It's essential for you to be acquainted with the generally recognized medical meaning of panic and panic attacks. You want to be sure you use the most efficient, safe and fast panic attack treatment available!

What Is A Panic Attack?

Panic is a severe form of anxiety , which recurs, for no particular reason or circumstance. Panic is unforeseeable. Panic attacks may occur at any time, anyplace, even when you are asleep (nocturnal panic attacks).

Panic disorder is a kind of anxiety . It occurs when you have repeated periods of extreme panic, called panic attacks.

Suppose one day you're getting out of your car to go to work. Suddenly, your chest feels clenched. Your heart races. You start to feel dizzy and faint. You start to choke. You might feel as if the end is near. Was it all in your head? No. Most likely, you had a panic attack.

The Medical Community's Definition of Panic Attack

According to The World Health Organization's ICD-10: “Panic disorder [episodic paroxysmal anxiety ] The essential feature is recurrent attacks of severe anxiety (panic), which are not restricted to any particular situation or set of circumstances and are therefore unpredictable. As with other anxiety disorders, the dominant symptoms include sudden onset of palpitations, chest pain, choking sensations, dizziness, and feelings of unreality (depersonalization or derealization). There is often also a secondary fear of dying , losing control, or going mad. Panic disorder should not be given as the main diagnosis if the patient has a depressive disorder at the time the attacks start; in these circumstances the panic attacks are probably secondary to depression .“

Panic attacks last about 5 to 30 minutes and may include many of the symptoms listed here: http://panicsolutions.info/panic-attacks-symptoms . Panic attacks can lead to phobias if they aren't treated.

Effects of Untreated Panic

While a single panic attack may be brief, the effects of the experience can have a lasting influence.. The memory of the overwhelming fear and terror that you experience during the attacks can have a corrosive influence on your self-confidence and cause grave interruption to your everyday life. Eventually, if untreated this leads to the following panic disorder symptoms:

* Anticipatory anxiety – This anxiety stems from a fear of having future panic attacks. This “fear of fear” is present most of the time, and can be extremely disabling.

* Phobic avoidance – This avoidance may be based on the belief that the situation you’re avoiding caused a previous panic attack. Or you may avoid places where escape would be difficult or help would be unobtainable if you had a panic attack. Taken to its extreme, phobic avoidance becomes agoraphobia.

Click Here to read about what causes panic attacks: http://panicsolutions.info/what-causes-panic-attacks

Click Here to read about treatment of panic attacks: http://panicsolutions.info/panic-cure-pt1

In summary

Knowing what is a panic attack and what is not is crucial as you begin to take control of your health and start to overcome panic attacks. When you know what is a panic attack you can overcome it quickly and effectively.

Author's Bio: 

Dan DeLuca, CH, is a Certified Consulting Hypnotherapist, Author, and Coach in the fields of Life-Health Coaching, Motivation and Communication. Since 2005, Dan has been practicing Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Hypnosis, TimeLine Therapy and other life-changing modalities.

He is a member of the Association for Integrative Psychology, The National Guild of Hypnotists, and the American Board of Hypnotherapy.

His website is http://panicsolutions.info