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The focus here is on attacks of panic that appear to come on without cause. Involving a racing heartbeat (palpitations),
chest pain, sweating, trembling and shaking, many people fear that they are having a heart attack or stroke, dying or going mad.
We feel sick and want to go to the toilet, our mouth is dry, it's hard to swallow and we are sweating. Feelings of dread consume us and
we have an overwhelming urge to run, to flee, to get away.
All of this and out of the blue... no wonder we feel that there is something radically wrong with us.
The current worldview of panic attack problems is based on the medical model, which views such problems as mental illnesses, 'disordered behaviour',
caused by something going wrong in the brain and the answer lies in 'fixing' the thing that has gone wrong – often with medication.
However...
Take the girl in her early twenties, emotionally fragile and over-anxious due to constant conflict at home and work, whose anxiety overflows
into a panic attack that scares her so much she is ever fearful of another attack. Is her apprehensive, fearful thinking and panic really dis-ordered? Has
something simply gone wrong in her brain that needs fixing?
Or is there a better explanation?
And a better solution?
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