Anxiety attacks are excruciatingly frightening. But here's the thing; they can't harm you. I will repeat that because it's so important: Anxiety attacks can't harm you. If you take just one thing from my article, then take that. Because this is your crucial first step in how to cure anxiety attacks.

This first step is the foundation on which to treat anxiety / panic attacks naturally, without medications with their nasty side effects. But in order to truly believe that anxiety attacks cannot cause you any harm, you need to understand what causes them in the first place...

The anxiety attack symptoms that you suffer; tightness in chest, shortness of breath, racing heartbeat, tingling extremities, hot / cold flashes, trembling, nausea, dizziness, a feeling that you're detached from reality and a feeling of some impending doom, etc., are caused by your body's own defense mechanism kicking-in...

This is called the body's 'fight or flight' response, which is a very good description of the value that this in-built mechanism has for your safety. And it works something like this...

Your 'sixth sense' suddenly alerts you to something that may be dangerous. So an 'anxiety' signal triggers the brain into setting off a series of chemical reactions. These do things like diverting more blood to the muscles, improving vision, raising heartbeat, and so on.

All this is to help set up your body and mind to be faster, stronger and more alert, i.e. to give you the best chance possible of fighting for your life, or, running away to safety.

Okay, but when you have had your anxiety attacks in the past, there weren't any physical dangers present, right? So, where does your brain get the idea that you're in potential danger?

Well, your underlying general anxiety is already higher than normal, so all it takes is for you to suffer some stressful event, such as being stuck in rush-hour traffic, to push your overall anxiety levels over-the-top, so that your brain perceives this as you being in danger, and consequently triggers its fight or flight response.

It is as simple as that. Your brain has mistaken your suddenly raised anxiety levels as the signal that you are in danger. It wants to do everything it can to protect you, so doesn't take any chances at all, and triggers its defense mechanism. So you suffer the terrifying symptoms of an anxiety attack.

And this is the second step in how to cure anxiety attacks; knowing what causes them. So know you know why they occur, and, that they cannot harm you. If you didn't know these facts before, you're already in a much stronger position to cure your anxiety attacks naturally, without medication.

To just hammer home the point, try this for me please; try to force yourself to have an anxiety / panic attack. Go on, try as hard as you can. Try again. And again. Do you get the picture now? It is impossible to make yourself have an attack.

So how does this help you? Simple. You've just shown that by accepting panic attacks for what they are, and, meeting them head on with a positive attitude, you can defeat them. Of course, you need more than I can explain in the time available here to take this further. And the first thing is to use what you've learned so far to help you breakout of your 'cycle of anxiety.'