When panic attacks
Are you plagued by fears, phobias, or panic attacks? Do you toss and turn at night with a knot in your stomach, worrying about your job, your family, work, your health, or relationships? Do you suffer from crippling shyness, obsessive doubts, or feelings of insecurity?What you may not realize is that these fears are almost never based on reality. Anxiety is one of the world's oldest cons. When you're anxious, you're actually fooling yourself. You are telling yourself things that simply aren't true. See if you can recognize yourself in any of these distortions:All-or-Nothing Thinking: "My mind will go blank when I give my presentation at work, and everyone will think I'm an idiot."Fortune Telling: "I just know I'll freeze up and blow it when I take my test."Mind Reading: "Everyone at this party can see how nervous I am."Magnification: "Flying is so dangerous. I think this plane is going to crash!"Should Statements: "I shouldn't be so anxious and insecure. Other people don't feel this way."Emotional Reasoning: "I feel like I'm on the verge of cracking up!"Self-Blame: "What's wrong with me? I'm such a loser!"Mental Filter: "Why can't I get anything done?
Stats for nerds
6recommend
10mentions
7people
2011–2022years
90% recommend10% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Reading a great book on this right now (When Panic Attacks). Before that, I didn't realize that is was possible to do CBT without a therapist.
- Have you checked out the book "When Panic Attacks" by Dr David Burns? It's a book that's helped a few friends of mine with severe social anxiety. It's CBT, but you may benefit from a book more tailored towards anxiety, as opposed to more generalised negative thoughts.
- Working on anxiety can be life changing. I highly recommend the book "When Panic Attacks" by Dr. David Burns. In fact just the other day Dr. Burns had as a guest on his "Feel Good" podcast a tech guy who was rebuilding his web site (https://feelinggood.com/) in exchange for help with his anxieties. In a nutshell, the guy was a "handsome, successful, Yale educated, British" guy who was suffering from anxieties in social situations. Dr. Burns also has a book called "Feeling Good" which is geared more towards depression. Burns is one of the pioneers in cognitive behavior theory. If you're suffering from anxiety and/or depression I highly recommend his books/website/podcast - I will also note that Dr. Burns promotes drug free and rapid recovery that can be accomplished in many cases through "bibliotherapy" - e.g. just by reading a book and , most importantly, doing the exercises/work he recommends.
- I'm a founder that has struggled with this (but it's basically been solved for a while). When Panic Attacks (https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Panic-Attacks-drug-free-therap...) is a great book. Just being able to identify it and know it's not dangerous helped me the most.
I loved his anecdote of doing jumping jacks while having a panic attack. The lightheartedness of the way he approaches the disorder is kind of nice.
One weird thing that helped me was reading everything I could possibly find on panic attacks over some short period of time. Every paper, book, medication, etc. Unlike some disorders, the truth seems to mostly be positive (non-dangerous, relatively straight-forward ways to beat it), and so the more you know the better you'll be at approaching it.
- I second, "Feeling Good" is great.
BTW, there is another book by the same author(David Burns) -- "When Panic Attacks" [1]. It is focused on anxiety, not depression, but these two conditions often go hand in hand.
- I can't comment on the whole situation, since I live outside of the USA, but I can give you some advice about Problem #1.
There are great books by David Burns: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" and "When Panic Attacks". Both are available at amazon kindle: http://amzn.com/0380810336 and http://amzn.com/076792083X The "Feeling Good" book is focused primarily on depression issues and "When Panic Attacs" (as its name suggest) on various anxiety disorder. I suggest to read them both. They are really helpful, but not just because of their content(which is good), but because they present of number techniques from Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, which you can apply on yourself. But please note that reading the book and using these methodics is order of magnitude more effective than just reading the book and internalizing its contents.
Also, can you please elaborate on your issue with finding a therapist? Can you just go to a therapy session? Or you can't because you have to overcome strong anxiety first? If you are able to come and see a therapist(being able to manage your anxiety if you have any), then find a good CBT therapist and do come see her of him. Therapists are trained to deal with people who have all sorts of issues, even such serious as yours.
