HOW TO BRING A PANIC ATTACK UNDER CONTROL
Experiencing a panic attack can be a terrifying, out of control experience. Many people describe them as sudden, intense, overwhelming and frightening event and it makes total sense why they would do everything in their power to prevent it from happening again.
When we are afraid, we usually feel threatened by something and this triggers the ‘fight or flight’ response. In that moment, our body activates it’s alarm system, our panic button gets ‘pushed’, adrenaline gets released and all these weird and wonderful but also scary changes start happening to our bodies.
One of the main changes that people experience is hyperventilation, which increases the oxygen (O2) levels in our blood and decreases the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels to turn us into a ‘fighting’ or a ‘running’ machine.
But these changes to the O2 & CO2 levels cause a lot of our panic symptoms and if we want to feel calm again we need to equalize them. And here is now:
THE BREATHING EXERCISE FOR PANIC
Here are some clear steps to bring a panic attack under control in under 10 minutes:
1. Rate your anxiety 0-10
2. Hold your breath for 10 seconds (without taking a deep breath in and count slowly). Breathe out
3. Breathe in for 3 seconds from the nose & breathe out for 3 seconds from mouth or nose (this is 1 breath)
4. Take 10 of these breaths
- you just completed 1 cycle -
5. Re-rate your anxiety
6. Repeat if needed (hold your breath again for 10 seconds and take 10 breaths)
*2-3 cycles bring most panic attacks under control.
*Repeat the cycles until your anxiety drops to at least a 2/10 of anxiety.
*I suggest that you practise this when you are calm so you can learn it and use a second timer to get used to the pacing (as everything speeds up in a state of panic).
**You can also use it proactively (before any anxiety builds to keep your levels low throughout the day) as well as reactively (as soon as it comes on).
This breathing exercise has been ‘borrowed’ from the anxiety disorders literature (reference below) and I have personally tried and tested it with a lot of clients. When it is practised consistently and correctly, many of my clients find that their panic attacks reduce significantly and even if they start, they are confident that they can bring them under control.
We won’t always be able to prevent an initial spike in our anxiety (since from time to time we will feel threatened by things) but knowing what to do to effectively to bring it down is a skill we all need to master in life.
And if we master that, anxiety and panic will no longer be something to run away from but a normal physiological response that has been activated and we simply need to deactivate through the power of our breath.
Reading: Andrews, G., Crino R., Hunt, C., Lampe, L., & Page, A. (1996). The treatment of anxiety disorders. New York: Cambridge University Press.