Here’s How to Deal with a Panic Attack

Although many tend to downplay a panic attack, anxiety disorder can have an impact on one’s day-to-day life.

But first you need to understand the real symptoms of a panic attack.

Here are some tips from Dr Yusuf Matcheswalla, a psychiatrist with Mumbai’s Masina hospital:

• During a panic attack, the individual is completely unaware about why they are experiencing such intense fear all of a sudden.
• A panic attack can last for as long as 30 minutes in some cases. It is usually triggered either when the person is in an extremely crowded place, while travelling, or even while they are indoors in a small place.’
• You will soon start experiencing the physical symptoms of anxiety. The individual starts believing that he is suffering from a heart attack and experiences symptoms like chest pain, breathlessness, dizziness and he will even start sweating profusely,’ says Dr Matcheswalla.
• He will get the urge to escape from the situation and might even insist that he needs to be taken to a hospital to see a cardiologist immediately due to his increased heart rate,’ he adds.
• When you go into this panic attack mode where you believe that something terrible will happen, it escalates the initial panic that you were experiencing in to a full-blown panic attack.

How to cope with a panic attack

Here are some of the things that you can do to cope with a panic attack: