I remember waking up in the middle of the night, convincing myself I was deathly ill and then making my wife drive me to the emergency room. I had a normal cold but I had blown it completely out of proportion in my mind and was convinced there was something terribly wrong with myself. The doctor was kind but wouldn’t listen to me. She kept insisting that I only had a common cold and coughing up mucus was a symptom of the cold, nothing more. She gave me some drugs, I thought they were for the cold at the time, but it turns out, they were diazepam to calm me down.

Another consuming thought I constantly had was that there was going to be some sort of disaster and I would ultimately be trapped. Sometimes in tall buildings I would let the thoughts of a fire consume me. I dreamt while awake, while in conversation with colleagues, that the fire would trap me on the top floors of the building and I would die. Same with traffic. I thought often on my way home from work that if something were to happen, I couldn’t get anywhere because of the traffic jam. I felt like a prisoner, and no amount of reason or logic could convince my mind that none of this stuff would actually happen.

The thing is, I didn’t always used to be this way, it just… started happening. I don’t really know how to explain it, but something in my brain must have switched off one day. I like to think of it as my brains ability to hear reason. At first, I would feel uncomfortable sitting watching a movie. My mind would race with thoughts of suffocation, gassing, fires, you name it, I dreamt it. After the first few months of my condition, it completely took over my life. It encompassed everything I did. Evey time I would go to the grocery store, I would have a panic attack. Every time I got in the car, I would have a panic attack. Every time I did anything, I was so afraid that it would end terribly that my life had become not much of a life at all.

After countless hours of therapy, a number of online courses, and a few trips to the pharmacist for prescriptions, I found Panic Away. All I ever needed to do was find a tool that would break the terrible cycle of my panic attacks and bring me back into the real world. Panic Away did all that in three days and quite literally saved my life for me.

• 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.