Can You Really Stop Panic Attacks In Your Sleep?...

When you want to stop panic attacks, one of the best things you can do is start getting the best quality sleep possible. So what follows are 3 of the best tips for improving the quality of your sleep.

***Tip#1. No Negative Thinking In Bed***

More worry and anxiety happens when you’re lying awake in bed than at any other time of the day. That’s pretty incredible when you consider it’s the place where we should be most relaxed!

This problem probably affects you at night when you’re lying awake trying to sleep, during the night when you wake up, and in the morning when you’re awake but not up yet.

So the key here is to eliminate as much of this “worry in bed” time as possible. The easiest one to solve is the worry in the morning, when you’re awake but you haven’t got up yet. The simple solution here is to get up the moment you wake up!

This is a very simple idea, but it’s amazing how much anxiety this will remove from the start of your day. Getting up before your mind has a chance to remember all the things it could be anxious about will give you a better start to the day than you’ve had in a long time.

As for the times when you wake up during the night and start to worry/panic – well, this one’s slightly trickier. But there are things you can do! First of all, if you’re awake longer than a few minutes and you feel your anxiety increasing, get up out of bed. Being in bed in the silence will just make any anxiety you feel seem even worse.

Have a warm shower or wash your face with warm water, potter around for 10 minutes doing something that doesn’t need much focus (a bit of tidying, listening to some soft music, skim-reading a magazine etc.), and then go back to bed. The key here is to recreate a “natural” going-to-bed routine.

So instead of lying awake for hours you get up for a bit, and then finally when you return to bed you treat it as if you’re going to bed for the first time. This is much more natural for your body to accept than it is to lie there for hours when you can’t sleep. It’s far more likely that you’ll get back to sleep doing this than simply lying there.

***Tip #2. Stick To The Same Schedule***

If you’re suffering with a sleep problem for any reason, not just one that’s caused by anxiety and panic, then sticking to the same schedule every day is great advice.

By simply going to bed at the same time each night and getting up at the same time each morning, your body’s internal clock will get back to normal. Many of your body’s functions, including the releasing of hormones, are affected by your wake/sleep cycle.

You know that feeling of being constantly “burnt-out?” That’s often because your adrenal glands are working even when they should be resting. One of the common causes of this is an irregular sleeping schedule. Getting back into a regular routine will fix this and many other problems too.

So do your best to go to bed each night at the same time, and get up each morning at the same time too. When you start out doing this, you may go through a couple of tough days while you get back into the correct routine, but it will be worth it. And also beware of sleeping in late on weekends, or days when you don’t have to be up early. All your hard work can be undone with a couple of late lie-ins!

***Tip #3. Have A Slow-Down Hour Before Bed***

Many of the problems that I had sleeping were because of what I was doing before I actually went to bed each night. I was often watching TV in bed right up until the moment I turned out the light and tried to sleep. This is a very bad idea! The same goes for any loud or heavy music, and even for reading if the subject is heavy or extreme.

So the first thing to do is eliminate anything stimulating for at least an hour before you go to bed. You should also not do any exercise at all for at least a couple of hours before bed. And try to develop a new pre-bed routine – a “slow-down” routine, as I like to call it.

Consciously begin to ease back on everything for the last hour before you go to bed. Stroll around like you’re on vacation. If you like to have a bedtime drink of some kind then sip it outside if it’s a nice night and enjoy the fresh air. If it’s too cold outside, curl up on the couch and relax for 20 minutes while you enjoy your drink.

It may sound a bit obvious to give this kind of advice, but how many of us really give ourselves time like this? Even those of us who do don’t do it enough.

If you’re a bath-taker, then whenever you can take one right before you get into bed. Make it warm, but never too hot. A warm bath has been proven in many studies to put the body in just the right state for great quality sleep. So make this slow winding-down hour a new part of your pre-bed routine. It can work unbelievably well when you’re not sleeping.

