Medication Panic Attacks

I think the most comforting thing you can learn when you have panic attacks is that it’s just not your fault. Most often it is heredity and has been passed down to you through the generations. Often, it’s also a product of an overly cautious world view that your parents expressed upon you your entire life. Like with many other neurological disorders, nobody really knows exactly why anxiety and panic attacks can arise and take over a life, and there’s probably not just one concrete reason. In fact, there are a lot of reasons that the attacks might arise in you. I’m going to try and lay them out here as best I can.

• Stress is a very common cause of anxiety and panic attacks. As it accumulates, the condition builds itself up inside of you until one day, you can no longer function properly in society.
• Biology can also play a large part. If you suffer from a disease such as obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, hypoglycemia, hyperthyroidism or other similar diseases, you are at a much higher risk for panic attacks. People with a deficiency of Vitamin B due to inadequate diet or depletion due to a parasitic infection may also have pani attacks triggered.
• Clinical Phobias are also a huge trigger when it comes to panic attacks. People will often have a panic attack by being in a situation that they aren’t at all comfortable with.
• Sometimes, a personal loss will trigger a series panic attacks. Losing a loved one, life transitions or certain rites of passage are all short term triggering causes.
• A lack of assertiveness is also a problem people facing panic attacks often have. Although it is a polite demeanor, this passive style of communication seems to contribute to panic attacks while constantly appearing in patients suffering from panic attacks.
• Medication causes panic attacks fairly often as well. It is always listed that panic attacks are a side effect of taking the medications but they do differ in certain ways. Ritalin, for example, lists panic attacks as a possible side effect but claims that if they do occur, that it will only be while the patient is getting used to the drug. With some other drugs, panic attacks can last as long as the drug is taken. Nearly all SSRI class antidepressants can cause a heightened anxiety in users. Coming off the medications is also a chance for the body to respond with anxiety attacks.
• Alcohol or drug withdrawal are times where your body isn’t getting what it’s used to so it might act irrationally and create symptoms as well.
• Hyperventilation syndrome sufferer’s also have increased risk of panic attacks. Breathing from the chest will cause what is called over-breathing. You exhale too much carbon dioxide in relation to the amount of oxygen in your blood stream. The syndrome also includes mostly mouth breathing. The symptoms created as a byproduct of the lack of carbon dioxide are lightheadedness, dizziness and a heart beating too fast. All these things can lead to panic attacks.
• My personal favorite, because they affected me the most often, are the situational panic attacks. I would associate certain situations with panic attacks due to either experiencing the situation before with an unfavorable outcome, or because I would just build up a worst case scenario and truly believe that it was about to happen. I had conditioned myself to believe that something incredibly unlikely to happen would happen.
• Some chemical substances either contribute to panic attacks or directly induce them. Some of these chemicals are alcohol, amphetamines, caffeine, etc. People often cite phobias of certain drugs or chemicals due to induced panic attacks.
• Finally serious or chronic illnesses can contribute greatly to panic attacks. A patient in these circumstances is under an incredible amount of mental pressures and stresses. It is incredibly difficult to treat people with panic attacks due to these symptoms because unlike the rest, their fears are very very real. Death may be very close and even imminent. Often people facing these conditions are completely at the command of their sickened minds.

All of these are incredibly serious causes of a very serious illness but all of them can be treated and, with hard work, completely cured. Please keep your head up and believe in yourself, which I know, at this point may seem impossible, but I’m here to convince you that it’s not.