Anxiety attacks how to support sufferers
- 1. How To Support Someone Suffering An Anxiety Attack
- 2. Never Easy It’s never easy seeing someone you know and love having an anxiety attack This slide show is about how to support someone who is suffering an attack
- 3. Your Instinct Your instinct is to do something to help the one you love, to alleviate his suffering This desperation to help is sometimes fuelled by fear This risks you reacting in ways that could worsen the situation
- 4. Behaviours To Avoid Here are some behaviours to avoid if you are supporting someone suffering an anxiety attack
- 5. Dismissing Avoid dismissing the attack By dismissing or ignoring the obvious, you may contribute to the feelings of isolation your loved one, friend or colleague may be experiencing
- 6. Dismissing Dismissing the attack also sends out a message that says you’re not interested
- 7. Accusing Avoid blaming your partner for her attacks, accusing her of just seeking attention. This is not the case
- 8. Accusing Some of the symptoms of anxiety attacks are so severe they resemble those of a heart attack
- 9. Accusing When you understand this you can start to see how frightening it is for the sufferer
- 10. Offering Medication Avoid at all costs giving your friend any kind of medication that has not been prescribed to him
- 11. Offering Medication More often than not the symptoms of an anxiety attack will subside But if they don’t, be ready to get your friend some emergency medical help
- 12. Reasoning One behaviour to absolutely avoid if you’re supporting an anxiety sufferer is trying to reason with the person
- 13. Reasoning Although the symptoms of an anxiety attack are harmless, they can be very frightening
- 14. Reasoning Someone who is going through an attack is not listening to reason. His focus is on getting control of his attack
- 15. Reasoning You cannot reason with someone who is having an attack, nor can you force him to ‘get over it’
- 16. More Information For more details on how to cope with anxiety and panic attacks go to: www.panicattacks.beatthechallenge.com and click on the ‘ Stop Panic Attacks And General Anxiety Fast!’ button