I regularly see clients who have had panic attacks at my Leeds therapy clinic. These clients can be of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds. What they all have in common is that they are experiencing regular surges of anxiety that they refer to as “panic attacks” The person literally feels like they are “under attack”, and regardless of analysis or reassurance from friends and family, the extent of the panic attacks remains unaffected.
Treating panic attacks via Zoom
These panic attacks can seem as if they have started for no particular reason, BUT there will always be some form of trigger that creates the unhelpful feeling. Any feeling can only be triggered in four specific ways, which are
What you see externally
What you hear externally
What you imagine or picture internally
What you say or think to yourself internally
THEN and only then comes the unhelpful feeling!
Simply talking about the experience or analysing past events won’t, in my experience, change the overall feeling.
When I see clients for this, we focus on changing the unhelpful thinking patterns that contribute to the final feeling described as “a panic attack” Often, once a client has experienced this kind of feeling, they begin to anticipate it returning, so unwittingly they are then helping to create the very problem they want to be free from.