It just came out of nowhere and now you are here: anxiety, heart racing, chest tight, breathing wrong, a part of your brain convinced, absolutely convinced, that something terrible is happening.
If you are here, you already suspect a panic attack. And while that doesn’t make it less frightening, it matters, because understanding what’s actually happening in your body is the first step to moving through it.
When you experience a panic attack your alarm system goes off with no fire. Adrenaline speeds up your heart and breathing and gets your muscles ready to run. The racing heart, tight chest, dizziness and tingling hands are real and uncomfortable, but they’re not dangerous.
Most panic attacks peak within about a few minutes. Your body can’t hold that level of alarm for long, so it comes down on its own.
What sends people into recurring and full panic is the meaning they attach to it. “My heart is racing” becomes “I’m having a heart attack.” That fear pumps out more adrenaline, which makes the heart race harder, which “proves” the fear. Sensation plus scary meaning equals panic.
It’s also important here to distinguish the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack: Panic attacks are sudden, intense surges of fear, often unexpected and peaking within minutes. Anxiety attacks build gradually over time, often linked to specific stressors and are usually what people describe as “panic attacks lasting for days”.
These feel like help:
Each one tells your brain: that was dangerous, and you only survived because you escaped. So next time, it fires faster. The response is normal, your brain is trying to protect you, so you basically have to show your brain through experience that it’s safe.
The fastest way through a panic attack is to stop trying to stop it.
Name it. Out loud if you can: “This is a panic attack” without attaching meaning to it.
Let it be there. Don’t fight the sensations or bargain with them. Resistance is fuel.
Stay where you are, if it’s safe. Every time you stay, your brain collects evidence that you can be here and be fine.
Carry on afterwards. Shaky, flat or tired is just adrenaline clearing. It doesn’t mean you’re getting worse, and it doesn’t need analysing. You don’t need to push through tiredness, but don’t let yourself drown in it either.
You don’t need the panic to go away to get on with your life.
Panic resolves when your brain learns, through repeated experience, that the sensations aren’t a threat.
Interoceptive exposures (deliberately bringing on the sensations in small doses until your brain stops treating them as an emergency) works well for panic attacks, combined with other types of exposures and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) for learning how to build psychological flexibility (the ability to move towards what matters to you even when difficult feelings are there, without getting overwhelmed by them). For other difficulties you experience alongside panic attacks, an integrative approach might be useful.
If panic has started deciding where you go and what you do, get in touch and let’s work together to help you get your life back.
Anxiety Therapist working with fear, and the life built around it
A 3-step free guide to understanding and interrupting repetitive patterns in your relationships, behaviour and emotional responses.
