not my asthma,
it is my anxiety attack.”
You will experience at least some ongoing anxiety when you suffer from a major
medical condition. But it is important that the anxiety remain in control and
proportionate to the seriousness of the situation. A disproportionate mental reaction
would increase breathing discomfort and shortness of breath.
Realistic anxiety is beneficial because it prompts us to take the required action but
excessive anxiety helps nothing; it only complicates the medical condition.
Mother Nature has built into us a "suffocation alarm system" so that we don't go
on suffocating to the point of death. This suffocation alarm is important for our survival.
Consider the case of babies who die in their sleep, perhaps without a scream or a cry.
Perhaps their suffocation alarm system failed or had never developed. Without such an
alarm system, we may not recognize the need to get away from a toxic environment even
when the pollution reaches a dangerous level. As the saying goes, “forewarned is
forearmed.”
Spontaneous panic attacks," or “panic attacks with sudden onset” as they are often
called, come like a bolt out of the blue. Patients are not thinking of any anxious or
worrying thoughts to cause a panic attack. In fact, they may be resting and thinking
about a harmless, everyday event, and then a panic attack may "spontaneously" appear.
Their heart suddenly races, breathing goes haywire, the body shakes, they sweat like their
body is on fire, legs feel weak and crumbling, and other menacing symptoms shake and
rattle the body. Such symptoms occur even when there is not such an ominous cause for
terror.
After the attack, one asks oneself, "I wasn’t panicking about anything! Why did I
have a panic attack?" The individual suspects he or she was having a heart attack but
medical tests just failed to identify it.
Some when find out there is nothing wrong with their heart begin to worry even
more. They begin to think something along these lines, "The Doctors told me there was
nothing wrong with my heart but I had severe chest pains and my heart was in my mouth.
If my heart is okay, does it mean my head is not? Am I going crazy?" No you are not!
You are having a perfectly normal reaction because you have not been explained much
about the panic attacks. Panic attacks can mimic medical symptoms such as chest pains,
heart palpitations, breathlessness and many other symptoms.