Exposure Exercises To Deal With Panic Disorder

A panic disorder is one of the disorders that limits someone’s life the most. This is because their daily routine ends up in big worries about when the next seizure will happen. Thus, they tend to limit their daily activities. Medications can help. However, psychotherapy and exposure exercises are what really make a difference.

People experience a panic attack as intense sudden terror accompanied by various physical and cognitive manifestations. The intense discomfort that is experienced during the first makes the person feel afraid to be afraid. Thus, they begin to be alert and vigilant and fear a new crisis.

What they fear is the occurrence of unpleasant experiences. But paradoxically, fear itself can cause one to enlarge and oversize any normal bodily sensation. The excessive attention they put into it, along with a series of maladaptive thoughts, leads to a new panic episode.

Interoseptic exposure

People end up considering certain harmless physical manifestations as both dangerous and alarming. They take palpitations as a sign of a heart attack and interpret shortness of breath as imminent suffocation. They also consider dizziness as an introduction to fainting. During a panic attack, the individual feels that they are going crazy, losing control or even dying.

To avoid such unpleasant situations, they begin to follow a series of avoidance strategies. They try not to do activities or go to places they associate with a panic attack. In addition, they perform precautions, such as always carrying a bottle of water or sitting near the exits on public transport or public place.

All this avoidance does is perpetuate the interpretation of danger and deprive the person of verifying the innocence of their sensory impressions. Therefore, the main element of the treatment is exposure to these bodily sensory impressions. It is also about provoking these physical manifestations through various exercises. All so that the person gets used to them and stops being afraid of them.

Exposure exercises for panic disorder

Some of the most common preventative methods against a panic attack are:

• Hyperventilation often causes dizziness, numbness and a feeling of derealization. For this, the person should breathe in and out 30 times a minute.
• Breathe through a straw for two minutes, so that it leads to nausea and shortness of breath, as well as rapid heartbeat and palpitations.
• Quickly shake your head from side to side for 30 seconds to cause dizziness and blurred vision. You can also achieve this by rolling around or by lifting heavy objects.
• Make sudden attitude changes, such as getting up suddenly. This will create hypotension, and it will act as a barrier against overactivation.
• Forced breathing is a good exercise to mimic the feeling of tightness and chest pain. To do this, the person must breathe deeply and keep the chest muscles tense. Then take a deep breath again after releasing as little air as possible. They must repeat this sequence several times.

• It may be enough to wear a high neck or a tight tie to create a feeling of suffocation and tightness in the neck. It can also be useful to press down on the back of the tongue with an object such as a toothbrush handle or the like.
• Being in a very hot environment dressed in warm clothes can be enough to cause overwhelming emotions similar to panic attacks.

Other useful exposure exercises

In addition to getting used to bodily experiences, exposure exercises to imagination can also be positive. In other words, those where the person visualizes that they experience the bodily feelings of panic and meet them, without fleeing or avoiding them.

Likewise, a person must gradually go to the triggering places and situations they have avoided. It is clear that exposure can be aversive and unpleasant. However, it has proven to be the most effective intervention with long-term results. In fact, these are better than those available with medications.