By following these 3 tips, your sleeping will be sure to improve, and you’ll be one big step closer to being able to stop panic attacks for good.

Overcoming Agoraphobia The Easy Way...

If you’ve had trouble overcoming agoraphobia, and you feel like you’ve tried everything and exhausted all your options, it’s possible that a simple change of perspective could be the answer.

By redefining the way you see your agoraphobia, you can change the way it affects and controls you. But before you can successfully change your perspective, you’ll need to first remind yourself of how you see your agoraphobia right now, and for most people this will be a very stereotypical point of view.

And that stereotypical point of view is this: Agoraphobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of public places or open areas, especially those from which escape could be difficult or help not immediately accessible.

That’s what you’ll find as the definition of agoraphobia if you look it up somewhere online, and that’s how you would probably define it yourself. But for many people with agoraphobia this definition is nothing more than a memorized sentence from a dictionary – it actually means nothing to them.

And because so many agoraphobia sufferers have lost touch with what their agoraphobia actually is, and what it actually means to them on a day-to-day basis, successfully overcoming it can be next to impossible.

The key to beating this problem is to redefine your agoraphobia, because only then will you see it for what it really is, and only then will you have those eureka moments when solutions suddenly begin to suggest themselves.

First of all – what agoraphobia is not (despite many experts who will tell you otherwise). Agoraphobia is not actually a fear of public places or open areas. And it’s not even a fear of having a panic attack when you’re outside your comfort zone; those are all symptoms of agoraphobia, but they are not agoraphobia themselves.

Agoraphobia is a defense mechanism.

It’s a defense mechanism against any unknown thing you fear.

This definition goes against a lot of common and established beliefs, but if you actually take a long, hard, fresh look at what your agoraphobia means to you, I think you’ll find that you agree with the “defense mechanism” idea.

To understand why agoraphobia is actually a defense mechanism, it’s vital to fully understand it’s true cause. And for the vast majority of people, that cause is a different, underlying panic disorder.

Many people, many experts, believe that you can experience agoraphobia completely on its own, with no other anxiety disorders or symptoms. But these people, and these experts, have usually never suffered with agoraphobia and anxiety and panic disorders themselves. And so they’re not in a strong position to make such claims.

As an example, someone with generalized anxiety disorder could become increasingly more withdrawn – their constant, unjustified worrying may cause them to go deep into their “defensive shell.” This person will begin to limit their movement away from their comfort zone, simply because any new experiences and interactions could potentially become new worries.

This person will begin to go to increasingly greater lengths to avoid new situations, in order to protect themselves from new situations that could become uncontrollable worries and fears.

And that’s why agoraphobia is a defense mechanism.

There are many other forms of panic and anxiety disorder beside generalized anxiety disorder, and each of them has the potential to cause agoraphobia. Health anxiety (or hypochondria), social anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, separation anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even phobias.

They all have the potential to cause agoraphobia. In cases where there are apparently no other panic disorders as the underlying cause, there’s often one that’s gone completely unnoticed – because the agoraphobia spirals out of control and becomes all that you can focus on, the smaller things, which are often the things which cause and control the agoraphobia, are impossible to see.

That’s why anyone affected by agoraphobia should look at identifying any underlying panic disorder causes, and addressing those, instead of addressing the agoraphobia directly.

This has to be a better approach – it allows sufferers to address the cause, and not the symptom. Addressing the symptom will never achieve anything, except masking the problem temporarily.

So the key to discovering a way out of your agoraphobia are these: take a fresh look at it, and don’t just see the dictionary definition of it; get a fresh perspective; go hunting for the true underlying cause, which will almost certainly be some other form of anxiety disorder; treat the underlying cause, and not the superficial one.

Following a simple plan like this can work wonders.

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A Look At Anxiety Attack Symptoms...

If you suffer from anxiety attacks, it’s very likely that you’ll also suffer many anxiety attack symptoms. These are physical symptoms that develop purely as a result of the constant anxiety your body is subjected to. And they can be incredibly damaging, because as an anxiety sufferer you’re hyper-aware of even the smallest changes in your body.

