Panic Attack Thoughts

Note: You can also print this document in Adobe PDF format by clicking  here. (It requires Adobe Reader which you can obtain for free here.)

This is especially the case if you’ve already gone through your own thoughts and found some of the common and recurring distortions and replaced them with more realistic ones (which I certainly hope that at this stage of the newsletter you have).

According to Dr. Martin Winkler of the University of Applied Sciences in Germany, one of the most effective help for patients with anxiety symptoms is a diary or protocol of panic attacks.¹

The good news is that such self-monitoring is quite simple. 

All you need to do is go through each day and, every time you have a negative thought, keep count.  Some people find it useful to use a golf counter that would be used for counting score in a golf game, but really a simply piece of writing paper will work.  The important idea is that you keep count of every negative thought you have.  

Alternatively you might try honing in on specific recurring thoughts that you have noted when you did the previous mentioned steps of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). 

Now self-monitoring might sound over simplistic but it is backed by science.  The mere act of counting negative thoughts seems often* to be an effective step at combating them.  In my opinion having had the opportunity to analyze your thoughts makes you a better detective at picking up on them.

* I use the word “often” because any CBT technique is not absolutely guaranteed to work but the idea is to not give up and when one CBT doesn’t work, then it’s time to try another. 

The great news is that many CBT techniques exist and in this continuous newsletter I keep presenting more and more over time so I would submit that probability increases greatly over time – not to mention of course many other things are continuously covered, not just CBT.   

But self-monitoring is something that is worthwhile trying.  You might be surprised.  Helpful things do not have to be complicated things.  Mental Health professionals suggest giving self-monitoring at least a 3 week chance.