My Theory About Anxiety and Panic Attacks

[Georgec]

Hello Everyone,

I've never started my own thread here before... I usually try to answer questions or see if I can help with certain problems...

Over the past few months I spoken with many people over the phone about their anxiety and I've also been reading up on new research and things like that...

I used to suffer from anxiety and panic attacks so I understand what it's about and how it feels...

With all this information I came up with an interesting idea about anxiety that I wanted to share.... I'm not sure if anyone has said this before so please direct me to a link if it has been said :)

My theory is that anxiety and panic attacks are the body's way of distracting us from dealing with a complex or difficult problem. This usually stems from an inability to deal with problems in some cases. In other cases it stems from extremely difficult problems that require life changing solutions. (Most people don't like change so life changes are almost never welcomed until they are absolutely necessary)

Spend some time thinking about your life and what effects you. This is a great way to get a handle on every day stress and anxiety that requires some interaction from you to become less stressful.

This kind of long term strategy to overcome anxiety is much more difficult than relaxing and dieting, but it is really the only way I see anyone getting over their anxiety.

Let me know what you think... this is just an idea and I am open to any ideas.

Thank You,

George Christodoulou

[northstar]

hi george, your theory is interesting and yes it's very important to look after the mind, be confident enough to handle change and to think about what may be triggering anxiety.

however my own theory (and experience) is that anxiety is not the body distracting you but the body telling you that something is wrong. it's an alarm in a way, your body in distress asking for help.

it is a firm belief of mine that our diets and lifestyles are a huge factor in anxiety and panic problems. our modern diets that are overloaded with sugar and caffeine combined with inactive or stressful lifestyles it's only going to lead to problems like hypoglycemia and stress that lead to anxiety.

many people have no idea why they feel anxiety (generalized anxiety disorder) and this was my problem, i felt anxious, got to the stage where i had constant panic and i had no idea why. eventually figured out it was down to how and what i was eating and once i corrected that all my problems disappeared.

so the first thing i will ask someone who suffers with anxiety is 'what is your diet like' because it is incredibly important. once the body is being looked after properly then we can begin to look after the mind through exploration of our fears and difficulties, ideally with a good therapist :) some people need a little bit more help through cognitive behaviour therapy.

so basically what i'm saying is that it's a great idea to explore our anxieties, but if we're still not treating our bodies properly then it's not going to work quite as well as we want it to. don't underestimate the importance of getting the balance right physically as well as mentally :)

[Georgec]

Ah yes, diet is very important for some people. I usually place that in another category. I do think that some people's anxiety can be caused by something physical. I personally know many people who have anxiety and eat very unhealthy diets with little or no exercise.

We can never rule out the physical when it comes to anxiety.

Thanks,

George

[Robbed]

Then again, you just can't discount psychological causes, either. Diet may have been THE factor for northstar. But for me, the main factor is overwhelmingly psychological. Not that my diet is in perfect order, or probably ever will be. But I KNOW what has caused me anxiety disorder. Yes, I need to make major life changes. Unfortunately, they seem to be a little (oops, make that ALOT) beyond my abilities to orchestrate.

[northstar]

Then again, you just can't discount psychological causes, either. Diet may have been THE factor for northstar. But for me, the main factor is overwhelmingly psychological. Not that my diet is in perfect order, or probably ever will be. But I KNOW what has caused me anxiety disorder. Yes, I need to make major life changes. Unfortunately, they seem to be a little (oops, make that ALOT) beyond my abilities to orchestrate.

i'm not discounting the psychological causes at all, i'm saying you have to balance both by looking after your body as well as your mind.

what good is it trying to fix the psychological side if you're still pumping your body full of sugar and caffeine? if we're not looking after ourselves by making sure our bodies are in good shape for proper mental health then you're not going to have much of a result i think.

[Robbed]

i'm not discounting the psychological causes at all, i'm saying you have to balance both by looking after your body as well as your mind.

what good is it trying to fix the psychological side if you're still pumping your body full of sugar and caffeine? if we're not looking after ourselves by making sure our bodies are in good shape for proper mental health then you're not going to have much of a result i think.

Then again, I just don't see ANY hope when it comes to improving my diet. I have LOTS of difficult things that I have to deal with in life, like starting a career in mechanical engineering during bad economic times. But, as hopeless as this seems, I feel MUCH more hope about eventually being successful in engineering than improving my diet. So, perhaps it is best for me to just stop worrying about my diet, take my chances with the way things are (as far as eating goes), and try to change that which I actually CAN change.

