7 Easy Steps on How to Stop a Panic Attack

Key Takeaways:

• You may not be able to stop a panic attack immediately, but breathing, grounding, muscle relaxation, and other calming techniques can reduce its intensity and help you safely manage symptoms until they pass.
• How can you calm a panic attack? Remind yourself that the attack will pass, slow your breathing, use the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, relax tense muscles, and focus your attention on a calming image, thought, or physical sensation.
• Slow, controlled breathing can help prevent hyperventilation from worsening symptoms such as dizziness, tingling, chest tightness, and lightheadedness. Gentle breathing with a relaxed, longer exhale may be more helpful than repeatedly taking large, deep breaths.
• If you’re in a safe place, immediately escaping whenever panic begins can reinforce fear and avoidance. Staying in place while using coping techniques may help prevent avoidance patterns associated with panic disorder.
• Recurring or unexpected panic attacks may indicate panic disorder or another anxiety condition. Treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure-based therapy, and medication can help manage recurrent panic symptoms.

You likely won’t be able to stop a panic attack right away once it starts, but you can take steps to reduce how intense it feels and help you get through it. Panic attacks involve a sudden surge of fear along with physical symptoms like a racing heart, sweating, chest pain or tightness, shortness of breath, dizziness, shaking, nausea, and sometimes a strange sense of detachment or an out-of-body experience.

If chest pain, difficulty breathing, fainting, or other symptoms are new or unusually severe, seek medical attention rather than assuming they’re caused by panic.

When you’re experiencing a panic attack, the goal isn’t to fight every sensation. It’s to help your nervous system register that there’s no immediate danger so the alarm can switch off. The seven steps below are ways to do that at the moment.

1. Remind Yourself That the Panic Attack Will Pass

Panic symptoms feel dangerous even though they’re being produced by your body’s anxiety response. That fear of the symptoms can make it more difficult to deal with and can make the attack feel stronger. Instead of telling yourself “something is seriously wrong,” try naming what’s happening: “This feels intense, but I recognize these as panic symptoms.” Or “My body is reacting like I’m in danger, but this will pass.”

This won’t stop an attack on its own, but it will hopefully cut off some of the catastrophic thoughts you might be having about the fear of dying, fainting, or losing control. This is important because those fears feed into your panic and often make the situation worse.

2. Slow Down Your Breathing

Hyperventilation makes dizziness, tingling, chest tightness, and lightheadedness worse. The instinct is to take big gulps of air, but that’s the opposite of what helps.

Breathe gently through your nose. Let the exhale be slow and relaxed, longer than the inhale. Don’t gasp, and don’t keep trying to “fill” your lungs. Deep breathing gets recommended a lot, but forcing repeated large breaths can actually worsen hyperventilation for some people. Slow matters more than deep.

Breathing exercises work best when you’ve practiced them beforehand, so they feel familiar rather than like one more thing to figure out mid-attack.

3. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique

Grounding techniques move your attention away from what’s happening inside your body and back to the room you’re in. The 5-4-3-2-1 technique is one of the simplest. Identify:

• 5 things you can see
• 4 things you can feel
• 3 things you can hear
• 2 things you can smell
• 1 thing you can taste

This is especially useful when panic causes derealization, a sense of being disconnected from your surroundings, an out-of-body feeling, or a fixation on your heartbeat or breathing. You don’t need to do it perfectly or even finish the list. The point is to focus on something other than the panic attack you’re experiencing.

4. Relax Your Body Instead of Fighting the Symptoms

Panic activates the nervous system, and the whole body tenses in response. Do a quick check of your jaw, your shoulders, your hands, and your stomach. Most people are clenching at least two of those without realizing it. Drop your shoulders, unclench your hands, and let your muscles loosen wherever you can. Focus on releasing the tension you can control rather than trying to force the panic to disappear. Relaxing your muscles can help signal to your body that the immediate danger has passed and may make the physical symptoms feel less intense.

5. Use Cold Water or Another Physical Sensation to Ground Yourself

Sometimes it helps to give your brain something physical to focus on instead of the panic. Splashing cold water on your face, holding a cool washcloth, or taking a sip of cold water can help pull your attention back to what’s happening around you instead of the feelings inside your body. You can also try holding something with an interesting texture, pressing your feet firmly into the floor, or focusing on a familiar scent.

6. Focus on One Calm Image or Thought

Visualization gives your mind something specific to hold onto besides panic symptoms. Picture a familiar place where you feel safe. Imagine the panic as a wave that rises, peaks, and falls on its own. Or pick one object in the room and describe it to yourself in detail. The idea is to give your brain one steady point of focus so it has less room to pay attention to the panic symptoms. Try to stay with that image or object for a few minutes instead of jumping from thought to thought.

7. Stay Where You Are if It Is Safe

The urge to escape during a panic attack is strong. But if you’re somewhere safe, leaving every time panic starts can reinforce the idea that the place itself was dangerous and make you more likely to avoid it the next time.

Instead, sit down somewhere safe, give the symptoms time to decrease, and use the breathing and grounding techniques above. One important exception is if you’re driving, operating equipment, or somewhere physically unsafe, get to a safe spot as soon as possible. Repeated avoidance can become part of panic disorder, and over time it can reduce the list of places and activities someone feels able to handle.