Everyone, at one time or another, is going to experience anxiety at one point or another in their lives.
There may be a discernible cause: you're late to work and your boss has told you if you're late one more day you'll be fired.
Or you're about to get married...
or just ask some out on a date.
But what if you get up in the morning and all of a sudden, for no reason at all, your heart starts to race, you can't catch your breath, you feel dizzy, and to cap it all off, your hands are tingling.
You're afraid you're going to have a heart attack.
Well, hopefully, even if the feeling passes, you visit your doctor that very day an explain what happened.
He - or she - will explain that those are symptoms of cardiac arrhythmia, pulmonary embolism, a panic attack, or a hyperventilation episode.
The problem is figuring out which one.
If you've watched the TV show House, with that crack diagnostician Gregory House, you know that diagnosis is not an exact science and it can take a doctor several different "tries" before he or she figures out what's the matter.
Now House is just a TV show, and actually it's medical mumbo jumbo is quite often just that - but the principal is definitely true to life.
Usually a doctor can not diagnose you based on just one checkup alone.
Tests will have to be run, and more tests after that.
So don't panic over your panic treatment.
Yes, that's a very facile thing to say.
Panic attacks are very frightening, but it all comes down to knowing what causes them.
It helps to keep a journal, in which you note down what you were doing - or what you were intending to do - when the panic attack occurred.
Your doctor will be able to take that information and use it to assist in prescribing a course of panic treatment for you.