How To Cope With Panic Attacks

In this video, I'm going to tell you how to cope with panic attacks. First of all, identify your triggers. Are there particular situations or maybe particular places or even people that you're around that trigger these attacks? What are you thinking when these attacks are coming on? It may even be that the thoughts that are going on in your head are actually causing these attacks in the first place.

If that's the case, that's actually good news because that means that you can control your thoughts. You can start to change the way that your mind is processing these thoughts so that you can prevent these attacks from coming on. Now, start to rationalize these thoughts by writing them down on paper.

Look at those words; think about what the worst that can happen is. You'll probably find that the worst that can happen is not bad after all and the panicking is all about the unknown. I've got a neuro-linguistic programming technique that can help you when this starts to happen.

What you need to do is take a couple of minutes when you're feeling relaxed. Think about a situation when you're feeling calm, when you're feeling comfortable and when you're definitely not feeling like these attacks are coming on. What's different about that situation? What can you see? What can you hear? What can you feel in the pit of your stomach? As you visualize that moment, feel as comfortable, feel as warm and feel as calm as you possibly can and then take your thumb and your two fingers and squeeze your thumb together for a moment.

What you've done is created an anchor for a relaxed state. This means that whenever you're feeling uncomfortable or slightly anxious, all you need to do is squeeze that same thumb and you'll feel that moment of calm wash over you. This should hopefully help you to prevent a panic attack coming on.

Another way you can do this is with a breathing technique. So, take your right thumb and cover up your right nostril. Breathe in through your left nostril and close your left nostril breathing out through your right nostril.

If you do that a few moments, what you'll find is that your whole body will start to feel a lot more calm, a lot more relaxed. And this is a technique that lots of performers use when they suffer from stage fright to calm them down before they go on stage. And that's how to cope with panic attacks. .