Everyone experiences, to a greater or lesser extent, what we know as anxiety. This state of psychological and physiological activation often goes hand in hand with a very significant malaise, as well as feeling of alertness or fear even when there is nothing nearby that constitutes a real danger .

However, there are those who, in addition to feeling anxiety in complex and demanding day-to-day contexts (such as before an exam), experience panic attacks relatively frequently. If feeling anxiety is normal, going through these attacks is not so normal, since they are qualitatively different experiences from what can happen to us when we notice that the day is going uphill.

In this article we will see how to regain control and calm down during a panic attack , although it is complicated to find an “instant cure” and much of the success or failure of this task will depend on the situation we find ourselves in. But first, let’s start with the basics.

What is a panic attack?

This phenomenon has different dimensions. On the psychological side, a panic attack involves experiencing an intense fear that comes on suddenly , and often without a clear or rather diffuse trigger. For example, it can appear when hiking in a place where there are many bushes with thorns on the sides of the path, even though it is relatively complicated to prick yourself with them.

Panic attacks therefore often have a purely emotional root , which is alien to logic, although this is not always the case and real dangers can trigger them.
These crises usually last a few minutes, although sometimes they can last an hour or more. Their basic symptoms are as follows:

  • Dizziness .
  • Nausea.
  • Loss of balance.
  • Difficult to talk about.
  • Difficulty breathing normally.
  • Pulse acceleration .
  • Tremors and numbness of the muscles
  • Thoughts associated with fear.

So, panic attacks are something similar to what would happen if we released all the anxiety we had been holding for days and made it affect us in a concentrated way in a few minutes, especially during the first five minutes. On the other hand, many times the appearance of these episodes is unpredictable, among other things because their onset does not even depend on whether we are thinking about something that is stressful.

What to do during a panic attack?

To best manage your panic attack and calm down as quickly as possible, follow the guidelines below.

1. If you can, find a quiet place nearby

It is good to look for a quiet place, since avoiding exposure to highly overloaded environments can feed panic . However, it is very important that you look for that space of relative calm in the closest places you are, just a few meters away.

If you intend to move around more, for example by changing floors of the building you are in or going to a park, this can in practice become an escape. Which brings us to the next piece of advice.

2. Don’t run away

Running away only confirms the mental framework in which you are experiencing the panic, as it reminds you that there is something you should try to get away from. That means that, if you move a lot, it is very easy to transform that simple move into a hurried retreat , which at the same time feeds the fear that the situation affecting you might follow you (yes, even if what you are panicking about is not something material or is very diffuse).

3. Don’t look for complex mental distractions

Imposing on you the task of thinking about very complex things will only frustrate you, since, as you are going through a panic crisis, you will not be able to do so, giving you more reason to worry.

That is, if when you feel the symptoms of such a crisis you start trying to remember which were the Godos’ kings of the Iberian Peninsula, or you propose to try an imaginary conversation, the failure will remind you over and over again that something serious enough is happening to slip through all your mental processes .

4. Adopts a very passive attitude

To calm down during an anxiety crisis, it’s best to stay in something like a “state of hibernation”-not concentrating on anything in particular, nor paying attention to anything that’s going on around us. Assuming that the main problem is the panic attack itself and not a real danger located nearby, the desirable thing to do is to let go of everything and let the experience go by itself , just like a skier would do when he notices that there is a plate of ice underneath.

One way to do this is to stop focusing on the look and then mentally repeat a very simple word, but without paying attention to whether we are doing it right or not.