Panic Attacks Symptoms
Common panic attacks symptoms – and how to relieve them
Note: This website is for informational purposes only and must not be construed as medical advice. (See disclaimer at foot of page.)
Panic attacks symptoms - in this section we look at:
1. Physical symptoms and how to reduce their intensity
The common physical symptoms experienced in a panic attack, and how to reduce their intensity and duration.
2. Psychological & Emotional symptoms and how to reduce their effects
The common psychological & emotional symptoms experienced, and how to alter your thinking so as to relieve them.
3. How you can prevent panic attacks symptoms from happening at all
Finally, the best drug-free method for permanently eliminating panic attacks from your life.
Let’s begin with the physical side of things.
1. Physical symptoms and how to reduce their intensity
Your heart races or has palpitations – sometimes ‘skips a beat’ or ‘flops’
This can be frightening, but no harm will come to your heart usually, although it is always advisable to check with a medical professional to be sure it is not a genuine heat attack or related condition. Stress can cause the heart rate to increase plus ‘exciter’ adrenaline is produced into your system.
It does this so that the body is ready to take action. But once the adrenaline fades away your heart rate should return to normal. There is no evidence that panic and anxiety has any adverse effect on the heart and related pains are easily explained.
Try distractions (see section 1 above) so that you do not listen to your heart beat, but more importantly, take regular limited exercise – it helps to alleviate and minimize this symptom. Plus avoid stimulants like smoking, caffeine, chocolate and sugar, (like cookies and sweets).
Hyperventilation
Hyperventilation is ‘over-breathing’ caused by you breathing much faster than the body needs. It disturbs the body’s oxygen / carbon dioxide balance. This reduces oxygen flow to the brain and confusing, tense, symptoms of anxiety begin to appear – even feelings of suffocation. This can lead to a panic attack.
It’s called the “Bohr Effect” – and is familiar to those who have studied hyperventilation.
Hyperventilation is not a serious medical condition but can be extremely unpleasant. One method for restoring normal breathing is cup hands over your mouth and breathe steadily, or into a paper bag. This can take just a few minutes to work effectively.
Shortness of breath
Related to hyperventilation. Your bronchial tubes or airways expand and it requires a greater amount of air to fill your lungs and so takes a greater effort to breathe. You feel breathless and sometimes repeatedly yawn to enable yourself to catch your breath.
When stress changes the body, it speeds up breathing so the body is ready for fight or flight. Breathing becomes shallow. But if we remain inactive because there’s no real threat, the body doesn’t get enough oxygen. And we feel breathless.
Getting regular exercise helps to sustain a normal breathing pattern. When your nervous system has had enough exercise and rest, this symptom will fade away.
Tightness or ‘a lump’ in your throat / Trouble with swallowing
Stress can sometimes causes feelings of choking or even strangling. But the reality is that this is only a perception. It is usually caused by a tightening of the throat muscles or by unconsciously pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth. This tenses up your throat and jaw
Be aware of the tongue syndrome, and move your tongue away from the roof of your mouth. Also take care when eating. Chew food slowly and fully before swallowing to avoid ‘gag’ reflexes. Plus use some of the distractions described above to remove your focus on these symptoms – because focusing on the symptom can increase it.
Dizziness or feeling ‘light-headed’ 
Sometimes you imagine that that you may faint. Floor feels as if it is moving. It’s usually caused by hyperventilation or extreme fear and the associated flood of adrenalin. Note: Medical tests are advised to be sure that it is not caused by something else
What you can do: If caused by hyperventilation, deliberate deep slow breathing will reduce and even eliminate this symptom. When the nervous system has had enough rest, this symptom will fade away.
Shakiness or trembling, hot or chilled feelings and sweating
This is often your body reacting to stressful over-stimulation of the nervous system. Hands, arms, legs or the entire body may shake or tremble and can be made worse by a shortage of sleep.
Stress can also over-stimulate the involuntary nervous system, producing unusual results such as hot, cold or icy sweats that seem to appear without reason, and can be a precursor to a panic attack.
Light regular exercise and relaxation will help these symptoms fade away.
Chronic Fatigue
You constantly feel exhausted and tired all of the time, and could sleep all day and then wake up still not refreshed. You begin to feel extremely anxious and concerned that ‘normality’ may never return.
This is often caused by your body burning far too much energy because your nervous system has been over-stimulated. You may not be doing much physically active, you may even be asleep, but your nervous system is still burning up the body’s energy sources.
The best remedy is to bring your rest and sleep levels back to normal. It may require stopping work for some days. As with most other symptoms, when your nervous system has had enough rest, the anxiety will most likely fade away.
