2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Many works have been written and many songs sung about panic attacks (vegetative-vascular dystonia, diencephalic (hypothalamic) syndrome, etc.), so I will not dwell on the clinical picture of this suffering and describe the chilling experiences of patients.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the psychological causes that led to this condition. I am absolutely deliberately not calling panic attacks a "disease" because it is something else.
As a rule, people experiencing panic attacks are not to be envied. They really feel bad, but according to laboratory and instrumental examinations, everything is normal for them, well, or almost everything is normal.
They are looked at as pretenders, shamed and urged to “pull themselves together,” but to no avail. As before, the heart beats as if it is ready to jump out of the chest, the hands grow cold, like a dying man, there is not enough breath, death looks into the very soul with its eyeless sockets; through the cold sweat on the pale skin, you can already feel her icy breath on you …
And they don't believe you! They believe that you are pretending! Once everything is good in the analyzes, it means "you are fooling around!"
Of course, you can get the doctor to prescribe antidepressants, tranquilizers or vegetative stabilizers, but this DOES NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM. Any psychopharmacotherapy will only give relief for a while. Symptoms will dull, fear will hide, there will be a state of the type "what will, what bondage - all the same …"
So, if classical "medicine is powerless", let's try to look into the area of the psyche that no one has seen, but everyone knows that it exists. Into the subconscious.
In my observation, there are several psychological reasons that can lead to panic attacks.
FEAR OF NOT JUSTIFYING ANOTHER'S EXPECTATIONS
DO NOT GIVE YOURSELF THE RIGHT TO THE ERROR
EXCELLENT SYNDROME
PERFECTIONISM
Usually, life attitudes from childhood prevail here, such as: “You should act in such a way that you are proud of. You should do everything on "5", preferably with a plus, and better - on "6". If you get a "4", or even a "3", you will disappoint your parents (grandparents), you should be ashamed! You must correspond to what other people expect from you (parents, spouse, bosses, colleagues, business partners, etc.), all hope is on you, no one else can do this, you must get married and give birth to grandchildren to their parents, etc.”.
As a rule, a person starts to drive himself, trying to please everyone, to be “good / good”. But in this unequal struggle with himself, he loses. As a result, as a kind of answer to the question of why a person did not live up to the expectations placed on him, an “answer” arises - panic attacks.
It is not uncommon for a person who is led through life by these attitudes to achieve a lot, reach incredible heights, but then, due to the described circumstances, a failure occurs, and the situation is formed, which is said: “First we spend health to make money, then we we spend money to restore our health."
Another psychological mechanism underlying panic attacks is very close here. - JUSTIFICATION WHY I'M NOT A HERO. Usually, in this case, panic attacks arise as a kind of excuse for a person to himself or to others in a situation where the goals set, perhaps even many years ago, were not achieved.
I didn’t become the general director of the holding, I still didn’t get married and didn’t have children, I DIDN'T REACH MY GOAL, but not because I am a quitter, but because I am SICK! And even such an unpleasant thing as panic attacks! Of course, I will realize myself and achieve what I have planned, but first I need to improve my health.
PARTY ILLUSIONS! In this case, your health will never get better! Or it will be a little better - a little worse.
Because PAs save a person from shame. Because if he is healthy, and nothing will stop him from going to what was planned, then how will he explain to everyone, and first of all, to himself, why he never achieved what he wanted?
The approach to the treatment of PA should be fundamentally different: first, we change our attitudes, values, attitude to life, give ourselves the right to make mistakes, stop driving ourselves, and, most importantly, ACCEPT OURSELVES AS / WHAT IS. When the pathological mechanism of self-abasement is thus stopped, the need for illness will simply disappear, and panic attacks will stop. But this is the result of serious work with a psychotherapist.
SENSE OF GUILT / FEAR OF PUNISHMENT. Here, too, the most ancient, childish mechanisms are turned on: if he is guilty, then there must be punishment.
As a rule, in this case, PA arise in patients with a great sense of responsibility, pity, and readiness for self-sacrifice.
They may not even be aware of the feeling of guilt, because it is so painful that powerful mental forces are thrown into protecting a person from this pain. All their efforts are aimed at being "good" again, so that everyone is happy with them. In this case, the feeling of guilt is "painful", it is too hard and unpleasant to experience it, and therefore such people too often step on the throat of their own song, subordinating all their time, emotions, affairs to OTHERS, sometimes even to the closest people.
Such patients, to my question: "Do you often feel guilty?" interests, etc. However, all these mechanisms, I repeat, are aimed at one goal: not to feel guilty!
These are people who, with my question: "What do you want FOR YOURSELF?" for a long time "freeze". Because from a prolonged sense of guilt, the organ of "wanting" for themselves atrophies in them. When a PA occurs, two psychological mechanisms work here: since I'm guilty, then bear the punishment, or don't beat me, I have already punished myself with such sufferings as PA!
Psychotherapeutic tactics are aimed, first of all, at neutralizing social dependence (“what will others think / say about me ?!”), feelings of guilt, fear of losing control, at restoring basic trust in the world.
SEXUAL ABSTAINMENT. This is a classic of the genre, more often found among the female half of the population, although men are also no exception.
When, for a variety of reasons, a person lives for months - years without sex, desire seems to "dull" or even "disappear" altogether. But in fact, it does not disappear anywhere, because it is the biological essence of a living organism. And if a person stops thinking about it, it does not mean that everything is calm “in the Danish kingdom”. Sexual desire is repressed into the subconscious, and then, quite spontaneously and unexpectedly, manifests itself in the form of panic attacks. Treatment is psychotherapy again. The main directions: awareness and subsequent neutralization of sexual inhibitions, the formation of trust in the opposite sex, the removal of body blocks.
I didn’t write this article to take bread from therapists and neurologists and other respected colleagues.
Any disease, any ailment occurs in a person as an important signal that something needs to be changed. In itself. In my life. In your worldview or environment.
But admitting this to yourself, and also doing it, is usually very difficult! It is easier to think that symptoms arise due to hereditary predisposition, imbalance in the activity of the autonomic nervous system, etc.
Here, I will come to the doctor, I will pay the money, the doctor will give me a magic pill, and I will be healthy! But I will not change anything in my life.
Yes, medical science does not stand still, and the magic pill may give an improvement. But, since the psychological problem has not been resolved, it may subsequently manifest itself in others, it may already be more serious symptoms. As they say, water will find a hole!
Therefore, it is important to remember that "The salvation of drowning people is the work of the drowning themselves!"
By solving your psychological problems, working with the cause of panic attacks, you change the quality of your life, and you get a long-awaited recovery!
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