Understanding The Occurence Of Chest Pain After Panic Attacks

March 23rd, 2010 Posted in Mental Health

Panic and anxiety treatments are more likely to be successful if you understand the nature of your condition and accept you need help.

Often, panic disorders are extremely disruptive. There is no need to despair because panic disorders can be treated and you can get a grip back on a normal life.

During a panic attack, the cardiovascular veins become stressed. This can result in chest pain after the attacks. Recurring episodes of severe fear and anxiety are the main characteristics of panic. Sometimes it may seem that without any warning and no evident 'trigger', fear can just manifest itself.

Many people experience chest pain after panic attacks, and this pain is mostly the result of the muscles contracting in the chest. As the fear overwhelms you during the attack you will feel out of breath and your body will tense up causing more fear and increasing the severity of the panic. It is during this moment that the muscles in your chest walls contract. Once your panic attack subsides and your mental and emotional state start to return to normal your entire body will become more relaxed, particularly your muscles and this causes the chest pain.

Chest pain after panic is generally characterized by localized pain in the chest walls. The pain is often sharp but flitting, but you may be sore for a few hours or even days after you have a panic attack. Severity of pain after an attack typically depends on intensity of the episode.

You may also feel exhausted after a panic attack as your muscles try to relax once again.

The best thing to do next is to seek out the help of a medical practitioner in order to treat the chest pain.

Doctors can easily misdiagnose chest pain after panic attack, so if a patient does not inform his doctor that he has an anxiety disorder or if the doctor does not ask his patient if he has it, the doctor may end up treating just the chest pain instead of treating the cause of the chest pain: the anxiety disorder that causes the panic attacks.

When talking to your doctor and discussing your chest pain, make it clear that the cause could be as a result of a recent panic attack. Although a pain in the chest, even if severe, can be treated quite easily it is more important to get to the route of the problem actually causing the panic.