Last night I had a nightmare of the kind where you are semi-awake, and i'm sure I tried to shoo something away and woke up frightened. Pretty scary, but rare fortunately
Another tip is visualization. Changing the circumstances. Take my culvert for instance If you visualize it bigger or you smaller so you can sit in it the panic goes away. You can do this with any Trigger, you just have to know what the trigger is.
I don't want to overload you with information, the best thing is to do the program since it is proven to work and ask when you don't understand something. It is a simple process but there are a lot of reasons for panic and a lot of different ways to treat it depending on what causes it. But over all it is changing negative thought to positive.
This is a great question to Ask our Expert Dr. Farvolden.
To offer one tip, check out the section on relaxation techniques. Practising these throughout the day and before. These can help you lower your overall anxiety level which may trigger anxiety in the evening.
There is a slight difference between panic attacks and dreams, even night mares. Dreams make sense for the most part and follow a logical sequence even if scary and it usually takes little to see where they came from. Usually some thing from daytime memory, a happening or a movie. And some times they come from eating too late.
Panic attacks on the other hand are illogical and often are things you would never do. They do not have a logical sequence so that you can easily unravel them. This is why they are hard to let go of. This is why they cause you to jump up and try to get away. This is fight or flight.
An example: With a night mare if you are claustrophobic, you might visualize some one crawling through a culvert and it would bother you, even make you sweat a bit. But with a panic attack you would wake up feeling the culvert press in on you and not know how you got there or why or how to get out. You could not think to change any of these things and you would have terror. And just reading this scenario would increase your anxiety.
I find if I'm really worried, I'd wake up, but dreams are actually a way of siphoning off the worry. Its a good question for the the "ask the expert" column, where a Psy. Doc answers our questions. I'm sure others have their input too- welcome
ps. Don't worry so much where you post, lots of us read around and answer what they can. Sometimes I get lost and can't answer right away, and then can't find my way back. There's lots of info and people to support each other though, as Sunny stated in another post
Once I posted a comment under the facilitator's comment area, and its there forever, instead of using the feedback form at the bottom of the toolbar/main page. It took me a year before I posted, too.
