An anxiety attack, or panic attack as they are more or less the same thing, is a scary thing. I witnessed my wife have a panic attack while driving our car! To say I was scared is the understatement of the century.

If you think you might be showing symptoms of anxiety attacks there's a simple test you can do. All you do is go through a series of check boxes. Select either yes or no. Check out the notes at the end of the test and it will tell you whether you may need to do something about it.

There's a whole list of possible symptoms in the anxiety test. If you are having one or more of them then it may be in your interests to act fast. The last thing you want is to suffer an attack at the wrong moment, like driving your car!

If you do find you are having some of the anxiety test symptoms then you can follow some of the links for more info on how to deal with, and stop them before they take hold. It's possible to overcome them as my wife actually uses this technique to control her attacks. However, before we came across this particular lifesaving technique she saw all manner of useless shrinks and quacks.

Probably the number 1 symptom to look out for in anxiety attacks is shortness of breath coupled with a rapid heartbeat. Often these symptoms begin for no know reason. Then they quickly get worse until you fear for your very life.

The symptoms themselves can actually make the attack worse as you are now panicking about the panic attack. A terrible vicious circle that's hard to break. But, if you can identify the signs you can employ techniques to stop it in it's tracks and carry on your day as if nothing ever happened.

Once you learn to spot these coming attacks you can halt them before they get any where near an attack. As you get better and better at this your panic attacks will become a thing of history.