12 ideas for handling a panic attack
- Remember: although the feelings and symptoms are very frightening, they are not dangerous or harmful.
- Understand that what you are experiencing is an exaggeration of the body’s normal reactions to stress.
- Do not fight the feelings and do not try to drive them away. The more you face your fears, the weaker they will become.
- Do not add to your panic by thinking about what “might” happen. If you catch yourself thinking “What will happen if”, try telling yourself: “Well, so what?”
- Stay in the present. Look around, see what surrounds you! Notice what is actually happening to you here and now. Compare it with what you thought “could” happen to you.
- Rate your level of fear from 0 to 10 and watch how it rises and falls. You will notice that the level of fear does not stay high for long.
- As soon as you catch yourself thinking about the fear, change your initial thought. Focus on a simple, manageable little task and carry it out.
- Notice that when you stop adding frightening thoughts, your fear begins to subside.
- When the fear appears, meet it. Wait. Do not run away. Give it time to pass. Learn to accept it.
- Remember: in this situation you are on your own, and there is nothing terrible or frightening in that; quite the opposite. You get yourself out of the frightening situation on your own, and the credit is yours and yours alone.
- Do not look for the reason you coped with the fear outside yourself, in a person or a chance circumstance. That way you become dependent and condemn yourself to always looking for something outside yourself to mediate what is in fact your own personal success.
- Once you have applied some of these ideas, be proud of yourself for the progress you have made. Think how good it will be when you master the panic and the fear. Recall your successes often! Successes achieved once will show you the strategy for coping successfully with future attacks.