You’re waiting in line and all of a sudden it hits… The anxiety had been bothering you all day and it has just begun to rise… All of a sudden fear surges through your entire body. Your heart is pounding so fast you can literally hear it. You try to force it to stop but it replies by sending a sharp pain through my chest. You can’t breathe… It’s just another anxiety attack you tell yourself. But the fear and sensations are just too overwhelming. What if it’s really a heart attack!? Oh my god, I’m dying…
You may or may not be able to relate to the description above, but this is exactly what it was like for me during one of my anxiety attacks. The symptoms of anxiety attacks are many and are different for everyone, although a racing heart is the most prominent. There are really more than a dozen other signs indicating you may be experiencing an attack. They include:
- A sense of impending death
- Sweating
- Shortness of Breath
- Tightness in your throat
- Hyperventilation
- Faintness Trembling chills
- Dizziness
- Hot Flashes
- Nausea
- Headache
- Chest pain
- Abdominal cramping
Your particular experience with anxiety attacks may include as few as two or three of these symptoms or you may have a good number of them.
But the common denominator is that an attack begins suddenly. You can, in fact, go from being symptom free to finding yourself in the peak of an attack in as short a time as 10 minutes. The duration of this phenomenon varies from one individual to the next. For some, the entire ordeal is over in as few as 30 minutes
For others, however, a panic attack may last for several hours. And in some rare instances, persons have been known to suffer with an attack for an entire day!
At the end of the attack, it’s quite natural to feel fatigued and worn out. But more than that, most people have a heightened fear of going through another at any time.
How a Doctor Diagnoses Panic Attack Disorder?
Just because you’ve provided your health care practitioner with a list of symptoms of anxiety attacks, doesn’t mean he’s going to immediately rubber stamp it as an anxiety attack. Before he can do that, he must be sure of the specific disorders or illnesses you absolutely don’t have, like a heart problem or a thyroid condition. Both of these, by the way, produce similar symptoms.
Depending on your specific complaints and your medical history, your doctor will choose from an array of tests and other diagnostic techniques to give you. Undoubtedly, though he’ll start the diagnosis with a physical examination.
From here, you’ll complete a psychological self-evaluation or questionnaire. Don’t be surprised if you’re also quizzed about whether you use illegal drugs or about your habits involving alcoholic beverages.
These are all criteria your health care professionals must take into account when making an accurate diagnosis of panic attack disorder. What may be surprising for you to learn however is that one panic attack — and even two — does not a disorder make.
That’s just a poetic way of saying that because you’ve experienced the symptoms of anxiety attacks and have had a panic attack, doesn’t mean you actually possess the disorder. For you to be diagnosed with the disorder, you must meet the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.
This is the manual health care professionals use to diagnosis a mental health condition. The book states a person must meet the following conditions before he or she is considered as actually having the disorder
Frequent, unexpected panic attacks
Worrying about experiencing another attack
Avoidance of situations which you believe may trigger another attack
The attacks, themselves, aren’t triggered by substance abuse or another underlying mental health condition, such as agoraphobia or other social phobia.
If you meet these criteria, then you’re likely to be diagnosed with panic attacks. And from here, you’ll receive offers of treatment along conventional medicine’s lines.