Muscle tension & twitching
Stress causes muscles to tighten so the body is ready for ‘fight or flight’, so muscles can feel tight and strained, and often twitch. Sometimes painful with cramps on an ongoing basis. Occasionally the scalp is also painful and ‘tense’ with pains in the back of the neck.
Light regular exercise will help to relax muscles. As can massage or a warm bath. When the system has had sufficient rest and exercise, this symptom will fade away.
Shoulders and neck pain or headache
Hunched shoulders brought about by stressful situations can cause tension in your neck. Relax your shoulders.
Nausea, Loss of appetite, strange ‘metallic’ taste or smell
You can feel ‘butterflies’ in the stomach, gaseousness, burping and feelings of a ‘lump in the stomach. Queasy sensations, nausea or acidity. Often the idea of eating brings on nausea. Sometimes a metallic taste or smell is also detected.
High stress produces extra stomach acid and muscle action to digest and eliminate food more quickly from the digestive system so the body is ready for fight or flight action. If maintained too long, this produces excess of acid which causes indigestion etc.
One way treat this is eating smaller meals more often, with less spices etc. Anti-acid remedies and plenty of water will assist as well. But overall the most effective treatment is resting, even though it may take time to bring improvements.
Urge to urinate (Kidneys)
Similar to the stomach upset syndrome. The body attempts to eliminate waste as quickly as possible to be ready for fight or flight. A common sensation and often experienced by public speakers people about to appear in front of a large crowd.
Remedies: diarrhoea treatment, anti-acid, plus rest, relaxation and removing yourself from the cause of stress.
Blurry vision, light sensitive and watery eyes
We may see stars or flashing lights and eyes seem far more sensitive to light to the point of wearing sunglasses in ordinary daylight.
Eyes have nerves that send information to your brain. If over stimulated the eyes can give incorrect or false information. These sensations are sometimes the way we perceive this information.
None of these symptoms are serious if related to anxiety. But it’s vital to get a professional medical opinion to ensure your eye problems are simply related to anxiety.
Insomnia, waking up with a jolt, wild dreams
As you are going to sleep you suddenly wake with a jolt. Or wake up repeatedly and find it hard to go back to sleep. You may even wake up panicking from a wild dream
Stress and over stimulation causes disruption of the nervous system is a major cause of sleep disorders and broken sleep patterns. There are different types of sleep problems, but the ones described here tend to be related to anxiety disorder.
Due to constant over stimulation, the brain receives inconsistent and disorderly messages from the nervous system when we try to sleep. It is similar in effect to drinking strong coffee just before attempting to sleep.
The best remedy is rest. When you experience regularly disrupted sleep, may require means giving yourself time out of your regular schedule to have space to recover.
Continuous sugar craving
An unexplained increased desire for sugar (chocolate, sweets etc), but eating them does not reduce the desire. Sufferers should always check with a registered medical professional to be sure of the correct diagnosis – as it could, for example, be diabetes related.
In anxiety related cases, desire for sugar can mean that the body is short of energy, and the nervous system sends a signal to the brain causing the desire. Responding with a huge burst of sugar will mean that for a brief period, energy will increase. But the body will also match this by substantially increasing the insulin supply to cope with the extra sugar. This can quickly produce a feeling of fatigue and a ‘down’ emotional state, and if insulin is increased beyond a certain point, it can precipitate feelings of sickness, anxiety to the point of a panic attack.
One solution to sugar craving is to eat foods with natural sugars such as vegetables or fruit. These release sugars into the blood stream slowly, without sudden sugar rushes associated with sweets and chocolate.
Tingling in your hands or feet
Feels like pins and needles in hands or feet, or elsewhere. Or numbness or ’frozen’. Or a burning sensations in the arms, legs or face.
This is not great cause for concern and usually will subside once the nervous system has had enough rest.
Your legs feel weak
Your feel your legs won’t support you. You feel ‘weak at the knees’. This is a frequent symptom of stress.
As with all symptoms, when the nervous system gets sufficient rest, this symptom will diminish and eventually subside.
We’ll look at a final, permanent solution for stopping panic attacks shortly, but first let’s examine the pyschological and emotional symptoms experienced during panic attacks, and what you can do to reduce their severity.
2. Psychological & Emotional symptoms and how to reduce their effects
You startle easily, or suffer sudden panic or anxiety
You feel jumpy, and easily startled. This a very clear indication that your nervous system needs rest, because an over stimulated nervous system is keeping your body and mind constantly ready for action – fight or flight.
Every sense is alerted, so it’s not surprising that you are easily startled or ‘nervy’.
