Are Panic Attacks Controllable? By Licensed Psychologist Dr Randy Cale

 Are panic attacks controllable? Well, the answer is a resounding yes and no. Perhaps, I know that sounds rather wishy washy, but let's think about it for a moment. If you've had a panic attack, you probably know how terrifying that experience is. Your heart's racing, you're sweating, you perhaps have a fear of dying. It's a utterly horrifying experience. And...

Our bodies and brains aren't able to make sense because often we have the appearance or panic attacks have the appearance of coming out of nowhere. There's very solid research, however, that shows that when we track individuals with a history of panic attacks, what happens is their CO2 levels are dropping in the half hour, 45 minutes before. What's that indicative of? Shallow, rapid breathing. And so one of the things that is effective

at helping with panic attacks is to begin to monitor your breathing and to really be clear that longer, deeper breaths, I know it doesn't sound sexy, it doesn't sound like it's a particularly useful thing in the moment. And if you're in the middle of a panic attack, honestly, it's not that useful, right? It can be, but typically the bodily sensations, the heart rate, the sweating, the fear,

it overrides your ability to kind of stay focused on your breathing. So the key is, if there's a key to controlling things on your own, it's being able to have some idea, some way to monitor your breathing. Because we know from other streams of research that when you breathe in long and you breathe out slowly and deeply, something close to heart rate variability breathing,

We know that we're able to reset the relationship between the heart and the vagal nerve and the brain to calm the whole system down. So can you control panic attacks? If you're able to become aware of your breathing and your breathing rates and you practice, and this is the key, it's sort of like, I don't know, it's like any other skill set. It requires practice.

in order to master it. So you practice doing heart rate variability breathing, for example, and you learn to monitor your breathing pace so that if you happen to be in a more anxious situation or perhaps it's a you took on too much caffeine or perhaps you it's a stressful situation that you haven't even noticed the stress building up and your breathing starts to become faster and shallow.

then that buildup of CO2 is a signal to the brain, is a signal to the body that it's a high stress situation. That seems to create a vulnerability for panic attacks. Now, here's the catcher, however. Often when we see individuals in our clinic for neurofeedback, when we do a QEEG, in other words, we map their brain, we also find unusual levels of elevation.

in the left frontal region of what's called slow wave activity. Typically that's more theta. When that theta is elevated two, three, four times above the standard levels, what we find is individuals have not only a vulnerability to panic attacks, but to anxiety in general, escalation of emotion in general, and maybe even what you'd call impulsivity.

So I would say in terms of practical skills, of course, read the books, of course do therapy and of essential value, learn to monitor your breathing so that you're breathing in long and breathing out slowly and longer still. I know that sounds kind of odd, but it's a way of breathing in where on your out breath, you go a little bit longer than you did on your in breath. Thus,

It's a little slower on the out -breath, if that makes sense. That will tend to be helpful. But if you've done everything and panic attacks persist, perhaps it's time to consider getting acute EEG and looking into neurofeedback because the success rate with panic symptoms is very high. We find tremendous capacity to help our clients with panic attacks as long as they follow through with some

basic fundamentals in terms of taking care of themselves and do their neurofeedback regularly within four to six to eight weeks panic symptoms typically dissipated from their life. That may not be the case for everyone because not everybody's the same, but I'm giving you a typical example. So if you do have questions about neurofeedback, you want to learn more about this amazing technology that transforms the way the brain functions.

Give me a call, I'm Dr. Randy Cale. You can find my number listed below or look us up at Capital District Neurofeedback. But follow the links a lot easier. I look forward to chatting with you. Take care now.

Find out more about Anxiety and our approach to treating it: https://capitaldistrictneurofeedback.com/conditions-treated/anxiety/