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Panic attacks are often associated with physical symptoms such as shaking, a feeling your heart is pounding or racing, sweating, chest pain, shortness of breath, a feeling of choking, nausea, cramping, diarrhea, dizziness, an out-of-body sensation (a feeling of being apart from oneself), tingling in the hands, chills or hot flashes, and headache. A palpable, screaming fear rises inside and for no apparent reason; sufferers feel they are being choked by a panic that races the heart and paralyzes. Types of behavioral therapy involving counter-conditioning treatment of fear responses have helped to abort panic attacks, but are of little use during the attack. By. imagining a scene a person is just a little afraid of and then using relaxation techniques and affirmations to overcome the fear, people have been able to progressively face more stressful imagined fearful scenes until they were able to tolerate their worst fears. The authors suggest that, since there was positive benefit from light therapy in a single patient who underwent light treatment, seasonal panic disorder may be a variant of seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
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