How to Help a Family Member With Anxiety and Panic Attacks
By: Shawn Towson
If
you've been wondering how to help a family member with anxiety
and panic attacks but didn't know where to go, continue reading
on to get some easy tips to help out your suffering family
member.
Anxiety
with panic attacks are very commonplace today, so the odds
are pretty high that you will know someone affected with an
anxiety disorder at some point, and knowing how you can help
them is a great tool you can have.
If
a member of your family is increasingly becoming more anxious,
obsessive or agoraphobic, which is just a fear of being in
a place where the person may think it will be hard to escape,
then it will really help the both of you to know some signs
of panic attacks so that you will be more apt to know when
he/she is having one.
So,
a family member is saying they are feeling anxious, or they
are already having a full-blown panic attack. They may be
experiencing some of these more common symptoms.
Common
anxiety attack symptoms:
Fear
of dying
Nausea
Numbness
or tingling sensations
Racing
heart
Shaking
(visibly or internally)
Dizziness
There
are many more symptoms of panic, but these seem to be the
most common among sufferers. The fear of dying is the most
frightening for most anxiety sufferers, because all of the
other sensations they are feeling combine in their body.
When
an anxious person feels these effects together, their mind
forms a very real opinion that they are indeed, dying of something.
This can be really scary for your loved one, so it is important
to try as best you can to comfort and calm them during these
episodes of extreme panic.
What
can you do to help?
One
of the best things you can do for your family member is to
try to get them calm. Remember, they think that they are really
dying of something, so if you offer to do whatever you can
for them in order to calm them down you are helping them a
lot.
Listen
to them.
While
this seems easy, it can be tough for many people fully empathize
with an anxiety sufferer many times. Your family member is
going to have thoughts and ideas that can be considered irrational
when compared to the thoughts and fears of a non-anxious person.
It
is important to set that aside, and simply listen to them
if they need to talk about their panic attack episodes. Not
every sufferer is the same, so many do not want to focus and
obsess about their panic and talk about it, but most do it
seems.
Most
of all, you can learn how to help a family member with anxiety
and panic attacks by having empathy for them as they go through
a very tough time in their lives.
I
strongly urge you to click through so that you can find out
more about anxiety and how you can help your family member
deal with it, and conquer it for good at: http://curinganxietyattacks.info
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