Customer Reviews

Panic Attacks: A Natural Approach, Second Edition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After suffering personally from panic attacks, Trickett compiles numerous studies and self-help answers from medical journals and files, scientific publications, and empirical wisdom on how to recognize symptoms of panic attacks and how to treat them yourself.
Covering topics from exhausted nerves to low blood sugar she gives some wonderful suggestions on how a healthy diet, muscle maintenance and proper breathing can reduce the cause and effect of Agoraphobia.
Great book with lots of practical information.

While I appreciate Ms. Trickett's efforts, it does not address the seriousnes of some panic attack sufferers. My daughter suffered up to 35 panic attacks a day and was quickly becoming agoraphobic (fear of going aside for fear of triggering an attack). While prayer plays a role, her book is not sufficient enough to truly deal with the seriousness of this issue. It has taken two years of therapy to bring to the surface the root of the problem and telling a victim to pray, go outside daily, laugh, etc. really is not much help.

Shirley Trickett writes understandable language and helpful guidelines
for this illness. I recommend this natural approach to everyone who
would prefer to achieve results without chemicals.

I've suffered from panic attacks for nearly all of my adult life (let's just say I've held @ 29 for a while!). While I don't suffer from an attack daily (although I did in the beginning), I do suffer from the FEAR of having an attack. Panic is slowly eroding my life away, and I find myself giving into it as I get older. I've read articles and information online about panic disorder and how to cope with it. I found this book and read it over the weekend. I felt as though Ms. Trickett cracked open my chest and looked into my heart and soul! At times, I cried because I felt as though she were reading my life's story back to me. The best thing I took away from this book is the information on hyperventilating - I had NO IDEA this was going on during a panic attack! In my opinion, Chapter 9, "Improve Your Breathing," is the MOST helpful how-to literature I've read about diaphragmic breathing. I've practiced yoga in both a studio and at home with DVDs, as well as found online information about deep breathing, and I was really able to put this type of breathing into practice thanks to this book. I've been practicing it as often as I can and I feel very calm and collected - I'm hoping that the positive practice becomes habit so I can remain calm. I also hope to be able to call on this breathing in the event of a panic attack AND before trying something that would put me in the way of a situational panic attack (flying and driving on the freeway are 2 things that toss me into panic). I would recommend putting this book into your library as a resource and couple it with any and all other resources you are using (therapy, medicine, etc.). For those of us that suffer from panic/anxiety disorder, we need all the tools we can get in our arsenal!

Although the author is obviously driven by good intentions, such as promoting natural therapies which are invariably ignored by traditional medicine, she seems to have a dangerous prejudice against the use of medications which can be very useful for the treatment of more serious forms of panic attacks. The relaxation, diet, breathing retraining and massage techniqies she recommends are all very nice things and can be very helpful for mild sufferers. They can undoubtedly also be of great help for people with a more severe condition. However, writing that tranquillizers and antidepressants can actually cause panic attacks - as she does - can considerably increase a patient's fears and phobias about taking the medication he or she has been rightly prescribed.
I found certain parts of the book as extremely helpful - such as the ones where she describes what happens in our body during panic attacks - which helps to de-mistify them and put them into perspective. However, as I pointed out, her stigma against tranquillizers, sleeping pills and even anti-depressants is absolutely counterproductive and it ignores the fact that millions of people would have to leave their jobs and isolate themselves for months if they avoided taking them - thus perhaps adding to their low self-esteem and in some cases precipitating their depressive symptoms to uncontrollable levels. Although the underlying conditions are very different, what she writes is comparable to telling people who suffer from diabetes they should be careful about taking insulin because they may become addicted.