How to Help Someone with Panic Attacks

A panic attack is a period of intense fear or apprehension of an immediate onset accompanied by cognitive symptoms such as dizziness, heart attack, flashing vision, faintedness, nausea, shortness of breath, feeling of unreality, heart palpitations etc. This can take place to a person within a span of few minutes to hours. In such an attack, a person is likely to make him isolated from the other people and they may even over-react to the situation. In some cases where fear is not calmed down, it becomes a panic attack and it can reach a peak within a small span of ten to twenty minutes only.

How to Help Someone with Panic Attacks

1. Perform Breathing Exercises:-

Most of the people who experience panic attack complaint about a difficulty in breathing and thus panic attack can be best relieved by adding breathing exercises to your schedule. Besides this, breathing if done in the form of meditation can make you forget anything and this includes even your fear.

2. Panic Attack Treatment Therapy:-

Panic attack therapies like cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy can also prove to be a great option for managing panic attacks naturally. Cognitive therapy focuses on the thinking patterns and behaviors that are sustaining or triggering the panic attacks while the exposure therapy  makes you exposed to physical sensations of panic in a safe and controlled environment. Such exercises and therapies can really bring about a desired control over signs and symptoms of a panic attack and prove to be a great aid in enabling you to save your life in such a situation. Cognitive behavioral therapy is rather one of the best therapy based treatment of panic attacks.

3. Avoid Caffeine to Remove Anxiety:-

It is advised that you completely avoid a dose of caffeine from your diet to avoid anxiety that results because of it. It has been noted that the products rich in the content of caffeine can make you a prey to anxiety and this eliminating caffeine rich products completely from one’s diet can really make him capable to fight panic attacks.

4. Breathing In A Paper Bag As A Short Term Treatment:-

Breathing in a paper bag can serve as a short term treatment for panic attacks, but if they persist for a long time, you should immediately seek medicinal options like anti-anxiety drugs. Diaphragm based breathing exercises and aerobic exercises can really prove to be a better option for you in such a case. Change of place of picnic with friends can also prove helpful in some of the cases.

5. Avoid Smoking and Calm Down Yourself:-

If you are experiencing panic attack problem, the best way to fight and cope up with it is to avoid smoking and to calm down yourself. Those who smoke often become a prey to anxiety and breathing related disorders. Avoiding smoking can make you overcome all such problems that result because of lack of breathable air. Just try to calm down yourself and stay with someone closer who can keep you calm in such a situation. You will really feel relieved like this.