Panic Attacks Complicate Efforts to Get Rid of Depression
Fighting the signs and symptoms of depression becomes doubly difficult when a person is suffering from anxiety attacks. This forcefully raises the question, “How to fight depression?” Many people find that when they finally admit they are having panic attacks, they are surprised to find just how many people they know have also had them. Panic attacks make you feel crazy and yet they can leave as fast as they come. Many people have one or two panic attacks during a time of stress and then don’t have them again for a long time. Depression has a particularly symbiotic relationship with self help for panic attacks.
On the other hand, there are many people who struggle with them frequently. One of the problems in coping with them is the way that depression supplies fuel for them. Panic thrives on the feeling of being off balance and depression does a real fine job of making people feel off balance. Therefore, depression hinders self help for panic attacks.
Self Help for Panic Attacks or Depression: Which to Tackle First?
One of the problems in overcoming depression in our lives is that it is aided and abetted by anxiety. Consider the signs and symptoms of depression. Depression depletes our energy, robs us of the enjoyment of simple pleasures (and big ones), and often makes it difficult for people to stay asleep past 3 or 4 am. Anxiety ramps us up with an adrenaline rush or it gives fake energy caused by low-grade stress response that doesn’t seem to have an off switch.
Furthermore, anxiety often makes it difficult to fall asleep. Anxiety cuts our sleep short at the beginning of the night and depression cuts it off at the end of the night. Finally, the steps for how to fight depression get stuck: we find that we are handicapped by these effects precisely at the moment when we need everything going for us. It works the other way as well: attempts at self help for panic attacks are deflated by depression
Now here is the kicker: depression depletes us, makes us feel weak, unsafe, and vulnerable. In other words, depression creates the precise environment in our emotional landscape that makes anxiety grow like a weed. Similarly, depression undercuts motivation, our follow-through, and getting started with self help for panic attacks. One of the signs and symptoms of depression is difficulty getting started (for the day or for a task).
How to Fight Depression When Panic Attacks Pierce the Darkness Like a Shrill Car Alarm in Dead of Night
Panic attacks have a way of making us depressed because we begin to grieve the various losses resulting from our fearful avoidance. At the same time, depression in our lives is often aided and abetted by anxiety.
One of the reasons that anxiety attacks and depression make such a good team is that anxiety thrives on our sense of being unsafe, weak, and vulnerable to danger. The danger can be real or imagined. It can be tangible or intangible. Now here is the kicker: depression wears us down, deflates our motivation, makes us feel weak, unsafe, and vulnerable. In other words, depression creates the precise environment in our emotional landscape that makes anxiety grow like a weed.
The symptoms of anxiety attacks (panic attacks) make us feel vulnerable like no other type of anxiety. Not surprisingly, panic attacks can feed off of the “less than” feelings that depression so generously provides. The signs and symptoms of depression present roadblocks to self help for panic attacks because it drains away precious energy we need to learn new skills. But before we explore this interaction we need to review the symptoms of anxiety attacks.
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