Anxiety and Stress Forum

Pretzelhat - don't worry, you are not the only one to experience this feeling!!

I suffered with panic attacks like you, and for several years afterwards I had 'generalised anxiety disorder'. The main symptom was an unpleasant feeling of 'lump in the throat' which I used to get pretty much every day.

Im not a doctor - but my advice to you (based on my own experiences) is as follows:

It sounds to me like it is probably anxiety-related. The throat is a common area of the body that is affected by anxiety, though it can cause many different sensations.

First of all it sounds like you need to find some method to help you cope with the attacks. This may be different for different people, but there are breathing techniques that you can learn, some form of distraction may also help avert an attack (in my case watching BBC news 24 seemed to help!) and in more severe cases medication may be the only remedy.

Probably you will be thinking: "but what if it keeps coming back?"

Well, for a long term solution, what I would reccommend is that you learn as much as you can about anxiety, its causes and effects. The more you understand what is going on, the less you will fear the attacks and logically this should help lessen the problem (most fears after all are rooted in the 'unknown')

But the most important thing you must learn about anxiety is that it works in a cycle.

What I mean is that the problem soon starts to 'feed off itself' in a negative loop. So at first something real may have led you to feel anxious (loss of a job, an upcoming exam, personal problems etc), but then when you experience a physical discomfort from this (tight throat, difficulty breathing) a secondary worry takes over: you start worrying about the worry ("why does my throat feel tight? what if I am ill? Im losing control. What if this problem never goes away? etc) At this point as you can see the ongoing cause of the anxiety is not the external problem anymore (the exam, the job etc), but is now self-perpetuating. So put simply your goal must be to break this loop !

I know this is not easy - in fact it may seem impossibe at first. But when you find the right tools to break the loop you will be surprised at how quickly you feel better. WIthout fuel to feed the cycle, the problem will start to fade away. Instead you will start to put the cycle into reverse, and create a more positive chain of thoughts.

It took me a long time to tackle this (I wished I had done it sooner) but the most effective thing is CBT so I advise you try and talk to a therapist about arranging this treatment. Just going to talk to a professional about this will make you feel better -once you get your worries out in the open they will instantly seem smaller and you will feel less alone dealing with it.

How does CBT work?

As humans we naturally worry as a response to problems we encounter. Worrying makes us feel that we are doing something to address our problems - it feels better to worry than to 'do nothing'. Crucially though,in the case of an anxiety condtion, the WORST thing you can do is worry about it!! This only escalates and feeds the problem. In essence this is what they teach you during CBT.

One technique you will discover with CBT is how to challenge the pattern of your thoughts. You may not realise it, but you are probably thinking about this problem 24/7 (maybe in the back of your mind) and this is keeping the problem alive.

A CBT therapist will help you break the pattern of your thinking. They will teach you ways to just refocus your awareness and concentrate on the present moment. They will teach you not to let one thought lead to another and another and another etc. You will learn to develop a more healthy mindset that 'acknowledges' physical symptoms and sensations, but sees them as existing only in the moment, not forever. You will become less judgemental about your body and not to over-interpret the unpleasant symptoms you may occasionally feel. You will be able to live more in the present, and will stop seeking guarantees about the future ("I must get a good nights sleep or I will not be able to function at work, and then x or y will happen etc"). You will stop climbing aboard the train of negative thoughts where one bad thing leads inevitably to another.

Best of all, you will be doing this using your own mental strength (and not relying on medication). This means you will always know that you have this tool at your disposal to cope with stressful situations when they arise.

CBT will help put you on a more even keel - then from there you can more productively deal with any specific problems in your life that you feel you need to confront (we all have problems after all!)

Good luck, and PLEASE take my advice - I'm still doing my CBT right now (Im on week 8 or 12) and its made a HUGE difference to my life already.

If it all sounds too simple then why not put it to the test? its really just a 'trick of the mind', but it works as many others will testify.

ps. sorry for such a long post, but after 4 years suffering with this I just feel quite strongly about it.

x

Tight Throat?