How to cope with a panic attack

 Clients often perceive panic attacks as some kind of disease that is accompanied by seizures. But this is simply fear for your life, which has become acute due to a lack of understanding of what is happening to you.

After all, visits to doctors do not yield any results - the doctors do not find “anything serious” with them and cannot give any recommendations.

Google is also of little help in identifying symptoms. The most suspicious believe that they have vegetative-vascular dystonia and try to treat it.
So, panic is an episode of acute fear, with the release of adrenaline. This is the difference between panic and anxiety. In a state of panic attack, the client is convinced that just a little more and he will die or go crazy. This state prompts him to immediately do something about it - run somewhere, call an ambulance.

Such an attack never begins in full force immediately, but begins gradually with weakness, dizziness, decreased concentration, and tachycardia. Moreover, a person cannot explain these incomprehensible sensations to himself, and this gives rise to incorrect assumptions - “heart attack,” “stroke,” “I’m going crazy.”

It is these hypotheses and the lack of alternatives that turn on the mechanism for the release of adrenaline into the blood, activating the instinct of self-preservation.

This is a completely normal mechanism, inherent from birth. Mobilization of the body is necessary so that a person can escape in an extreme situation.  For this, breathing quickens, heartbeat increases and muscles tense.  It is this condition that people confuse with a heart attack or insanity.

But then the person makes the following mistake - he begins to save himself with medicine, call an ambulance, drink water, run out into the street. When a panic attack passes (and it always passes), the person is confident that he “has not gone crazy”, “survived” only thanks to his actions and is therefore lucky. This only strengthens the panic attack mechanism. Such vivid experiences are stored in the memory; a person fears and waits for them.

Why doesn't this happen when you go to an interview or some important meeting? It would seem that you are no less nervous, but at the same time you can explain everything logically, so adrenaline is not released into the blood, and panic does not occur. It is the strange behavior of the body in a safe environment that gives rise to terrible guesses.

How to overcome a panic attack?

First of all, when you feel a panic attack approaching, say out loud what will now happen in your body from a physiological point of view. Why do this?

So that you convince yourself that this is not some unknown and deadly disease, but just an emotional state.

Just say it out loud and say “my weakness is not just an emotional state caused by fear, not a heart attack, I’m not going crazy right now.” 

If you calm yourself down in this way and convince yourself that you will not die right now from this condition, then adrenaline will not be released and there will be no panic.

If panic still overtakes you, and you are already very scared, then you need to calm your body instead of shaking it with rapid breathing and fussy running around.

On the contrary, you need to start breathing deeply and slowly and move less. As if they were now recovering from a quick run. Turn your shoulders (which curl inward when you are afraid) and straighten your back. Sit down, smile and tell yourself that you won’t run anywhere - you’re just scared now. The key point is DO NOTHING!  Just nothing - no need to stuff yourself with pills, drink a sedative, call a doctor and run outside. When you learn to wait out this state on your own in a relaxed manner, then the reinforcement caused by all your previous fuss will go away and the body will understand that nothing terrible is happening.

Try to ridicule and devalue your panic attack. The more you resist your state of tension in the body, the more it covers you according to the law - “the force of action is equal to the force of reaction.”

Tell your panic “Something is weak today, But can’t you get stronger? Come on, tense up! That's all you can do! I want to be properly afraid and panicky!” Or just tell your condition, “I accept this condition, I won’t worry.” The more indifference, smile and relaxation, the less chance there is of an adrenaline rush.

Why is there such tension that results in a panic attack?

These may be problems in the area of self-realization, in personal relationships and at work. Unresolved problems, decisions that you do not make, hovering in a state of uncertainty and accumulating create tension that at a certain moment causes emotional exhaustion, which can lead to a state of unreasonable fear, a dead end, which you are not aware of, but the body processes with the help of a panic attack and unreasonable fear.

The best thing is not to wait until such unresolved problems exhaust you and transform internal tension into causeless attacks of fear - a panic attack, but to gain courage and begin to consistently solve them.

You can contact a psychologist or psychotherapist online who will help you solve your psychological problems or overcome the habit of processing stress through a panic attack. To register, click the button below.

Take action and you will succeed!