What Do I Do When I Feel Anxiety?

You’re at the movies or shopping in a supermarket, and when you least expect it, an anxiety attack sets in. You have the terrifying sensation of losing your mind or dying. But after several tens of minutes, your body and your mind calm down.

You’re going to a party, you feel excited and a little nervous. You feel like there is a knot in your stomach, something that is holding you back from being happy. You’re certain something bad would happen even if nothing in the environment indicates that. ‘What if no one is talking to me and I don’t know what to say or where to put myself?’ wonders your little inner voice.

Have you ever felt this way? Ever been in any of these situations? Then, you and I know that if it isn’t managed properly, it is the one thing that could ruin your mood and your entire day.

What is an Anxiety Attack?

An anxiety attack is a state of emergency to which your body responds physiologically in a confused and completely irrational way. Most of the time, it is due to acute stress caused by an anxiety-provoking situation, a neurosis anchored in you for too long, a phobia, a painful childhood memory, or even an insurmountable psychological shock. Other factors can also trigger an anxiety attack, such as alcohol, cannabis, or drug abuse.

In an increasingly stressed society, anxiety disorders now affect 7% of the world’s population. Social anxiety, panic attack, phobias – these behaviors are now recognized, studied, and named. This anxiety makes you anticipate a fantasized situation in which you would be in failure. The problem is, you can’t reason with yourself, so you convince yourself it’s going to happen.

These panic attacks can happen in contexts where you have to socialize or in crowded places, like public transport. And once it is over, everything is back to normal. At least for a moment because inevitably, the crisis returns as soon as it is triggered. But our trigger level differs from person to person because it depends on our awareness. So some will never have a panic attack while others will do so in the most mundane situations.

Symptoms of an Anxiety Attack

There are a few ways to tell if you are having an anxiety attack;

• Heart palpitations
• Breathing discomfort with a feeling of suffocation
• Discomfort in the chest – tremors or twitching.
• Dizziness
• Blurred vision
• Itching
• Ringing in the ears
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Diarrhea
• Sweating
• Chills or hot flashes
• Restlessness
• Insomnia
• Headaches
• Tight throat
• Feeling of suffocation
• The feeling of depersonalization and imminent death

The person, faced with these symptoms, whose origin he does not understand, reacts to them with dramatization. The person fears death or thinks they are going permanently mad. They remain agitated, searching for a solution, and thereby aggravating the symptoms.

What Do I Do When I Feel Anxiety?

What do you do the minute you feel the anxiety begins to set in? There is a method you can try to provide a temporary solution. It is called the 5-4-3-2-1 method. This method was developed by Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist working at the Center for Anxiety Disorders at Boston University. What it does is to help you to control your dark thoughts and quickly find calm and serenity. This method engages the five senses, like a mindfulness game.

Step 1:

Look around and identify 5 things that are part of your environment.

Step 2:

Successively identify 4 things you can hear.

Step 3:

Identify 3 things you can smell by touching (like the ring on your fingers, your belt, your feet in your shoes).

Step 4:

Identify 2 things you can smell by actually smelling it like the smell of the grass, food, etc.

Step 5:

Finally, identify 1 thing that you can “taste” (it can just be to perceive the taste of the inside of your mouth or to drink a sip of it).

Paying attention to the senses allows you to anchor yourself in the present moment and counting the elements interrupts the thread of thoughts. From there, you can bring your mind back to certain elements, divert your attention, or dismiss negative thoughts. One of the advantages of using this method is that it can be done quietly and discreetly. So remember next time you feel the angst take hold of you, take a deep breath, and think about the five key steps in this method. With a little concentration and kindness to yourself, you should quickly be able to regain your composure.

