My Aunt (may she rest in peace) suffered from panic attacks. For several years she just had to fight through them, although eventually they did get better. I don't know what combination of health / therapy / medication finally helped. (For what it's worth, despite the panic attacks, she was a brilliant author).
I don't know if this is related, but I occasionally suffer from Ocular Migraines (20 minutes of visuals -> 2-4 hr headache -> 12-36 hrs exhaustion). One of the triggers seems to be consistent low level stress (as opposed to the acute stress when there's some kind of crisis). Minding my caffeine intake seems to help (a little coffee at the start makes it much easier), black pepper is definite trigger, exercise during the visuals seems to reduce the intensity. Meditation and ritualistic behavior also seem to help.
The reason I mention this at all, is that Migraines seem to be caused by over-stimulated neurons that first fire continuously, then fail completely for a while. There may be a partial overlap in the phenomena.
I've had a few panic attacks in my life... the best thing I can recommend is yoga. The relaxation part is extremely important. It might be hard to do at first, but the deep abdominal breathing is super helpful when you start to feel panicky. You just try to make your breath go into your stomach, not letting it stop and get stuck in your chest. Diaphragmatic breathing does help to calm your body (I’ve even used this kind of breathing to calm my to-be sister in law that was coughing so hard she almost threw up) Once you get the deep breathing down, it’s good to practice breathing in for less time than you breath out, and then breathing in, holding your breath for the same amount of time, then breathing out for about double the time.
Noah knows a lot more about this than I do and I could ask him for advice if you want. I did find that yoga and specifically the relaxation at the end helped me a lot.
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I don't know if this is related, but I occasionally suffer from Ocular Migraines (20 minutes of visuals -> 2-4 hr headache -> 12-36 hrs exhaustion). One of the triggers seems to be consistent low level stress (as opposed to the acute stress when there's some kind of crisis). Minding my caffeine intake seems to help (a little coffee at the start makes it much easier), black pepper is definite trigger, exercise during the visuals seems to reduce the intensity. Meditation and ritualistic behavior also seem to help.
The reason I mention this at all, is that Migraines seem to be caused by over-stimulated neurons that first fire continuously, then fail completely for a while. There may be a partial overlap in the phenomena.
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Noah knows a lot more about this than I do and I could ask him for advice if you want. I did find that yoga and specifically the relaxation at the end helped me a lot.
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