Panic attack management

Panic attacks come on suddenly with physical feelings including breathlessness, chest tightness, heart racing and light headedness.

If you're aware this is happening:

• breathe
• focus on your senses
• challenge your panicked thoughts.

Read more about each of these below.

If you're aware a panic attack is happening:

BREATHE

• In through your nose for a count of 4 seconds
• Hold for 4 seconds
• Out through your mouth for 4 seconds
• Hold out for 4 seconds
• Keep going until you feel the panic fading. If you're too breathless to hold for 4 seconds that’s OK, get as close as you can.
• Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. The one on your belly should rise and fall.

Here's a video to watch as you do this:

Video: Guided square breathing exercise in 2 minutes

Next, FEEL (ground yourself in your environment).

There's a mindfulness exercise you can do called the 5–4–3–2–1 grounding technique.

• Identify 5 things you can see: It might be a plant, or a picture on the wall, or the window. You could say them in your head or whisper them out loud.
  
  
• Identify 4 things you can feel: It might be the sun on your face, a breeze or fabric on your skin.
  
  
• Identify 3 things you can hear:  It might be birdsong, a car going past or music playing nearby.
  
  
• Identify 2 things you can smell: It might be freshly mown grass, traffic fumes, coffee.
  
  
• Identify 1 thing you can taste: It might be what you ate or drank recently, chewing gum or lip balm. If you can't taste anything think about the taste of a favourite food or drink. 
  
  

Image credit: Canva

Now, THINK

• Identify the trigger, eg, I'm walking into a supermarket, I feel my heart racing.
• Identify the unhelpful thoughts, eg, I think I might collapse and embarrass myself in front of everyone.
• Challenge the thoughts, eg, my heart is racing because I'm anxious. I’ve had this feeling before. It gets better after a few minutes and goes away after I leave the supermarket.

Panic usually starts to fade away after 10 minutes. You can feel unsettled for quite a while after. After a panic attack is a good time to learn about what happened.

Learn more about panic and how to manage and prevent it.

Just a Thought have created an online course on overcoming panic. Read more about the Overcoming Panic course.