To limit anxiety attacks and prevent relapses, doctors usually prescribe anxiolytics and antidepressants that reduce anxiety and act on emotional suffering, but better than drugs, the behavioral approach has been proven to reduce the impact of anxiety disorders daily. So, for a more permanent solution, there are several tools/methods you can employ. We will be discussing some of the below;

1. Understand Your Triggers

Instead of struggling to make your anxiety attack go away, let it come. When it does, watch it and understand it. Try to understand the message behind your fear; Was there something that started this crisis? Why am I in this state? Try to understand what drives you and what triggers caused the panic. You may not get it right the first time, but you will see that gradually, the crises will be more spaced and less violent than before, and soon it will disappear completely.

2. Breathe

When you have an anxiety attack, your breathing quickens and you feel like you are running out of air or even suffocating. And the more air you run out of, the faster you breathe, and the more your feeling of suffocation increases.

See Also

Moving Into The Growth Mindset And How To Get Started

When you feel the anxiety attack coming on, lie down on your back if you can or sit where you can. Inhale very slowly with your mouth closed, inflating your stomach without forcing it. Put a palm hand flat on your stomach to feel its movements. Hold on for about 10 to 15 seconds. Then breathe out slowly with your mouth open until your stomach completely empties. Do this exercise for five to ten minutes after which you will notice that the anxiety attack has disappeared.

3. Try to Grab Control of Your Life

It has been proven that people who feel in control of their lives feel better about themselves. If you feel like you don’t have control over anything, you have to multiply the experiences that will give you the impression of controlling your life. And for that, we must take action. The best way to do it is to tell yourself that you’re going to do it wrong the first time anyway and that’s okay.

This attitude speeds up your decision-making when you could have spent hours wondering how or why to do it. Very often we aim for perfection, but we find ourselves doing nothing at all because our objectives are too high and therefore too stressful.

4. Forgive Yourself

Forgiveness is a very powerful strategy. Forgiving yourself for all that you have done, are doing, and will do, will give you compassion for yourself. You will not be able to heal without this benevolence, because it improves self-esteem. Appreciate the fact that you are not perfect and that you will make mistakes. Understand this and make it a habit to forgive yourself in advance.

5. Find Purpose

Try giving meaning to your life by trying to help others. You can’t be happy without knowing that someone needs us. Acting with someone in mind supports us through difficult times in life. We can act today for future generations. Even if they will never know it, we will know it and it gives meaning to life. It could be something as small as running errands for your elderly single neighbor. It is always easy to find fulfillment in those little things.

6. Distract Yourself

If you are having an anxiety attack, learn to distract your mind by thinking about something else entirely. Here, you can employ the 5-4-3-2-1 method or you could focus on reciting the alphabet backward or even say your favorite pastries. If you can’t talk, then you shouldn’t. This is a mental exercise and you can do it in silence if you so please.

7. Sing

When another panic attack strikes, before it even overwhelms you, sing your favorite tune There is no question here of murmuring or humming. It doesn’t matter if you sing out of tune. The idea is not to perform vocal performances but to free your breath and relax your diaphragm. But it also allows you to let go of the anxiety attack by diverting your attention to something else in a playful way. Plus, it works. So, get your singing mic ready!

8. Therapy

Therapy is always a good idea especially when you are looking for a lasting solution. Some scientifically proven therapies can serve as an excellent complement to drug treatments, or even replace drugs altogether. This is because what drugs do essentially is to act on the symptoms of the anxiety attack and not necessarily the cause. But to reach the bottom of the issue and work towards resolving your triggers, you must work on yourself. Behavioral and cognitive therapy, sophrology, psychotherapy, or mindfulness meditation can free you permanently from your anxiety attacks.

Although their approach is different in some ways, these methods are all geared towards understanding the stress that triggers your anxiety attacks. They can help you calm your emotions, chase negative thoughts, and modify your behavior to lower the pressure inside you. But we must note that how much effect they have on you depends entirely on how involved you are.

Daily, anxiety disorders make it difficult to concentrate, to pursue a profession, and to have romantic relationships. A lot of people put their anxieties under the rug, thinking that it is simply nervousness or weakness, but understanding the phenomenon and how much power it wields (if not addressed properly), will pave the way for total healing.

All pictures are from Pexels and no attribution is required.