Episode 8 - Dodging a Panic Attack

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Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Emotional Millennial. My name is Annie, and I am your podcast host. With this podcast cast, I aim to kind of break the stigma around mental health and share my personal experiences in hopes that you can relate and connect to some of my stories. Life is not easy, and I hate to feel that everyone is constantly pretending on social media that everything is a blast and flowers and daisies when that is simply not the case. I'm trying to bring some authenticity to the table and shed some light on struggles that real people have and real people experience.

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Today, I'm going to talk about ways that I get out of a panic attack when I feel like one is coming on. If you had a panic attack before, you know that they suck. They can manifest differently for everyone. But for me, I've fainted before. I felt like I'm dying.

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It just really puts a damper on the entire day. And it's almost like the idea that you might be having a panic attack is scarier sometimes than the panic attack itself. If I'm out and about and I feel a panic attack is coming on, it almost makes my anxiety that much worse because all I can think about now in my brain is, I don't want to have a panic attack. Please don't let this happen to me. Not now.

(01:55)

Not convenient. And so over the years of dealing with anxiety and dealing with panic attacks, I found a couple different strategies that have really helped me to get out of that situation. When I feel it coming on, panic attacks can be super cute in the way that you think everything's fine, normal day, nothing's happening at all. And then one simple little thought of anxiety or the possibility of panic comes into your brain, and suddenly it's all you can think about and everything's ruined. If, you know, you know, it sucks.

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My brain works in a way where I need to be completely distracted by something. There are some people who are like, oh, just go to your happy place, think about something else. If I try to do that, it does absolutely nothing for me. All I'm thinking in my head is, okay, go somewhere happy. And I'm like, Where's happy?

(02:56)

Nothing's happy. Right now, I'm going to have a panic attack. And so I've come up with a couple of different ways that actually forced me to think about something else and make my brain, like, work. And when it's working and thinking out strategies or doing something that is actually an adequate distraction for me to hopefully stop whatever panic attack is starting to come on. The first one that I like to do is going through my five different senses and really just focusing in on myself in that moment.

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So, for example, right now, I feel my feet on the floor on a concrete floor. I can see wood in front of me. I can smell. I don't know what I can smell right now. But let's say my perfume.

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Okay? And I can hear my own voice in these headphones. All of those things in those senses. Kind of like, brings you back to present. Brings you back to this reality.

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And makes you realize, like, what's happening right in front of you. And brings you to the present moment rather than being inside your head. And honestly, I'll just continue doing that. Continuing to go through my senses and looking at different things, hearing different things, trying to bring my attention to as many things within my surroundings rather than what's going on in my mind. The next one I will sometimes use is counting my breaths.

(04:34)

Whether that's doing like, four counts. In holding it for four counts and then breathing out for four counts. But I like to keep myself on my toes. And by that I mean breathing in for a specific number. Like, let's say five.

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And then holding it for three. And then breathing out for six. And trying to change it up on myself. So that my mind stays busy with trying to keep up with the pattern that I've chose. Because if it's something too consistent, then I can easily get distracted and go back into my anxious thoughts.

(05:10)

Because my mind just likes to do that kind of stuff. So we have the five senses, we have breathing patterns. And the other one I really like to do. And this is my favorite one is I play a game with myself. Bear with me.

(05:30)

Okay? And I actually go through the letters of the Alphabet. And I pick a category. Okay? So let's say we're doing fruits.

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And I go through my head. Ok. A, Apple, B. Banana. C.

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Cantaloupe you get the picture? And this forces me to, like, think about things hard in my brain. And like, forces me to actually take part in an activity. And that really, really helps with distracting me from whatever is going on in the present moment. Now, granted, when I'm doing this, if I'm present, like, with other people around me and they're having conversations, they have no idea that this is what's going on in my brain.

(06:17)

I can't participate in whatever is happening. Because I am completely occupied with what is going on in my head. So I'm just kind of like standing there existing and doing this game in my head without other people knowing about it. And so that's a good strategy. If you are around other people and you can't take a second to be alone.

(06:41)

Because ideally, when I do feel like I'm getting extremely anxious and I'm at home and I'm alone. I will close my bedroom door and lay on the ground. Just totally remove any and all stimulation. And just like focus on myself and focus on my breathing. Unfortunately, when I'm around other people or around noises, lights, honestly, any kind of stimulation when I'm feeling super anxious, it does absolutely nothing to benefit me.

(07:17)

That's just the way that my brain works. It's the way I'm built. So I do my best to step away from everything, just totally isolate myself and, like, put myself into a controlled environment. I will also try and verbalize to someone I trust, someone I love, who I know understands me, and I'll tell them, hey, I'm feeling anxious right now. And just the fact that someone else knows about it comforts me in and of itself.

(07:48)

And they know that I'm not asking them to try to fix it or try to do anything about it. I simply just want them to know and to be aware of it so that I don't feel so alone in the moment. And let's say something crazy happens. They'll be there to help. One last technique I want to mention, which is kind of a newer technique to me, but it actually has helped me a couple of times.

(08:13)

Is doing some type of consistent tapping, like a pattern or just like, tap, tap, tap on the floor, on a table, something like that, that's controlled that you are consistently doing. And sometimes that type of a rhythm will make me feel better as well. And I'll end on a funny little story of a panic attack that I almost had while I was on a hiking trip in Wyoming. We were in Grand Titan, the National Park, and we were back at the Airbnb. It was my boyfriend and I, and he accidentally performed a vagal maneuver on me where you put pressure basically on both of your carotid arteries, and it causes your heart rate to just drop, like super quickly.

(09:06)

Not a great time. Ten out of ten do not recommend this, but I immediately started to feel like I was going to faint because my heart rate got so low. And so I went to the ground and my gut reaction, for some reason was to ask him to sit on top of me and just apply pressure to my body so that I felt like completely grounded. And in that moment, that really worked. So, yeah, good times, I guess.

(09:35)

One last method I will mention is writing down my thoughts or taking notes of the things going on in my brain that are really weighing me down in that moment. And sometimes that will also help alleviate whatever I'm feeling in that current moment. I think getting things off your chest, getting it off your mind, onto paper, into your notes, app, whatever it may be. Just getting those thoughts out of your brain can really, really help sometimes so that you just get that release and it doesn't feel so trapped inside of your brain. I hope this was helpful for at least one person out there.

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I know there are a lot of different techniques that people will use to try and get out of an anxiety attack, and these are the ones that have worked best for me and they're the ones that I tend to recommend to my patients and they also agree that they are helpful. The feeling of using one of these techniques and getting yourself out of that mental spiral and avoiding a panic attack is the best feeling ever. It's like, bitch, I did that. No panic attack today? No, thank you.

(10:45)

Better luck next time. Okay. Actually, I lied. I have one more funny story about my anxiety during medical school. During our neurology organ systems course we had a lecture about fainting which is called Syncopy.

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Well, just so happens that when I get super anxious I happen to faint or have a syncopal episode. So during this lecture, what do you know? Of course I feel like I'm going to faint so in the middle of the lecture I texted my friend and I was like, hey not doing well, can you meet me outside the lecturer and I literally was laying down on a bench out there because we were simply having a lecture about Syncopy and so I thought I was going to faint. Absolutely ridiculous. So yeah, you're not alone.

(11:39)

I'm a doctor and that kind of crap happens to me so this is just the life we lead. Okay. Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen and hang out with me. I would love to hear from you.

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You can email me at the emotional millennial@gmail.com and all transcripts for my podcasts are available on my website which is emotional millennial.com. Thank you, thank you and have a great rest of your day. Bye.