Rose Recommends: 5 Tips for Managing Panic Attacks
Me and panic attacks have been old buddies for years. For me, they started when I was 11 and visited me pretty frequently until I got treatment for anxiety when I was 18. Before then, I had no idea what was happening to me - I felt a lot of shame about it and hid it from everyone, including my family, and of course the shame only compounded the anxiety. Thanks to CBT, hypnotherapy and EMDR, I have a very different relationship with anxiety now. It’s something I’ll always be working on, but I can safely say that panic attacks’ visits are fleeting, less of a bull-in-the-china-shop moment and more of a poking-its-head-round-the-door-to-remind-me-that-they’re-still-there kind of moment. Over the last 5 years, I’ve been digging into anxiety to really understand what it is and how it works, in order to feel some kind of control over it.
So here’s the Sparknotes version of anxiety: in our evolutionary past, where predators were always around the corner, anything that was perceived as a threat had to be responded to at once. We still have this mechanism – the fight or flight response.
Our threat system is still very primitive, scanning for danger in the grass. If it sees a perceived threat, the system can trigger a fight/flight response, preparing the body to either fight off the threat or flee from it. This involves flooding the body with stress hormones, increase circulation to our muscles and away from our digestive system, ramp up breathing to increase oxygen in the blood, all to get us to respond IMMEDIATELY to danger. To us, this can look like cold sweats, trembling, fast breathing, numbness and dissociation - the dreaded ‘panic attack’.
This threat system has served us well in the past, but the threats we experience today are usually not life-threatening. When the threat system first evolved in our primitive ‘reptile brain’, we didn’t have such a developed sense of imagination. Our modern brains have an astounding sense of imagination, which means we are able to ‘scan the grass’ for threats in the present, but also the future (‘worry’) and past (‘rumination’). We even the ability to viscerally imagine ourselves in disaster - our brain struggles to decipher what is a real threat and what is imagined.
We’ve long swapped the cave for the office cubicle or comfy couch, but our threat system still does what it’s designed to do - scan for danger. The threats we experience nowadays tend not to be life or death, but are still threatening in their own way (being ousted from the group, being laughed at, ‘failing’). Humans are social creatures and we’re hard-wired to perceive our survival as dependent on being part of a group, so it makes sense that these things feel threatening. Abstract threats also prompt our imagination to run riot (think walking along a creepy alleyway at night, the perpetually negative news cycle, a worldwide pandemic).
If you experience anxiety or panic attacks, you’re not alone. According to Anxiety UK and the NHS, in 2013, there were 8.2 million cases of anxiety disorder diagnosed in the UK and September 2022, 40.5% of people experienced ‘medium’ or ‘high’ levels of anxiety. Around 10 million people experience phobias and about 1 in 10 people experience occasional panic attacks. It’s important to remember that some people naturally experience more anxiety than others; people experience anxiety differently and will be triggered by different things. This is due to a combination of factors, including personality, brain wiring, our upbringing, life experiences and trauma. Some of us simply have a naturally sensitive nervous system. It’s also worth noting that women, particularly young women, are a high risk group for anxiety and panic disorder.
Tips for managing panic attack symptoms
Remember the science behind panic attacks. They only last for 20 minutes at an absolute maximum and they cannot kill you or harm you physically. If you’re worried about a panic attack causing you harm - such as making you crash your car - remember your survival instinct will override a panic attack to protect you. Once you’ve identified that what you’re experiencing is a panic attack, I recommend reading up on it - knowledge is power and will help you feel less ‘out of control’ when having one (even though you are in control).
Use grounding techniques. It can be difficult to anchor yourself in the midst of a panic attack, but it’s possible (especially as panic attacks always taper off after a few minutes). Some exercises you can do are the 7/11 or 3/5 technique for relaxation – deep, diaphragmatic breathing to balance out oxygen in the system. Breathe in deeply for 7 seconds, out for 11 seconds (or in for 3, out for 5). You can even hold your breath for 10 seconds to prevent carbon dioxide leaving the system - too much oxygen can actually cause that uncomfortable, hyperventilating feeling.
Zoom out. To get perspective on a panic-inducing situation, visualise zooming out and looking at the scene as though you’re in a helicopter. How life or death is this? Will you remember it in one month? Six months? One year? Remember that panic attacks are far less noticeable to other people than they are to you - if you think you’re being judged, you probably aren’t.
Look into therapies. There are effective treatments for panic attacks out there. From experience, I highly recommend CBT, hypnotherapy and EMDR. These therapies help rewire neural pathways in the brain which may be triggering panic attacks.
Show yourself compassion! Your brain is doing what it’s designed to do - keep you safe. It’s easy to feel shame about panic attacks, particularly if you don’t understand what’s happening to you or don’t perceive the people around you to have anxiety (spoiler: they do, it might just manifest differently to you). Next time you feel panic attack symptoms, just smile to yourself and remember that, while physically uncomfortable, your brain is just trying to be helpful - this is normal and it will pass!