Hello Ash
Welcome.
Panic attacks are curable. Right now it seems very complicated but it really is not just that when you derail it causes a chain reaction. You only need to change one thing but to get to it you need to back up the chain reaction.
The program is designed to do that, teaching you how to relax and cope before changing your thought patterns. There doesn't have to be trauma now, it could have been ages ago and hidden now. There doesn't even really have to be any.
A change of attitude will do.
Seratonin is a neurotransmitter that controls the amount of information going to your brain. Referred to as the thought hormone. A lack of it would allow too much information through and you would be very aware of your surroundings, sight, sound, smell and you would have past memories associated with those things playing in your mind.
SSRIs slow down the breakdown of Seratonin so you might get worse in the first two weeks. It levels out at about six weeks. You can still have panic attacks with an SSRI because it is just a neurotransmitter. Xanax is a tranquilizer. It controls the neurotransmitters and there are a number of these at each synapse. It reduces the amount of information crossing the synapses traveling to the brain but more so the ones in the brain. It controls the cycling of information in the brain that is going round and round in memory. It tends to make you sleepy.
Short term memory lasts from a nano second to 24 hours depending on how important it is. At night it gets moved to long term memory or it gets deleted. When it goes to long term memory it gets stored with similar memories but as coded pieces not the actual episode. If one of these pieces was an anxious moment during the day it will be stored with similar moments. If it is strong enough it will wake you with only it as the focus, not the whole episode which could be harmless. So you wake confused. Fight or flight kicks in to protect you. Your Hippocampus sends a message to your Hypothalamus and it sends a message down the line causing all the symptoms. Once in place the original trigger doesn't even matter. What matters is sending a message to fight or flight in the Hippocampus so it can stop the panic. Sounds complicated. Not really. Relaxation and coping skills take care of this. Xanax stops the messages.
CBT stops the short term memory from putting the anxiety information into memory in the first place and over time you stop having panic attacks.
It works.
Any questions?
Davit.
Ps I don't have panic attacks any more.