Rest and relaxation helps bring your mind and body back from this state. Drug medications can do this but unfortunately many have some disagreeable side effects. Instead usually sleep and a good rest are equally effective.
You feel pressured that everything depends on you 
You feel overwhelmed, often angry, impatient and depressed to the point of tears that you have too much responsibility, and that if you stopped, everything would fall apart. There’s seems to be no pleasure, nor enjoyment of life.
This may well be caused by an over-stimulated nervous system that sends conflicting feelings and sensations. It is best to recognize these as symptoms as such and that these will fade when the nervous system is rested.
So the solution is often to get plenty of rest and change your ‘self talk’. Avoid focusing on how you feel as this can add further stress
Inability to concentrate, and constant ‘mind chatter’
Your concentration ability is very brief - shorter than it used to be. You lose attention and forget what you are doing even if you right in the middle of it. Your mind races in an unfocused way, constantly chattering.
An over stimulated nervous system (brought about be reaction to stress) will often cause us to think too rapidly and continuously. It’s this non stop unfocused thinking pattern that interferes with concentration. This is often caused by the release of stimulants into the body if you are under stress, and the resulting agitated mind makes it difficult to concentrate
This is nothing to be afraid of, but will only subside when you take the pressure off, and rest the nervous system so that you can regain your concentration ability.
Depersonalization or feelings of ‘Unreality’
This is usually caused by an overworked or tired mind creating anxiety. You feel like you’re detached from everything or you’re in a dream. The world around can seem kaleidoscopic, blurred or very bright.
It is generally thought what occurs is that the limbic system in the brain decides too much is happening, so it goes into ‘protection’ mode and reduces external stimuli recognition. This produces the vague feelings of unreality.
Try 20 minutes of exercise to give your mind time to rest and relax at least 3 times a day. As adrenaline levels fall you calm down and ‘reality’ returns.
Fear of ‘Loss of control’
Your symptoms are the feeling that you will do something extremely embarrassing like vomiting, or falling over in public etc. You suddenly lack confidence in controlling your body or even in what you might say. This can make you very self-conscious and anxious.
But this is not the real situation, only a fear that it might be. It can grow if dwelt on – the result of an overactive nervous system. With enough rest, this symptom will fade away.
Fears: Disturbed thoughts & frightening feelings
You find yourself very afraid of something that you usually think of as normal. E.g. Fear of loneliness, or an unsupported fear for your own safety or fear that you might hurt others irrationally.
This is caused by our feelings being altered incorrectly by an over-stimulated nervous system, which sends inappropriate signals to the brain. This causes loss of confidence and can increase the occurrences if left untreated.
This can be managed by realizing and that these are irrational fears. Try changing your ‘self talk’ about what you are feeling. The symptoms may reappear until your nervous system has received enough relaxation and rest.
You suffer from excessive energy, and cannot relax
You feel constantly ‘over-pumped’ about everything; your mind is continuously ablaze with non-stop thoughts and ideas. You feel you cannot stop, but must constantly be on the move.
This is brought about by the body producing natural stimulants to keep you energized in the face of constant stress, the source of your anxiety disorder.
Relaxation and rest is the way to calm down your system without using drugs to dull it, although some medically prescribed treatments can help just at the outset.
Fixation with ‘How to get well again’
You are constantly attempting to define your illness, and continuously look for evidence in the form of aches pains, and sensations.
This syndrome is common. Constant poor health can make you dwell on it particularly if it’s hard to define like anxiety disorders can appear to be, so it’s not surprising that sometimes it can become an intense source of focus. But it is important to realise that this is a mental pattern, not a condition and that any pattern it can be replaced.
Some ways to deal with this are to change your mind chatter, and focus on something strongly distracting, long with positive affirmations and more pleasurable thinking.
As with other forms of anxiety try relaxation, deep breathing and rest. This will help to diminish the sensation and pattern.
IMPORTANT: The above suggestions are effective in the short-term, but are really just first aid. What you need is a fast, permanent way to stop panic attacks from happening in the first place.
So what is the solution?
3. How you can prevent panic attacks symptoms from happening at all
We trust the information here will help you to reduce the severity and duration of panic attacks symptoms that you may experience. But they do not cure or treat the underlying problem.
Major panic attacks require proper treatment.
If you want to stop panic attacks for good, there is a drug-free solution that actually works, according to the consumer feedback we’ve seen:
Visit the Official ‘Panic Away’ Website to Stop Panic Attacks <<<
Disclaimer: Important Notice regarding use of this Web Site
This website is for informational purposes only and must not be construed as medical advice.
In all instances see a physician or other health provider if you believe you have a medical condition.
See medical disclaimer notice here.