4-Steps For Controlling Panic Attacks
What happens when you panic?
The first thing to realise for you start controlling panic attacks, is that you don’t have to be afraid of them, as they will never kill you. It is an incredibly scary experience and it may seem like you’re having a heart attack or dying but take comfort from the fact that everything is fine, it’s just an extreme version of what is called the ‘fight or flight’ response.
The fight or flight response is an inbuilt mechanism that helps us cope with dangerous situations. It is there for our survival. When you experience a panic attack, you’re essentially experiencing the fight or flight response, only this is an exaggerated version of it. Strangely, your panic attack is trying to do good thing!
Whenever we experience a dangerous situation, we need to respond immediately. When this happens our adrenaline levels will raise, respiration rate increases and our heart pumps blood around our system faster. This physiological response happens to prepare us to either fight the threat or run away in the opposite direction. We need to respond quickly and therefore our survival mechanism needs to be strong enough and intense enough to be effective.
A panic attack only differs in intensity and in the absence of any immediate or apparent danger.
Begin controlling panic attacks
Typically during a panic attack, you begin to focus on your internal experience. What this means is that you begin to amplify the experience and the intensity begins to worsen. You’ve probably found that the harder you try not to focus on your panic the harder it becomes and just like a vicious circle, it gets worse and worse. You will more than likely begin to catastrophize the situation. This means you begin to think in a very negative way. Thoughts such as “I’m going to die”!
Here are some things you can do to begin controlling panic attacks. These tactics aim to reverse the symptoms:
1) Place your hand on your abdomen and begin to breathe in and out very slowly through your nose.
2) Focus your attention away from yourself. You can easily do this by striking up a conversation with somebody else.
3) Start doing something physical such as going for a jog. This can really help to relieve the tension.
4) Manage your negative thought processes, as these can have a tremendous impact on your experience.
One way to control your thoughts is to remind yourself that panic attacks are not dangerous. So if for example, you start saying to yourself; “I’m losing control, I’m losing control, I can’t handle myself”, latch onto the positive alternative such as, “I am confident and calm and can handle this easily”.
Be in control
There are other very powerful methods you can learn in the comfort of your own home to help you start controlling panic attacks. If you’d like to find out more information about how you can do this, click here: cure panic attacks.