Psychology of the Abnormal
If you don’t want to engage in this behavioral exercise, imagine instead that you are driving down the highway at 80 miles an hour listening to music, when suddenly you see the lights and hear the siren of a police car only 40 feet behind you. What sensations does this produce in your body? (Your heart rate, respiration, palms, stomach, or other areas?) What thoughts go along with the experience? On a scale of 1-10, how distressing are the feelings and thoughts?
Compare these feelings and thoughts to the symptoms of a panic attack. Are there similarities? Now imagine for a moment that the sensations you had at the peak of their strength were something that happened to you completely out of the blue, without warning for no apparent reason while you were driving or in the middle of a first date or taking with your employer. How would this make you feel? How might you make sense of it? Would it frighten you? What concerns or assumptions might you make about your physical or mental state if that happened?
READ ON FOR ASSIGNMENT DETAILS
To complete either option for the assignment and have the potential to receive full credit,
1) Describe the exercise you chose to engage in, and describe the sensations, thoughts and feelings that you either experienced or imagined as you engaged in the exercise.
2) Describe the symptoms of a panic attack, and detail the degree to which there was overlap between the symptoms you experienced and the actual symptoms of a panic attack as described in text and lecture.
3) Next, respond to the specific questions about what it might be like for you to experience such a sudden rush of feelings and sensations for no apparent reason, and how you think you might make sense of it or what you might do differently as a result of the experience.
4) Finally describe the degree to which you found this exercise interesting or useful.
In order to receive full credit, you must write in complete, grammatically correct sentences and fully address all of the components of the assignment.
Again, remember that he paper should be submitted online through a link in the Assignments section of Blackboard on Friday, October 2.
