Panic attacks and agoraphobia

Panic Attacks:

Panic attacks may happen to you in a very sudden and discrete way. A feeling of intense fear and discomfort starts building up, your heart starts beating very fast, and you may experience difficulty breathing. This will make you think that you are “losing control,” “fainting,” or even dying. You might be sitting at home watching a movie, studying at school, or working at your job, and without any prior notice, you go into panic mode in an instant. These episodes will happen to you multiple times and may cause you to be afraid of the attacks happening again, leading to a change in your behavior, for example, avoidance of driving long distances, traveling, or going into crowded places.

Panic attacks can also happen late at night when you are sleeping. You suddenly wake up from sleep in a state of panic, feeling intense fear without any obvious trigger such as nightmares, making you think that you’re dying or something bad is happening. This will start causing you to be fearful of sleep, as a result, your behavior changes, and you will start delaying your sleeping time, which causes sleep deprivation, leading you to have more nocturnal panics.

It is necessary that you take into account that panic attacks can be caused by a variety of mood disorders, as well as when you smoke hashish or take drugs.

Panic disorder

If your panic attacks persist for more than 1 month along with changes in your behavior, a diagnosis of panic disorder can be established. When it comes to the symptoms you experience, they are not always the same for everyone. You can have an absence of perceiving danger or threat while experiencing intense, abrupt fear, causing your panic attacks.

Statistically, panic disorder happens twice as often in women than men. It usually starts in adolescence, and the longer you have panic attacks, the higher the chances of developing agoraphobia it gets. (See text below.)

Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is often a consequence of panic disorder, when your avoidance behavior becomes more and more debilitating.

Agoraphobia, in simple terms, is when you avoid or endure with so much discomfort a situation that you may think is very difficult to escape or when help is unavailable if something goes wrong. In those moments, you may feel disoriented and afraid of something bad or unknown happening. You will also start feeling strong physical sensations like nausea and the need to vomit, stomach discomfort, and a sudden urge to rush to the bathroom. This will lead you to avoid some places like going to the mall, waiting in line, going to a concert, or cinema.

Agoraphobia in its advanced stages will set in you hesitation to drive long distances, and you might avoid crowded places out of fear. In severe stages, if you don’t seek treatment, it highly limits your mobility, sometimes making you a prisoner of your own house just to feel safe. This restricts your freedom and your daily life activities and ruins your social life.

Agoraphobia tends to increase your history of panic attacks. Statistically, it affects women more and becomes more female dominant as levels of agoraphobia worsen.

CBT as an effective treatment for panic attacks and agoraphobia

All research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) works well for your panic attacks and agoraphobia. It helps not just your panic attacks, but also related problems like when you’re feeling depressed because you can’t go out as you used to or feel anxious and afraid about your panic attacks happening again. Your therapist will first educate you about the nature of your panic attacks, going through what you’re feeling in your physical body and what you are thinking in your mind, and how these thoughts and feelings are changing your behavior by giving you the right information you should know, while correcting the common myths and misconceptions you have. (Read more about psychoeducation in this article.) They will also create a tailored treatment program with different components and exercises based on your specific needs that you will be doing by yourself at home, like self-monitoring your own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, or with your therapist in the therapeutic session using the most powerful techniques of CBT for your panic attacks and agoraphobia, known as exposures, more specifically, in vivo exposures for your agoraphobia and interoceptive exposures for panic attacks, as well as cognitive restructuring.