How to deal with panic attacks: 11 effective ways

Breathe slowly

How to get rid of panic attacks? Slow breathing helps to cope with a rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing, which are both symptoms of a panic attack and its provocateurs. By breathing slowly, you send a signal to your brain to calm down. This is one of the most effective physiological ways to stop a panic attack.

Focus on your breathing. Inhale for one-two-three-four, hold your breath for one second, exhale for one-two-three-four. Look at your stomach (even through clothes): how it inflates as you inhale and retracts as you exhale.

Phytotherapy

Herbal health requires responsible adherence to doctor’s recommendations. Herbal infusions are extracts from plants that relieve the negative symptoms of panic disorder. The method helps to cleanse the body of excess flora and improve metabolism. This is strengthening general well-being, eliminating headaches, migraines, and cardiac disorders. In therapy, herbal teas with a relaxing and calming effect are used. For example, lemon balm and mint slightly neutralize the negative symptoms of panic disorder.

This is a traditional medicine method that should be discussed in consultation with a psychotherapist. The use of herbal medicine alone does not provide long-term results. The advantage of the phytotherapeutic approach is the use of herbal, natural preparations. The technique has virtually no side effects, unlike antidepressants or tranquilizers. Possible contraindications include allergic reactions.

Breathing exercises

Breathing control is important when treating panic attacks. This is a non-drug method that is easy to use at home.

One of the exercise options is to take a very deep breath and hold your breath for as long as possible. After this, exhale slowly. During the exercise, it is recommended to try to relax all parts of the body and close your eyes. The technique must be repeated about 15 times a day.

Due to hyperventilation of the lungs during a panic attack, the gas balance of the blood flow is disrupted. This provokes an increase in anxiety and shortness of breath. During the onset of an attack, it is important to quickly normalize breathing. To do this, it is recommended to breathe through a piece of paper pressed tightly to your nose and mouth or through folded palms. It is necessary that inhalations and exhalations be smooth and slow.

Another technique is diaphragmatic breathing, which reduces anxiety. You can perform the exercise both at home and in a public place. To do this, you need to put one hand on the abdomen, the other on the chest. After this, you need to slowly exhale through your nose until you feel the movement of your stomach. The chest remains at rest. It is advisable to visualize in your head as if the abdominal area is a balloon that you need to try to inflate without moving your chest. Inhale - tense the abdominal muscles - slowly exhale through pursed lips. At first there is a feeling of dizziness, which later goes away.

Physical exercise

Meditation and muscle relaxation are techniques that help you relax and relieve anxiety. These are ways to improve the process of falling asleep, relaxing the mind and body.

The progressive muscle relaxation exercise is carried out as follows. First you need to feel it as much as possible, and then try to tense the muscles throughout your body. First the neck, then the shoulders, palms, feet. Then the tension is released and the muscles relax. Psychotherapists recommend concentrating on the feet first, and then the rest of the body in a higher direction. Attention is paid to every area of ​​the body.

Admit you are having a panic attack

How to understand that you are having a panic attack and get rid of it? During a panic attack, a person catastrophizes what is happening: it seems that it is a heart attack, stroke, death, madness, that you are fainting or about to vomit.

Tell yourself mentally several times: “This is not a disaster, this is a panic attack.” The intensity of your symptoms will decrease and you will begin to regain consciousness.

Beck Scale: Test for Anxiety

Main symptoms of a panic attack

All possible symptoms are divided into two groups: typical manifestations and atypical ones. You need to understand that psychosomatic reactions are very individual. Moreover, symptoms can change over the course of the disease, even in the same patient.

The following are typical signs of a panic attack:

• Symptoms from the cardiovascular system: tachycardia, a feeling of interruptions in the heartbeat, high blood pressure.
• Dizziness, feeling of unsteadiness.
• Feeling of suffocation, feeling of lack of air.
• Flashes of cold or heat, sweating.
• Nausea, sudden urge to go to the toilet, feeling of cramps in the abdomen.
• Derealization and disturbance of bodily sensations.
• Sudden anxiety, fear of death, fear of going crazy.

The main problem of this symptom complex is that during the first attack, a huge number of patients mistake a panic attack for a serious “bodily” illness. They call an ambulance, and when the attack passes, they go for examinations to somatic specialists. While the disease does not have any organic nature, and you need to look for a psychological problem. It is important to remember that no matter how scary the symptoms may seem, they are not dangerous. Acute anxiety during an attack makes you more nervous, and the symptoms appear more and more. But a psychotherapist will help you cope with the attack and tell you what techniques can be used to stop a panic attack.

There are symptoms characteristic of an atypical attack:

• Cramps.
• Hearing and vision impairment.
• Aphasia.
• Unsteady gait.
• Difficulty swallowing.
• Presyncope, fainting.
• Vomit.
• Pseudoparesis.

Panic does not always accompany an atypical attack. Such symptoms are observed much less frequently. They usually appear against the background of other somatic and mental disorders. Patients should remember that even the most severe panic attack does not pose a real health risk. All manifestations of an attack are the body’s natural reaction to fear.

On average, an attack lasts from several minutes to an hour. If the attacks are repeated, then constant “background” anxiety and tension in anticipation of a new panic attack, sleep and mood disturbances, and depressive symptoms join the manifestations of the disorder.

Train your mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to notice what is happening in and around you.

Panic attacks often lead to a feeling of unreality, out-of-body, detachment from one's own body and from the world. Mindfulness helps cope with a panic attack and the first signs of its approach.