These symptoms go on to form a part of a very common vicious circle: you’re anxious, your anxiety causes physical symptoms, and the physical symptoms cause yet more anxiety. And then the cycle continues again, and again, and again, each time resulting in more and more anxiety. But there is something you can do, and that’s to educate yourself about these symptoms. By understanding what really causes them, and what’s actually going on inside your body at the time the symptoms strike, you’ll find that they cause you far less concern and you spend less of your time worrying about them.

I’m going to take a minute or two to go over some of the most common anxiety-caused physical symptoms, clearing up exactly why you suffer with them, and revealing the true, underlying causes.

First up, palpitations.

This is where your heart beats unusually fast for no reason at all, often with such force that you’ll be aware of your pulse at points throughout your entire body. Palpitations can also be much less severe, and simply cause a permanent “awareness” of your own heart beat, although the heart’s pace and rhythm will remain normal. Many anxiety sufferers confuse the sensations of palpitations with the symptoms of much more serious medical conditions like heart attack and heart disease, but the truth is thankfully much less terrifying. And that truth is that you have palpitations simply because, as an anxiety sufferer, you have considerably more adrenaline in your system than a non-anxiety sufferer. Your constant worrying and panicking leaves you permanently on the edge of panic, and the result is often palpitations.

Next up is another very common symptom among anxiety sufferers – headaches.

They can be mild or severe, they can be located almost anywhere in your head, and they can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks.Despite anxiety-induced headaches being unpleasant enough in their own right, anxiety sufferers often make them far worse by fearing that they’re the symptom of terrifying conditions and diseases – most notably, brain tumours and brain haemorrhages.

Once again, the truth is much less terrifying.

You develop headaches because of the constant tension in your neck. The tension typically begins high up in your back, and then slowly rises up into your neck, before finally moving into your head. If you suffer with unusually high levels of anxiety, it should come as no surprise that your constant worrying causes you to have far more tension in your back and neck than someone who doesn’t suffer with anxiety. So it should also not come as a surprise that you suffer with more than your fair share of headaches, since headaches invariably begin with muscle tension in the back and neck.

Okay, the next symptom is trembling.

The trembling caused by anxiety and panic disorder will most often be found in your arms, and more specifically in your hands and fingers. But it can also be a big problem in the legs. The involuntary movements in your arms, hands, and legs can be very scary, because the movement is completely beyond your control. In fact, the more you try to steady yourself, the more you’ll tremble.

As with the other symptoms I’ve covered, anxiety sufferers will usually decide that the trembling is being caused by some other terrible condition or disease. But also like the other symptoms, the explanation is usually much less terrifying. Your anxiety is with you around the clock, and so there’s a massive amount of excess adrenaline in your body, and it’s this excess adrenaline that causes your trembling.

Having too much adrenaline in your system causes you to permanently feel as if you’ve just experienced a genuinely terrifying moment. And so the trembling hits you, just as it would if you really had experienced something terrifying.

Another symptom I should mention here is muscle twitches. This symptom is closely-related to the trembling, since it’s also caused by the excess adrenaline in your system. Muscle twitches can also be caused by good old-fashioned stress, and they can also happen after you’ve done something physically demanding, like a tough workout, or some heavy lifting.

Next up is extreme tiredness.

Again, this is a very common problem for anxiety sufferers. There’s no real secret cause for this one – it just comes down to what you put your body and mind through. The constant psychological stress you subject yourself to, and the physical strain this puts on your body, simply wears you down, and the end result of that is often chronic fatigue. What’s worse is that sleep usually doesn’t help at all in refreshing you, and you’ll often wake to feel as bad as you did the night before.

The symptoms I’ve mentioned today are not the only ones suffered by those affected with anxiety, but they are the most common. By learning their true causes, and finding reassurance that nothing serious is responsible for them, you’ll find that your anxiety attack symptoms cause you far less concern.

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