By Renee Pullman

If you want to learn how to stop a panic attack you need to remember this: sometimes the opposite of what you think is true.

Panic attacks usually start when an anxious thought enters the mind and your body reacts to the thought.  Sometimes you feel a reaction in the stomach because there are lots of nerve endings there, sometimes it’s the chest, the body responds in many ways but you know it is a fear response.  Your mind tries to move away from this thought, to push it aside, but because of the body’s response your mind cannot seem to help turning it over and over in spite of trying to push it out.  The strategy of trying to stop the anxious thought doesn’t work.

Consider something completely different and then I’ll tie it to panic attacks.  You are driving your car in the snow and you go into a skid.  At that point every instinct about you is telling you to slam on the brakes and turn opposite of the way the car is skidding.  Experts tell us to do 3 things to break out of a skid:  1. release the breaks, 2. turn into the skid, 3. accelerate slightly — this works, but go figure.

It is often the same counter-intuitive methods that can stop a panic attack.  The thought comes and you begin to feel tension in your body and with every bit of rational thought left in you – you think you’ve got to get rid of the thought; you’ve got to get your mind on something else.  You are focused on that one thought and your mind begins to spin out of control and you keep trying to escape the thought.  Like the car in a skid the thing that common sense seems to tell you to get out of the skid, out of the anxiety is making it worse.

So how do you stop a panic attack?  Like recovering a car from a skid doesn’t follow your instincts, instead here are three quick things to do.

1. Let the thought in.  Say to yourself that you are doing something different this time that you are not concerned with the thought.
2. Label the thought.  Say to yourself: this is a fear of and then whatever the fear is about.
3. Observe it.  Just watch the thought, perhaps it will change and intensify at first, if so go back to step one and go through the three steps again.

And that’s it, a three step strategy that puts you on the way to learning how to stop a panic attack.