I can help you to no longer have panic attacks, without medication, using cognitive-behavioral techniques. I follow the practices of David Burns, M.D. (When Panic Attacks).
The traditional wisdom and therapy when someone is experiencing panic symptoms or a panic attack is to utilize calming, meditative skills. Here is why that may have only limited or no immediate or lasting benefit:
During anxiety our executive (higher) brain tends to disengage because of what we are thinking (cognitive processes) and our primitive brain comes forward. In the primitive brain we think ‘DANGER’ and the primitive response is to fight, run away or curl up into a ball (freeze/shut down). These responses typically don’t work in modern times. It is the thought of danger that our organism responds to. Let me give an example:
If I’m walking along a city street and I don’t see a piano falling from a high rise – splat – I’m smashed. If, however, I see the piano about to drop, my thought is danger, my emotion is fear and I jump out of the way: thought > emotion > behavior.
When we sense danger our primitive fight/flight/freeze response becomes engaged. This triggers a physiological response even if we only perceive danger, not a real threat to our life). Adrenaline pumps through us, blood rushes to our arms and legs to run away or fight the danger, we perspire to cool our body, digestion slows (no one is going to eat while running from a dangerous animal), we breathe shallowly to get more oxygen, we feel like we are going to perish. These are just some of the common symptoms we might experience.
Through my cognitive-behavioral work I have learned a better way to short-circuit panic symptoms and panic attacks. Trick the primitive brain into thinking we are fighting or running away from the danger and the symptoms will subside.
How to do this?? MOVE!! Yes, do jumping jacks, run in place, run up and down stairs, any rapid movements to satisfy the primitive brain that we know how to survive.
In my office I have clients bring on panic symptoms (experience the panic, not avoid it) and as they are thinking (remember it is caused by what we think – the emotions are a result of what we are thinking) about their distress they do jumping jacks. Clients are very hesitant to trust the process (or me) at first: “I can’t breathe, I’ll pass out.” Truth is, their breathing improves, they don’t pass out, the primitive brain is satisfied and the panic symptoms either don’t develop or they subside. The result is a short-circuiting of symptoms and techniques to empower them to no longer experience panic symptoms.
