Your credit card company sends you a letter advising that your interest rates are going up 40%. You can just make the minimum payment today and you have no idea how you will cover a new, much higher, minimum payment.

How do you react?

If its anger that gets you on the phone to the credit card company immediately thats healthy. If you take a moment to analyze how this is going to impact your finances and what your options are, thats healthy.

If your reaction is a physical one, faster hear rate, sweaty palms or a tightness in your chest, that's an anxiety attack. Anxiety attacks can lead to larger physical and emotional problems and that obviously, is not healthy.

Overwhelming credit card debt, increased interest rates or credit lines slashed can trigger anxiety. If those events cause you to experience a shortness of breath, rapid heartbeat or a general state of uneasiness you are probably having an anxiety attack. To counter those symptoms it is important to understand what anxiety really is.

Michael Knowles, a renowned Life Coach has this to say about anxiety:

The word anxiety is only a label. We use it to describe a set of physical symptoms we experience and the ensuing thought habits. Believe it or not, the physical symptoms of anxiety happen faster than you can think. The thoughts you have about those physical symptoms are your mind's attempt to explain them.

Bad biochemistry can result in anxiety, however for most people it is a state of mind, specifically a regressive trance.

Regressive trance state is triggered by a fundamental fear experience that happened sometime in the past. That experience then projects irrational fears for the future. Say you were seriously bitten by a dog as a kid. Walking past a dog today could trigger an attack that would project you being horribly mauled. It's irrational but real to you.

Literally, in an anxiety attack we are living in the past and the future at the same time.

Because each of us has a different biochemical makeup, it is difficult to tell or diagnose what specific imbalance causes anxiety in an individual. There are drugs to treat anxiety but there is no one drug that treats all people.

So you're having an attack, what do you do? Remember the symptoms are caused by being in the past and the future at the same time. What you need to do is ground yourself in the present. A quick way to do this is to survey your body head to toe and describe the symptoms aloud in "grounded" terms. My neck is stiff is a grounded term. My neck is unbearably stiff is not.

As you describe how your body feels you will notice the symptoms dissipating. This is because you are getting your brain to focus on the present. Anxiety is real but is has to be controlled if you are to function. As bad as your credit may seem, it is not as disasterous as your anxiety would have you believe.