[northstar]

for me it's like this:

if you know that eating badly will induce anxiety then why would you do it?

just like a person with diabetes knows that loading up on sugar will have a really negative effect on their health why would they not control their diet wisely?

or just like a person with heart disease knows that going to mcdonalds for tea most evenings will have a deadly result, why would they choose to eat fatty fast foods?

it's a choice.

i know it's not always that simple, but when it came down to it for me it was change the way you eat or live a life full of panic, depression, medication and visits to the mental hospital.

why would you not make a positive choice about something that is absolutely within your control to do when you know it will make your life better?

an aunt of mine told me a story once, i think i may have mentioned this before. she met a man who used to suffer so badly from arthritis that he was confined to a wheelchair. then he discovered that it was possible to get better through diet change so he changed everything. it meant that his diet was incredibly limited, totally vegetarian and he had to be extremely careful about what he ate or the arthritis would flare up, but it also meant that he was able to walk again and live a normal life. it was difficult but worth it. then my aunt met a woman who was crippled, literally bent over with anxiety, not in a wheelchair but pretty bad, and she told the woman about this man who managed to get better and the woman's reply was 'oh but i couldn't go on a vegetarian diet, i love meat too much!'.

to be incredibly honest i just don't understand that kind of response. this is because what i went through was so terrible i would literally have done anything to get better. i don't know if my experience was more extreme that other peoples, i guess there is no way to gauge that, but it was so incredibly bad that the whole diet choice was absolutely not a problem for me. maybe i'm lucky that way?

[joey9]

When I was in complete flip out mode I found that diet and exercise were great ways to stabilise me. However, the one thing that I discovered about myself and anxiety was that the causes of my flip outs were my fighting of my thoughts. So - something would activate one of my triggers but then I was so fearful of the ensuing fear response that i would fight the truth about what I was feeling. Its really hard to put down in words. I would think anything to make whatever I was fearful of not be true. I have learnt now that it is WAY better to not fight the truth. You may get some uncomfortable feelings as you have to face up to whatever it is that's freaking you out but these pass pretty quickly. The chronic problems come when your mind is constantly denying what is real. I think this is one of the problems I have found with some CBT - its all about making things not be true or not be likely. So you stay tangled up in the same cycle of thoughts. So now I practice acceptance. I accept all my thoughts but I don't judge them. I accept myself for who I am without judging myself. I don't try harder to be someone else. It can be a bit 'ouchy' because it means admitting to yourself sometimes that you haven't reached the standards you set for yourself, that yes, I am actually pretty lazy, that - going back to a previous thread - i hate dancing so I'm not going to, that sometimes I crack jokes that simply aren't funny, that I get shy around some people, that I get a bit freaked out around authority figures, but that its fine to be all those things and that we all have our own personalities, this makes us human, and not one of us is perfect. Its amazing how much more peaceful life is inside my head when I do this.

[Robbed]

if you know that eating badly will induce anxiety then why would you do it?

First off, I don't know that eating badly truly induces anxiety for me. Honestly, if I am having a good day, I can eat a ton of sugar and not have any kind of problem. So as far as I can see, there does not seem to be any kind of immediate correlation between mood and what I eat. As far as changing my diet, I believe we have discussed this before. But let me refresh you. It's not so much that I am addicted to unhealthy food, or anything like that. Rather, the problem is trying to introduce the new food. I just don't do well with this. Literally, trying to introduce new, healthy food is like trying to get myself to eat feces. No, I'm not kidding or trying to be dramatic here. It literally tastes SO awful that I can only get it down with grave difficulty and LOTS of water. Not to mention that, because of this, there is great FEAR for me in knowing that I have to try eating such foods. I would literally rather come face to face with a bear in the mountains than, say, fish on my plate (perhaps an unfair comparison, since Smokey is really MUCH more gentle than that nasty fish - and he'll take that fish off my hands). So much so that, when I actually made an effort to change my diet some years ago (before anxiety disorder was a problem, by the way), I would often skip meals rather than put myself through the torture. And torture, it was (perhaps you remember me making reference to 'Abu Ghraib' to describe the experience). Furthermore, unlike, say, quitting smoking, this wasn't something that seemed to get any better with time. If only I didn't have to taste, things would be MUCH easier for me (believe me, I have thought for DECADES about ways to short circuit my sense of taste). As long as I am up against this beast, I think it is best to just chalk this one off as an unwinnable situation, and take things as they come.

It's kind of interesting that I have a friend with severe food allergies (mainly wheat and soy). He has to limit his diet because of this, and has said some of the same things I have when it comes to introducing new foods. For instance, he compared the taste of brown rice to being slugged in the face by a 300 pound body builder. But I think that one of his best lines was that he just wishes he could just get all of his food from taking a pill. I certainly wouldn't mind that one. It would make my life a hell of alot simpler!