Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355
  • Home
  • Therapy Services
    • Fees
    • How Psychotherapy Works
    • Who is it for?
    • Individual Therapy
    • Child Therapy
    • Couples Therapy
    • Marriage Counselling
    • Family Therapy
    • Group Psychotherapy
    • Corporate Counselling and Therapy Services
    • Clinical Supervision
    • FAQs
  • Types of Therapy
    • Acceptance Commitment Therapy
    • Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Body Psychotherapy
    • Clinical Psychology
    • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
    • Compassion Focused Therapy
    • Coronavirus (Covid-19) Counselling
    • Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
    • EMDR
    • Existential Psychotherapy
    • Gestalt Psychotherapy
    • Group Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Integrative Psychotherapy
    • IPT – Interpersonal Psychotherapy
    • Online Therapy
    • Psychoanalytic Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy
    • Systemic Psychotherapy
    • Transactional Analysis
    • Trauma Psychotherapy
  • Types of Issues
    • Abuse
    • Addiction
      • Gambling addiction
      • Porn Addiction
    • Affairs
    • Anger Management
    • Anxiety
    • Bereavement Counselling
    • Coronavirus Induced Mental Health Issues
    • Cross Cultural Issues
    • Depression
    • Family Issues
    • LGBT+ Issues
    • Low Self-Esteem
    • Relationship Issues
    • Sexual Issues
    • Stress
  • Online Therapy
    • Online Anger Management Therapy
    • Online Anxiety Counselling
    • Online Bereavement Therapy
    • Online Depression Psychotherapy
    • Online Relationship Therapy
  • Our Practitioners
    • Practitioner Search
  • Work with us
  • Blog
    • Ageing
    • Attachment
    • Child Development
    • Families
    • Gender
    • Groups
    • Loss
    • Mental Health
    • Neuroscience
    • Parenting
    • Psychotherapy
    • Relationships
    • Resources
    • Sexuality
    • Sleep
    • Society
    • Spirituality
    • Work
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us – Brighton & Hove Practice
    • Contact Us – Lewes Practice
    • Contact Us – Online Therapy
    • Privacy Policy

December 18, 2017 by Brighton & Hove Psychotherapy Leave a Comment

What are panic attacks?

Panic attacks can be terrifying and debilitating. They can feel as if you are going to die and like you have lost control of your body.  While nobody has literally died from a panic attack, feeling out of control and overcome by fear and anxiety can be one of the most unpleasant experiences. It causes some people to limit their lives, which can, in turn, lead to more panic attacks through hypervigilance.

What is a panic attack?

I have previously written blogs about how all of our emotions originate in our body.  Our emotional system (autonomic nervous system) is constantly scanning its surroundings for signs of threat. Some of us have systems that are primed to be more hypervigilant. This can be useful in dangerous situations, but not so helpful in normal everyday life.

There may be genetically inherited reasons why some people are more prone to anxiety, and thus panic attacks. However, other reasons relate to what we learned about emotions and how to feel them from our primary carer and family of origin.  Put simply, an anxious mother will most likely raise an anxious child. When the child becomes a parent, they become an anxious mother who raises an anxious child, and so on.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

Facebooktwitter

Why do panic attacks happen?

Panic attacks happen when we become overwhelmed with fear and anxiety.  We cannot simply feel and make sense of our experience and our emotional system goes into overdrive. The fast heart rate and shallow breathing that accompanies a panic attack exacerbates the experience and we can feel stuck in a nightmarish loop.

It is important to understand that a panic attack originates in the body.  It can therefore only be controlled through the body. We cannot think ourselves out of a panic attack. This is why it is so unhelpful when well-meaning loved ones tell us to “calm down!”

Panic attacks are generally unrelated to the immediacy of our environment in that we are generally not confronting a deadly situation. However, there will generally be something about what we are experiencing that is triggering anxiety and/or fear.

In my next blog, I will give you four simple steps to stop a panic attack.

Mark Vahrmeyer is a UKCP-registered psychotherapist working in private practice in Hove and Lewes, East Sussex. He is trained in relational psychotherapy and uses an integrative approach of psychodynamic, attachment and body psychotherapy to facilitate change with clients.

Further reading:

Managing conflict for emotional and physical health

What is attachment and why does it matter?

Click here to download a PDF version of this post.

Facebooktwitter

Filed Under: Mark Vahrmeyer, Mental Health Tagged With: anxiety, panic

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Find your practitioner

loader
Wordpress Meta Data and Taxonomies Filter

Locations -

  • Brighton
  • Lewes
  • Online
loader
loader
loader
loader
loader

Search for your practitioner by location

Brighton
Lewes

Therapy services +

Therapy services: 

Therapy types

Therapy types: 

Our Practitioners

  • Mark Vahrmeyer
  • Sam Jahara
  • Gerry Gilmartin
  • Dr Simon Cassar
  • Claire Barnes
  • David Work
  • Angela Rogers
  • Magdalena Whitehouse
  • Dorothea Beech
  • Paul Salvage
  • Susanna Petitpierre
  • Sharon Spindler
  • Michael Reeves
  • Kevin Collins
  • Rebecca Mead
  • Dr John Burns
  • Dr Laura Tinkl

Work with us

Find out more….

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Copyright © 2021 – Brighton And Hove Psychotherapy – Privacy Policy
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) Important Notice

We would like to reassure all our clients that Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is operating as normal despite the current situation.

Our working practices have fully incorporated online therapy in addition to a re-opening of our Hove and Lewes practices for face-to-face psychotherapy in accordance with Government guidelines and advice on safe practice and social distancing.