Panic Attacks | When the Storm Kicks in

Hi everyone and welcome to my place!

As I told you in the last random thoughts post, where I wrote about my anxiety story (You can read it here), I will be giving you some tips to help you calm you down and be able to overcome anxiety in general.

First of all I want to give a HUGE disclaimer: I am not a psychologist nor a doctor! Second the tips I am going to give resulted to me, it may not work with you! You will need to try it out and see for yourself the ones who work or not. Please if you are reading this probably you suffer anxiety and are looking for some help, this way I strongly advise you to go to your doctor to start treatment ASAP.

Ok, now that is out-of-the-way, I’m happy to say that I got a way to organize this series and not be all over the place! I will write a post for each level of anxiety that I experienced:

• Panic Attacks – no control whatsoever
• Daily High Anxiety Level – You have a little bit of control, to the point of not letting a panic attack strike
• Daily Medium Anxiety Level – You already can pretty much control your anxiety, but you are still not healthy and have to be always on guard non the less
• Daily Low Anxiety Level – You feel ok, you are not completely healthy, but at least you can live your life without thinking much about it!

And today, as you saw from the title I’m going to talk about Panic Attacks!

I’m not going to lie and tell you this is easy, because it is not! I was able to pass through Panic Attacks with the help of medication. I had some SOS pills that would make my anxiety disappear in a half an hour more or less, so I only had to cope with it for some minutes (although it seemed like hours). I’m not going to give you the name of the medication though. If you are experiencing go to your doctor and he will give what is the best for you! 🙂

First of all – Learn how to properly breath!

What the hell? Learn how to properly breath? Well, probably you are doing it wrong. You are supposed to breath to your diaphragm (basically to your stomach) and not your lungs. Here is a video for you to understand (If you are in your mobile and can’t see it, you can go to the youtube video here)

Yes, this exercise is for singers, but they do know how breath properly! I’ve played the flute since age 11, a wind instrument, this way I already breed in the correct way without even thinking! 🙂

After that: Control your breathing

I know, I know… It seems that you are not breathing enough when having a panic attack, but in reality it’s completely the contrary.

When you are having a panic attack you will be over breathing, that’s why you feel light-headed, because you are putting too much oxygen in your brain! But, do not worry! Even if you pass out because of it, your body will then just normally go to normal breathing. Remember, humans have been in this world for millions of year and of course, our bodies have been always evolving, so even if you stop controlling by passing out he knows what to do 🙂

But, let’s try not to pass out ok? Go to Youtube or something like that and find breathing exercises for Yoga, meditation, something that is meant to calm you down and practice them 🙂

This is also important because if you send more oxygen to your body, your heart will pump up faster (that’s why people normally describe having a panick attack that it seemed they were having a heart attack), if you slow down your breathing, your heart also will slow and this way you will feel more calm 🙂

Get fresh hair

Even with all the above, you can still have the feeling that you are not receiving air enough. By now we know that is our brain playing tricks and not the reality, however it is cool to relax our thoughts about it. Receiving fresh air always helped me. If you can’t go to the middle street (maybe it’s the middle of the night and it’s not the best neighborhood) just open a window to feel the air circulating. When I was experiencing anxiety I always slept with my window opened (I lived in the 8th floor) and it helped a lot!

Have someone to call

When you have a panick attack, normally you are afraid of something, or there was something that triggered that. It’s good to have someone to call and explain what you are feeling and why. It really helped me! Even if the person in the other side says that you are being stupid (which sometimes it also helps, I’ll explain it later) it’s relaxing to put it out there what you are feeling and having the feeling that if something happens to you someone will know and call an ambulance (even though it probably will not be necessary). If you don’t have anyone to call, call a support line you may have in your country. Here in Portugal it’s called 24 line, where you can call anytime and they do a pre-check before you go running to the hospital. I’ve called sometimes and even though they do not have much time to spend on you, hearing them calmly talk about your condition you easily understand that you’re not in an urgent condition.

Ridicule yourself, or have someone to ridicule you

This one is strange, but it helped me a lot LOL My main fear when having anxiety was to die, so when I was having a panic attack because I have choked a little bit while drinking water, my boyfriend (and later myself) would say “Have you ever saw in the news something about someone dying because of choking a little bit on water?”. Basically, he was telling “Your fear is stupid! Calm down!” and you know what? It helped? It would make sense to me and calm me down.

And that’s what I would do every time I had a panic attack. Sometimes some of them would work, other none would suffice… It depended in my mental state, really. Again, the medication I had helped me A LOT in these times of urgent need! This way, I would say that the main thing that helped me all the time was the pills. Sometimes they would work in less time, others it would take longer, but at the end they always worked 🙂

That’s it for today! Again, if you have the need to talk to someone comment down below, send me a message through the contact page or PM in twitter. I’m @Arthifis.

I really hope this post helped someone out there!! :3

If anyone had experienced panic attacks and think that can have other tips, please, pretty please, comment down below. It really helps to have many testimonials about people who passed through this kind of problem. It gives courage and support for the ones living it right now! 🙂

See Ya Soon!