What helps you in a panic attack?

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Same here. It's better keep my thoughts away from it, otherwise it might easily induce one.

what you say seems more like a paranoid anxiety. if you live in fear of panic attacks, there is an elevated likelyhood that you may experience one.

in your situation, you must acknowledge that you have actively worried about becoming panicked, and if you find yourself in a state of panic, then at least you have predicted that your mind would fall apart before hand (thereby lessening the surprise).

in my case, i have absolutely no reason to doubt anything i consider to be true, so i would never predict that one day i would panic about something, and therefore if i did panic, it would never have been forewarned or rehearsed in my sensorium, and so it would be a sudden and catastrophic dilemma in my mind.

i feel strongly anchored to the floor of what my opinion is, and i have a calm and collected opinion.

Most people are in the same boat as you, even if they've never consciously thought about it. I was too until the first one, which was indeed "sudden and catastrophic."

Reassurance and comfort from other people.

Taking a dose of my anti-anxiety medication (which can be taken up to 3 times a day), and preoccupying myself with my interests.

Xanax

Klonopin

I have not dealt with a full-on panic attack in public. I get a lot of anxiety but before it gets out of hand I just focus my thoughts inward, think entirely about my breathing (the shape of the air flowing in and out, the sound it makes, and the feeling in my lungs), and relax my eyes. I probably look ridiculous but in that situation I really don't care.

At home, if I get caught up in the wrong kind of thoughts, and my heart really gets pumping, I just force my mood to change. Confusion is very easy to "fake" and it usually clears my mind long enough to relax a little. At that point breathing exercises are usually sufficient to bring me back to my moderately anxious self.

One that was just taught to me recently is to breath in deeply, and to feel the air flow down the front of your body, to the bottom of your gut. Feel it circulate for a moment, and then breath out, feeling the air leave along your back. This alone has helped immensely when I can remember to do it.

Once you are comfortable with this, try feeling the air flowing into and out of your limbs as you breathe (it's not the air you're feeling, obviously. It's likely either expanding blood vessels or muscles receiving oxygen). Once you are able to feel this, try to keep the sensation from receding when you breath out. Let it build with each breath, and let it flow into every part of you.

If you can have a panic attack after doing that, I'm truly sorry and hope you find something better.

You are one hoopy frood.

As for panic attacks:

I know how they work - adrenaline and anxiety cause your ribcage to contract, giving the sensation of having difficulty breathing, which creates more anxiety over the racing heart and shortness of breath, possibly causing more symptoms and/or more intense symptoms. The way I think most people instinctively breathe when a panic attack comes on also causes hyperventilation, which brings on dizziness and makes everything seem worse. The answer for me is to break the cycle.

I take deep, slow breaths, sometimes drinking water helps. I try to remind myself that it only feels like doom is imminent. Often I find that finding something to hyperfocus on causes me to forget the panic entirely. I used to have severe, constant panic attacks (as in, nonstop for hours at a time, over a month-long period, and daily panic attacks for years before that), and medication is what initially broke the cycle for me - 2mg of clonazepam would stop all panic symptoms. Afterward, it was more a matter of being mindful that it was a panic attack and - aside from the emotional upheaval, relatively harmless.

That's not an easy step to take, and sometimes I get caught up in "but what if this is real this time?" But other times I can feel the panic attack just stop when I've managed to get things under control.

Strangely, learning the physiological processes at work made it much easier for me to cope.

I don't really know what to do. I almost never got panic attacks before I came to college, but now I get them every few weeks or so.

I think the best thing to do is to listen to relaxation CDs. Chill out music is very helpful. Also, try and get out into nature and spend time alone or with pets.

That's why I restrain myself from such thoughts when I'm in an environment that might induce one. (In my example, swimming in that swimming pool.) Sometimes it just happens, when things grow out of control. Maybe you want to say that if I wouldn't think of it at all it would never happen. Hmm. I wonder what a therapist would say about it. On the surface level, it seems beyond reach for me.


If you can recognize patterns that might be indicative of a forthcoming panic attack you naturally try to elaborate on methods deflecting them or at least lessening their effect. I know someone who's on medication with agoraphobia and having panic-attacks. The best she can do is to find a rational way out of a fit, for example making a phone call asking for help. It's hard when she can't say where she is, though...

i do stuff that will help me work off the excess energy. for me that means listening to music with a heavy beat like nirvana's smells like teen spirit and headbanging to that. that song brought me down from a 9 hour panic attack. maybe you could try that or just doing excercise or pacing if you dont want to look like an idiot.

i trust things that grow as a result of my control implicitly, and i view things that grow within external human control with disinterest (mainly).

sorry i am getting tired again and i promised i would desist at this level of judgement.

I don't have panic attacks, just GAD; so this may not help you guys that much. But I have found that simply distracting myself seems to help, especially with something very engagin. I don't know if it would work for a panic attack because of how intense they are compared to the more low-level stuff you get with GAD or the depression/anxiety combo. Maybe worth a try, though?

My wife!