How to Overcome Panic Attacks (4 min. read)
In my last blog post on panic attacks, I wrote about what they are and why they happen. The big question most people are asking though is “How do I make these things stop?”
There’s not an overnight remedy or a pill to take that can get to the root of stopping panic attacks, but if you are willing to put in some work, you can experience freedom. If you want to hear an in-depth explanation of these points and get a little more guidance in the process, check out my online course and/or reach out to a counselor.
The way forward relies on understanding the intersecting factors of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Here’s an example of how that interplay could work during a panic attack:
You feel your heart start to beat fast and your breathing gets more shallow. You think “oh no, I’m about to have a panic attack.” That might lead to more feelings, both physically (sweating, tightness, etc.) or emotional (fear, confusion). And maybe some more thoughts - “This is the end” or “I’m going to embarrass myself.” Finally, you leave the situation (behavior) and potentially avoid it in the future (another behavior).
This unfortunate cycle trains your brain that it is indeed responding correctly. It confirms that there certainly must be danger and it must be avoided.
But that’s a lie.
Just like the over-sensitive smoke alarm I mentioned in the last post, your body starts to vigilantly respond to things that actually pose no threat to you. You may not truly be in danger, but your brain believes you are.
To break the cycle you must address the various parts of it. Thankfully, you can actually influence each one of these factors. Let’s take a look at how.
Feelings related to panic attacks
For our purposes here, I’m only going to address the physical feelings you have during a panic attack. These are the symptoms that often signal to you that something is off - the racing heart, chest tightness, etc. You can address these physical sensations by engaging with your body in different ways to calm it down. A few examples would be doing some grounding work (engaging with your senses), yoga, or deep breathing. You are teaching your body to return to baseline and relax.
Another benefit of using coping skills to calm down is to train your body to relax. If we lived less stressful lives this wouldn’t be as necessary (just like if we lived more active lives going to the gym wouldn’t be as necessary). Over time, your body learns that it can come back down from those spikes. And when you intentionally calm your body down, it also affects the other two parts of the cycle - thoughts and behaviors.
Thoughts related to panic attacks
Thoughts sometimes seem to stream in and out at rapid pace, so how do we get a handle on these? Similar to working out physically, you can change the thought patterns of your brain by exploring unhelpful or incorrect ways of thinking and replacing them with upgraded thoughts. You can do this through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or journaling and introspection. A great app to help with this is CBT Thought Diary.
Our mindsets are key. Two people can go through the same exact thing and come away with two different conclusions, which reveals the power that mindsets hold. If someone cuts you off in traffic and you think “What a jerk! People are the worst!” it’s probably going to raise your stress level and affect your mood. However, if the same exact scenario happens and you think “They must be really late to wherever they are going” you can keep moving on with your day relatively unaffected. This same principle applies to anxiety and panic attacks. You have to reframe some of those unhelpful thoughts!
Behaviors related to panic attacks
Behaviors might be the easiest thing to change in some ways, but harder in others. They are easy to change because they are very tangible and straightforward. You just have to do them. But therein lies the challenge. If it were easy, you would have already been doing these new behaviors. So the trick is to start small and gain momentum. Try and make a list of all the situations that scare you, ranking each one from 1 to 100 on how much fear and distress you would be in if you were in each one. Then pick something towards the low-medium part of your list and make a plan to do it. Get help if you need it, but do it.
After conquering that first item on the list, the task is to move upwards towards things that are more distressing. However, when you do this at a healthy pace and with the support of others, you gain momentum and eventually reach the top. As you face your fears, they begin to have less of a hold on you and your life.
Now, each of these factors could take weeks or months to focus on. You’ll want to have a good foundation of feeling and thought work before stepping into the behavior work. You may notice at first you are still having panic attacks but you are better able to deal with them. They don’t scare you as much and you ride them out, knowing they will end. Then they start to become less frequent and maybe one day you notice it’s been months since you had one. Breakthrough is possible! Schedule a counseling session today if you’d like to discuss this journey more.
Written by Nicholas Hunter, MA, LPC
Photo by Tj Holowaychuk on Unsplash