How to deal with panic attacks? Focus on your body, look at it or imagine with your eyes closed: how your feet touch the floor, how your clothes touch your skin, mentally move to the tips of your fingers.

To distract yourself, you can focus your gaze on familiar objects around you - a glass with pens and pencils, a plant on the window, a pattern on the wall or on the floor, and so on.

Stop the attack with medication

Drugs from the group of tranquilizers (anxiolytics or anti-anxiety drugs) help stop a panic attack if you take the pill at a time when it is still in its infancy.

Tranquilizers cannot be taken by everyone; they are sold by prescription, so they must be prescribed by a psychiatrist or psychotherapist.

Panic attacks. Why don't pills help?

Psychotherapeutic treatment

Panic attacks cannot be cured without psychotherapy using the following techniques:

1.Cognitive behavioral therapy is considered the most effective in this area - it is called the “gold standard”. The patient, with the help of a specialist, goes through several steps:

• changes your thoughts about panic to more positive ones;
• learns techniques that reduce anxiety;
• learns to overcome agoraphobia, etc.

This therapy models thinking and behavior during an attack. For example, the following situation is played out: you have a panic attack while you are driving a car. If you pull over and stop, will anything bad happen? Will you crash your car or die? Hardly! It is precisely this belief that the patient develops, and he ceases to be afraid of an attack.

2. Classic hypnosis involves putting the patient into a trance state, in which he is encouraged to get rid of panic disorder. This method shows good results, but not all people succumb to it.

3. Ericksonian hypnosis allows you to resolve internal conflicts. It is softer, since the person himself enters a trance with the help of a psychotherapist. Moreover, in this case it is believed that there are no non-hypnotizable people. In addition, the patient learns self-hypnosis, which helps him prevent panic attacks by reducing anxiety levels.

4. Body-oriented therapy is a whole set of methods that involve working with the body (by influencing it and regulating sensations, you can reduce the level of anxiety). This includes:

• breathing techniques;
• relaxation according to Jacobson.

5. Systemic family psychotherapy sees the cause of panic disorder in the family, in the relationships and disharmony existing there. That is, the patient’s condition depends on all members of his family, and therefore work is carried out with all of them.

6. Psychoanalyst sees the causes of panic attacks in unconscious conflicts - meaning feelings of guilt, problems with parents, internal aggression, etc. Therefore, the psychoanalyst will clarify these very conflicts for several years. It is this prolongation that is the disadvantage of this method.

Physiotherapeutic procedures such as:

• relaxing and tonic physical therapy;
• massage course;
• aromatherapy;
• mesodiencephalic modulation of the cerebral cortex (MDM therapy);
• electrosleep;
• color therapy.

During the course of treatment for PA, the patient may begin to doubt that it is happening correctly, that he needs psychotherapy and that it is truly successful, and that the medications have a positive effect. In addition, circumstances may turn out to be such that he violated the doctor’s recommendations and the prescribed regimen. At the same time, he may have a seizure. Therefore, the patient should not hesitate to ask for help or consult with his leading specialist. The latter will be ready at any time to answer all the patient’s questions both over the telephone and in a face-to-face meeting. Such communication, especially in the early stages, should be continuous.

help yourself

Early diagnosis and timely treatment allows you to completely get rid of panic attacks, of course, if they have become chronic. You can contribute to professional treatment at home or know how to relieve an attack and alleviate it, strengthen the body and eliminate negative factors.

The following folk remedies will help reduce fear:

1. Pour 300 ml of boiling water over a teaspoon of dry oregano, leave for 10 minutes, strain. Drink 150 gr. four times a day.
2. 100 gr. pour 500 ml of boiled water into young birch leaves. After infusion, strain for five hours. Take 100 ml every day.
3. Infusion of linden or chamomile. Pour boiling water (a glass) over a teaspoon of dried inflorescences and after half an hour you can drink it as tea, having first strained it.

Motherwort juice is also good; alcohol tincture of oregano; decoctions of lemon balm and mint; infusions of valerian, wormwood, nettle, hops.

You can help an upset psyche by walking on grass or bare ground with bare feet (even in the cold season) - this calms you down.

Aromatherapy gives excellent results - candles with essential oils of pine, eucalyptus, juniper. A massage with these substances won't hurt either.

Experts advise drinking as little strong tea and coffee as possible, sitting less at the computer and in front of the TV, walking more in the fresh air, playing sports and being physically active. The day should be distributed correctly between time for work, rest and sleep. You need to monitor your diet - it should be rational and not contain spicy seasonings. Avoid bad habits (smoking, alcohol), take vitamins.

Those susceptible to panic attacks should adhere to the following rules:

1. Don't be alone, don't isolate yourself. Communicate with family and friends, tell them about your condition - they will help you cope with it. Keep a diary, share your thoughts with him, analyze them, tune in to something pleasant.
2. Relax more often - read, spend time in nature, watch a fun movie, take a bath, listen to good relaxing music, that is, have a good rest. You can learn to meditate and do it at home, in silence, in a calm environment.
3. Learn to breathe correctly, master a breathing technique that reduces hyperventilation of the lungs and thus alleviates panic symptoms - through a paper or plastic bag. An excellent option is Pilates, that is, breathing exercises. Sign up for the section and practice it under the guidance of an experienced instructor.
4. Gradually, with the help of training the nervous system, develop immunity to stress, do not engage in self-hypnosis of fear of anything, do not scold yourself.
5. If the situation gets out of control, immediately contact a specialist.
6. Set yourself up for positivity. When anxious thoughts appear, try to switch to something good.