Part 2: Thoughts and Panic Attacks

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Many times when we become anxious, these feelings of anxiety may seem to come out of nowhere. We may conclude that our feelings of uneasiness have no basis in our thinking.

However, feelings of distress can be brought on by something that has happened. But at first these things may not be obvious to you.

What do I mean?

Please endulge me to make use of an analogy.

If you’ve ever had the pleasure (sarcasm!) of studying either logic or computer based logic, you’ll notice that a part of it involves the use of rules, for example: if X then Y. It’s like a command to a computer that says: if this happens, then do this.

Let me look at a specific example (warning: this starts out a little dry, but please stick with me.):

Let’s say that I work for a company and one of my tasks involves retrieving the names of all customers whose birthdate occurs any time during the month of July. (Let’s say I want to send a birthday card to anyone who was born in July).  
 

In order for me to be able to retrieve this information from my database requires the database to run a command. So I need to program the database with a command.  The command might go something like this: If X is born between July 1 – July 31^st then list his/her name. This command will allow me to obtain a report from my database that lists the names of all customers who were born in the month of July. This process is very useful in computer based applications.

Humans too can certainly engage logical functions in their head from which conclusions are drawn. The problem, however, is that such conclusions are not necessarily true and can lead to anxiety and panic attacks.

Below are some examples:

If I feel anxious THEN I’m going to have a panic attack.

If I have a panic attack, THEN I will lose control and everyone will laugh at me.

If I have a panic attack THEN I will lose control and lose my mind.

Now these are basic and simple examples of thoughts that contain Cognitive Distortions.

I’m not suggesting that you only need to locate a few thoughts, their distortions, and then generate a few alternate thoughts and you’re done. No, this takes time but it’s well worth the effort.

You need to constantly talk back to your thoughts and, in a sense, the process is like you are rewriting the computer program that is causing your anxiety.

Getting a handle on the thoughts that are leading to your panic attacks involves using the process of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) that I’ve discussed many times in this website.  You can train your mind to employ new logical arguments and conclusions. By using the process of CBT you are creating alternate “if then” conclusions. You’ve written new rules. This example illustrates the power of thoughts and working constantly with them. For more information please sign up for my free newsletter (below)