Panic action (1) Calm your body

As with most stress reduction methods there is no ‘right way’ so experiment with the following tips to discover what works best for you. For example, some people find calming their body works well while others find that they release tension best through becoming more physically active.

Calm your breathing

Breathing out s-l-o-w-l-y calms your heart, nervous system, and thinking. Avoid long inhales or breath-holding. Breathing methods can be very effective for centering and calming yourself even when the anxiety/adrenaline rush is intense.

However if you are hyperventilating you may need to first use other methods to deal with this - such as re-breathing using the well-known paper bag method. Some people find drinking a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in a glass of water (while it is still fizzing) is a useful emergency method. Others find the Buteyko Breathing method helps. Ideally, you should aim to maintain awareness of your breathing and nip-in-the-bud the hyperventilation habit before the breathing becomes distressing.

Check out the Breathing Section

Posture

Immediate action: Relax your body. Slow down and let go! Systematically relax all parts of your body - so you become like a rag doll. Go floppy. Doing this replaces the normal tendency to try to fight the sensations by tensing your muscles or ‘freezing’.

On-going action: How you hold yourself affects your emotions. A slumped posture with shoulders hunched or wrapped forward around the chest is not conducive to a positive frame of mind. It can actually evoke a depressed and negative mental frame. Equally important it restricts breathing and can contribute towards the hyperventilation habit. (Changing your posture will not significantly change your mood if you are in the middle of a reaction - this is an on-going way of making the reactions less likely).

Activity or location

This is a tricky one on which to offer advice. Some people find they become so agitated that they dart about erratically, pick things up and put them down again, start doing something and then leave it, etc.

For this group the 'rag doll' approach mentioned above may be beneficial.

Other people go into 'freeze mode' and sit or stand in a silently trembling state. This is more likely to occur if they are in unfamiliar surroundings or they perceive the surroundings as being unsafe (which will usually be anywhere other than in their own home).

This trembling, incidentally, is often natures way of reducing muscular tension - the body dissipates tension through movement.. If you belong to this group it may be more appropriate to refuse to remain still but to get up and walk about. If you are in company or in a public place avoid the trapped feeling.

If you try to tense against this movement the tension simply builds and builds and you may begin to visibly tremble.

So move about and loosen up. But to do so purposively and in a quite deliberate manner - not pointlessly dashing about. Remind yourself that you are moving about to release the build-up of muscular tension.

Important: please read our caution regarding online advice

Panic: Taking action - your body