Category: takeCONTROL Training

“I used medication to control my panic attacks for two years.  Now, I am planning a pregnancy and I want to be medication free during my pregnancy. I hope those awful panic attacks don’t come back into my life during my pregnancy.  What can I do to prevent a relapse? What If the panic attacks return with a vengeance when I go off my medication…

The following is part of a training session, I administered last Thursday to one of my panic attack sufferers. The Three Types of Panic Experiences:  Type One: The Major Emergency Room (ER) Panic Attacks Major panic attacks hit you suddenly, without apparent reason, “Out of the Blue.”  Here, there is a sudden surge of multiple bodily sensations that seem to escalate rapidly including; heart racing,…

1.       Stop False Catastrophic Thinking  When a sudden surge of shortness of breath, weakness and rubbery legs, numbness and tingling in your hand and feet, dizziness and woozy feeling, heart thumping and inner trembling, heat waves and sweats create havoc in your body, don’t add False Catastrophic Thinking.  Don’t fuel the panic attack symptoms with enemy thoughts of stroke, heart attack, brain tumor, die, I…

Tom’s* Story: Shortness of Breath; Am I am Gasping for My Last Breath of Air? At 10:00PM last Saturday night, Tom, a 27 year old construction worker, and a group of his friends were watching a long awaited boxing match on pay per view TV. Tom was rooting for his favorite boxer, a former middle weight champion and underdog.  The boxer was battling for his…

Early Treatment Studies The first psychological treatment studies for agoraphobia centered on graduated invivo exposure alone to the feared situation (Hand, LaMontagne and Marks, 1974). That is, the agoraphobic patients were instructed to reenter the situations they had been avoiding. Agoraphobia is a secondary complication of panic attacks. The agoraphobic patient utilizes escape and avoidance strategies to manage panic. They begin to live their life…