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General Questions & Answers Page Two How can I stop having night time panic attacks? How can I recover? How long does recovery take? I can't sleep. What can I do? How can I stop having night time panic attacks? It is not so much stopping them per se, although you can decrease your vulnerability to them. It is more a matter of learning to lose your fear of them. The research on the nocturnal attacks show they happen on the change of consciousness as we are going to sleep or from dreaming sleep to deep sleep or deep sleep back to dreaming sleep, or as we wake up. The research also shows they have nothing to do with dreams or nightmares. (Reference Uhde TW, 1994, Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, 2nd edn, ch 84,WB Saunders & Co.) Many people with panic disorder have nocturnal panic attacks. We can decrease our vulnerability to them, by not getting caught up in the 'what if I have a panic attack tonight' thinking and by ensuring that we are taking care of ourselves and meeting our day to day needs. How can I recover? Learn to become proactive rather than reactive to your symptoms and fears Accept the diagnosis. Accept that having an anxiety disorder is not a reflection on you or your abilities. Learn as much as you can about your disorder, which will in turn lessen your fears. Become disciplined in practising either meditation or another relaxation technique every day. Learn and become disciplined in using either a mindfulness cognitive technique or another cognitive technique to manage your panic/anxiety producing thoughts. Learn from setbacks. They will teach us more about our panic and anxiety and more about ourselves if we allow them to. The more we learn, the more we can defeat our panic and anxiety in the long term. It is the way we think which causes 99% of the problem. The way we think, 'what if etc,' signals the body that we are in danger and the fight and flight response is activated which we then feel as panic and/or anxiety. But the only danger we are in, is being created by the way we think. Recovery means we need to learn to see how our thoughts are causing our distress and we need to learn to control them. It is not so much trying to think 'positive'. This usually doesn't work in the early stages of recovery as we don't believe what we are saying to ourselves. Rather, we need to learn to see cause and effect. Cause = thoughts. Effect = panic and/or anxiety. Learning to see ' cause and effect' assists us in learning to lose our fears which then assists us in controlling our thoughts. When we can control our thoughts, we can then control the effect. We also need to learn to let the panic attack and the anxiety happen. And it doesn't matter where you are or what you are doing, nor for that matter, what other people may think. Once we can control our thoughts and let our panic and anxiety happen we turn off the fight and flight response and our panic and anxiety disappear. Easier said than done at first but many of us have learnt to do this. And when we can do this, we recover ! How long does recovery take? It depends upon individual circumstances. This can include whether the person believes their diagnosis. If not, they will struggle to recover. You can't recover from something if you don't believe you have it in the first place! Recovery also includes doing the necessary cognitive work, not just occasionally, but working with it every day. It can also mean working on any avoidance behaviour that may have developed. It may also mean working through personal issues, any possible withdrawal symptoms from prescribed medication or alcohol dependence issues. Some of us have needed to do most or all the above. It can seem very daunting, and it is hard, but it does become the most profound and extraordinary experience of our lives. What our panic and / or anxiety takes away from us during our disorder, on recovery we are given back a thousand fold, in ways that we cannot imagine when we are caught up in our anxiety and/or panic. I can't sleep. What can I do? Part of the problem would be your self talk....'what if I can't go to sleep....I have to go to sleep....I won't get through tomorrow ' etc. This will not only keep you awake, but will also keep your anxiety levels high. Have you tried meditation? As well as using meditation as part of the overall recovery program many people use meditation to help themselves go to sleep. People report that it gives them the best sleep they have ever had. Plus the added bonus of meditation is it is the oldest cognitive technique in the world. It can really teach you about your thinking and how to manage it.  |
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Last modified: June 12, 2007