Therapy
If your heart races for no reason, you can’t catch your breath and you’ve already started avoiding places just in case, what you’re going through has a name and has treatment.
Anxiety is the body’s natural response to danger, but it becomes a problem when it appears without a real threat, too often or too intensely. A panic attack is its most acute form: a wave of intense fear that arrives suddenly and makes you feel that something serious is about to happen, even though your body is safe.
It shows up as a racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, chest tightness, tingling or cold sweats. Many people feel they are going to lose control, faint or even die. It is common to avoid places or situations “just in case” — the subway, public speaking, being alone — and for anticipatory worry (“what if it happens again?”) to take up more and more of the day.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy offers concrete tools: breathing and body-regulation techniques for the acute moment, and gradual exposure to regain the places and situations you have been avoiding. In parallel, we work on the catastrophic thinking that feeds the fear, so that anxiety stops making decisions for you.
