Page 39 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author

HOW TO MANAGE ANXIETY & END PANIC ATTACKS
It likely comes as no surprise to you that Becky had a history of anxiety and panic attacks. Until our fated meeting that day, when Becky and I were able to end her panic attack and I was able to provide her with helpful directions to prevent them from happening again, Becky had developed a firm conviction and belief: that all of her symptoms—elevated heart rate, the feeling that she couldn’t breathe, tingling hands and feet and even her feeling of impending death—were the symptoms of a panic attack or something even more dangerous. This seems like a perfectly logical assumption, and most of us hold this assumption until we come to understand what we’re going to discuss next.
The Culprits: Adrenaline And Cortisol
Bear with me here because we need to talk a little bit about endocrinology. An endocrinologist is a medical specialist who treats endocrine (glands that secrete hormones internally di- rectly into the lymph system or bloodstream) disorders.
Anxiety attacks mainly involve two primary hormones: adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline is the hormone I’ve been talking about that rushes through our body in less than 1/12th of a second and gets us ready to respond to an impending dangerous scenario with either fight or flight. We all know what it feels like to have adrenaline flushed through our system: Our heart starts to race, we can begin to hyperventilate and we are ready and on edge to respond to danger in a moment’s notice.
Maybe the first time you remember experiencing an adrenaline flush was as a child when you woke up in the middle of the night and heard that monster under your bed. Or perhaps you remember the more recent time someone leaned on their car horn and alerted you to an impending collision.
Most often, the initial rush of adrenaline is followed by a hormone I like to call its “big brother,” cortisol. Cortisol helps to support adrenaline and sustain its effects. It rises and lowers
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