Anxiety attacks affect more than 2 ½ million Americans every year. In fact, it is estimated that 1/3 of adults will have one each year. While there are many methods for treating panic disorders, I have the formula to help you ease the snowballing symptoms of this problem. I know my formula, which utilizes the natural medicine of humor, will work for you as a mental health treatment for adults.
Anxiety attacks involve an unexpected surge of unexplainable, usually unwarranted, fear. Without warning and without provocation, you get carried along in a tidal wave of panic far surpassing the usual stress most of us experience. If you are one of the estimated 2.5 million Americans already suffering, you know exactly how intense and overwhelming they are.
Symptoms include a racing heart, trouble breathing, nervousness, chest pains, and tingling in your extremities. So anxiety attacks mimic heart attacks, which creates even more panic for sufferers. Besides the obvious negative ramifications of these sudden and unpredictable events, this “snowballing fear” effect is one of the worst aspects of these episodes. Suffers often experience a spiraling fall into still worse fear as the symptoms manifest themselves.
This phenomenon is where humor and lightness play the biggest role in helping you with your anxiety attacks. Over the years of the medical practice, “the fun commandment, expect the unexpected,” has been a boon to sufferers of anxiety attacks. I know it can work just as well for you if you take some time to practice its application.
How does Expecting the Unexpected help you defuse your anxiety attacks? Let me start by asking you a question: If you had a choice, which would you prefer – a life where everything was predictable and happened “by the book” or a life full of surprises. Be careful as it is a trick question. Of course, the choice doesn’t really exist.
Like it or not, life is one surprise after another. The unexpected is the rule, not the exception. Your anxiety attacks make your acceptance of this fact paramount; your only choice in life, in fact, is whether you welcome the unexpected or resist it.
Even though you logically know this to be true, you are usually stunned whenever unexpected things happen. Emotionally you feel betrayed and disillusioned, as though you had a right to be exempt from this frustration. This presumption on your part is, of course, ridiculous and deserves to be addressed with lightness.
How silly you and I are. Still, you persist in perpetuating the myth that when the unexpected happens, it is a bad thing.
I say enough! Life’s too short not to have fun; you should be looking for surprises, not trying to avoid them. I don’t mean that your anxiety attacks should be something to look forward to, but if you start your day with the hope that you will be astonished by the unexpected gifts you will be offered, your attitude will begin making a remarkable turnaround.
And your positive attitude toward the unexpected is exactly what can help you calm yourself from the symptoms of a panic episode.
Here are my doctor’s orders to assist you in practicing fun commandments:
- Deliberately search out surprises in every situation
- Once a week, change the patterns of your daily “rituals.”
- Once a month, introduce someone or something entirely new into your life
With practice, you will begin to enjoy the unexpected rather than dread it, and you will find that your attitude change will ease the negative and life-shattering effects of your anxiety attacks.
