How to Deal With a Panic Attack

Steven Hayes, professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Nevada, offers advice to someone dealing with a panic attack.

How to Deal With a Panic Attack Well, the advice I’d give and if you're my patient, it’d be a little bit different because we’d have a little more time but if I can distill it down to the essence of what we do in the course therapy, the person with panic I can say this from the inside out since we're looking at a panic disordered person in recovery has adapted a posture with regard of the world within in which their own anxiety is their enemy. And I think that if they can just get the anxiety to go down, go away, not occur as much in such intensity or at least not occur here or there in that situation that then things would be better. In fact, all of that is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem. Holding anxiety is your own enemy and that it has to go down, diminish it, go away and that happen here is a kind of self invalidating interiorly focused process that would get you even more entangled with these processes. Instead, what we’re going to need to learn to do is to allow your history to bring into the present, thoughts and feelings and memories and to sort of hold them mindfully and self compassionately. And then focus on what you do and bring them along for that journey. So, feelings are only your history in occasion by the present moment. If that’s your enemy then your history is your enemy. If sensation is your enemy, your body is your enemy. And if memory is your enemy, you better have a way of controlling your mind in such a way that you're never reminded of things that are painful from the past. Well, there is no such thing like that, that’s healthy. And most of the things that people do that are called “Psychopathology” are the unhealthy things people do when they try to accomplish that agenda. If you avoid people, avoid having your buttons push, avoid going to places that might occasion anxiety if you're hammering down drugs and alcohol. These are all methods of trying to melt that unhealthy agenda. So, I would say, “Could we instead take this anxiety to be something that maybe of importance, maybe even be meaningful?” And it’s says something about your history and could be learned to sort of hold it in a way that’s more compassionate to sort of bring the frightened part of you close and treat it with some dignity. And keep focused instead of making that go away, focus instead on what kind of life you want to live connected to what kind of meaning on purpose. That’s going to be a quicker, more self compassionate and more certain journey forward than this kind of out with the anxiety, in with the relaxation, out with the self-doubt, in with the confidence, let’s just snap out of it harsh and lack and non-compassionate place that we stand with ourselves. Inside things like panic disorder.