Most people feel anxious or scared sometimes, but if it’s affecting your life there are things you can try that may help. Support is also available if you’re finding it hard to cope with anxiety, fear or panic.
Panic attacks are sudden, intense surges of fear, panic, or anxiety. They are overwhelming, and they have physical as well as emotional symptoms.
Many people with panic attacks may have difficulty breathing, sweat profusely, tremble, and feel their hearts pounding.
Some people will also experience chest pain and a feeling of detachment from reality or themselves during a panic attack, so they make think they’re having a heart attack. Others have reported feeling like they are having a stroke.
Symptoms of anxiety.
Anxiety can cause many different symptoms. It might affect how you feel physically, mentally and how you behave.
It’s not always easy to recognise when anxiety is the reason you’re feeling or acting differently.
Symptoms of a panic attack.
If you experience sudden, intense anxiety and fear, it might be the symptoms of a panic attack. Other symptoms may include:
- feeling that you’re losing control
- sweating, trembling or shaking
- shortness of breath or breathing very quickly
- feeling sick (nausea)
A panic attack usually lasts 5 to 30 minutes. They can be very frightening, but they’re not dangerous and should not harm you.
Collective fear
Mass hysteria. In essence, then, we are dealing with a collective fear event. In our prosperous, technically-controlled and automated world, we are no longer used to things being unpredictable. And therefore, we like to assume the worst.
It is like flying: Experts and statisticians never tire of pointing out that the airplane is the safest of all means of transportation. The risk of dying in road traffic is much higher. But the images of horrible plane crashes just keep on etching themselves onto our brains. The many thousands of successful take-offs and landings, every day, just happen, and aren’t worth a headline.
Certainly, the health system has weaknesses, the health authorities in the municipalities are overstretched and short of staff. And globalisation has its insane sides, which has become apparent by how many drugs are produced in China that we are now short of.
There was no landslide, but one expert was quick to caution that the incident should not simply be written off as an instance of mass hysteria.”What would be one person’s hysteria is another person’s genuine belief,” said Anthony Mawson, an epidemiologist at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, and the author of “Mass Panic and Social Attachment.””I don’t necessarily think there’s a difference between false beliefs and true beliefs in the way people behave,” he said. “Any belief, true or false, which causes people to move in threatening directions, causes adverse consequences.”Mawson explained that, while a few people may have panicked by the fear of a landslide, most responded to the genuine concern of being stampeded.Mawson and other experts say there is a complex mind-set that occurs in people during disasters, which may explain why mass panics are the exception, rather than the rule.While mass panic (and/or violence) and self-preservation are often assumed to be the natural response to physical danger and perceived entrapment, the literature indicates that expressions of mutual aid are common and often predominate, and collective flight may be so delayed that survival is threatened. In fact, the typical response to a variety of threats and disasters is not to flee but to seek the proximity of familiar persons and places; moreover, separation from attachment figures is a greater stressor than physical danger. Such observations can be explained by an alternative “social attachment” model that recognizes the fundamentally gregarious nature of human beings and the primacy of attachments.
Filter information to prevent panic
An abundant amount of information is created and delivered over electronic media. Users risk becoming overwhelmed by the flow of information, and they lack adequate tools to help them manage the situation. Information filtering (IF) is one of the methods that is rapidly evolving to manage large information flows. The aim of IF is to expose users to only information that is relevant to them. Many IF systems have been developed in recent years for various application domains.
Some examples of filtering applications are: filters for search results on the internet that are employed in the Internet software, personal e-mail filters based on personal profiles, listservers or newsgroups filters for groups or individuals, browser filters that block non-valuable information, filters designed to give children access them only to suitable pages, filters for e-commerce applications that address products and promotions to potential customers only, and many more.Social media is a powerful platform for communication and information dissemination. A huge number of posts are being published every day on a variety of different topics. In times of crisis, people talk about what they have witnessed, need, and can offer. This is valuable information which is usually lost among the flood of content. To gain useful information, spam, misinformation, and rumors should be filtered. We introduced these issues of irrelevant information and emphasized the importance of removing them along with an overview of methods to do so and present some challenges. Social media administrators want to detect and eliminate as much unwanted content as possible (high recall). On the other hand they want to have very high confidence in their detection to avoid marking any normal content as malicious (high precision). Unfortunately, current methods sacrifice recall for precision to prevent any misclassification. This process has led to huge amount of spam in social media. Designing new methods that can achieve high recall without drastically decreasing the precision is a remaining challenge in this field.Fewer news feeds with their negativity, and more beloved books, positive films, and fresh air – and a psychotherapist will not be needed.
Psychotherapist’s recommendations to prevent panic
If you can easily subordinate emotions and mood to other people and cannot completely distance yourself from their influence, try to be close to emotionally stable people; 5.2. Try to completely abandon bad habits. If you do not quit smoking temporarily, do not drink alcohol and psychostimulants. Eliminate or cut back on coffee. Contrary to the widespread myth of alcohol, it acts as an irritant to our nervous system;
Remember that you must take care of yourself and your loved ones, so it is important not to forget about your mental state in order to be able to support others. 5.4. Be physically active. Physical exercises for muscles, sports (Scandinavian) walking, breathing exercises can tone your body and also they relieve tension, fatigue, anxiety. If your family doctor recommends staying at home (for example, under quarantine), follow his advice, but you can also do physical exercises in the apartment.
Eat right. It is enough to drink pure water (6-8 glasses every day). Be sure to include dairy products in your diet. Eat fish regularly (possibly marine, since there are many such beneficial elements as omega-3 acids). Eat enough fiber foods. Enjoy your favorite food, feel the fullness of tastes and smells.
Do not forget to sleep enough. Observe the daily routine – try to go to bed every day at the same time. Eliminate the aggressively vibrant, irritating colors of your bedroom. Be sure to ventilate all rooms every day before bedtime. Give up gadgets at least three hours before bedtime, do not watch TV or other electronic devices.
Focus on your feelings. Try to hug something soft and pleasant to the touch (for example, a pillow or a beautiful soft toy) 5.8. Remember the pleasant and positive moments from your life, as well as the feelings that they aroused in you. Dream about something pleasant and unusual.
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