Latest / Float: The Anxiety Podcast with Dr John Eaton PhD / How To Stop A Panic Attack

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How To Stop A Panic Attack · Float: The Anxiety Podcast with Dr John Eaton PhD

• 0:00
  The first time you have a panic hotel It can seem to come completely out of
• 0:04
  nowhere You might be walking around a supermarket,
• 0:08
  Sitting in a meeting Or going into a lift And then suddenly your heart starts
• 0:14
  slamming your breathing drops,
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  The room seems to tilt slightly You may feel dizzy or shaky Or strangely detached,
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  And then a verdict arrives with complete
• 0:27
  conviction Something terrible is happening I need to get out of here,
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  And after you've had a few of them You may notice a pattern Same place,
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  same situation Same kind of event And then the panic becomes predictable But
• 0:43
  it doesn't stop And what you really want to know is What makes it stop?
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  That's what I'm going to talk about today And the answer may seem slightly strange,
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  Panic attacks stop When you stop trying to make them stop.
• 1:11
  Welcome back to FLOAT, I'm Dr. John Eaton. Now, here's the first thing to understand about panic.
• 1:19
  It's entirely automated. You don't decide to have a panic attack.
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  Your brain's threat system is creating
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  one as it's predicting something happening now could be dangerous.
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  That something could be entirely negligible, like feeling uncomfortable in a lift, for example.
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  And yet, adrenaline is released, your heart rate increases, your breathing drops,
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  your muscles tense, your body prepares itself.
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  You may feel sick or lightheaded or shaky, and on top of all those physical
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  sensations, the storyteller in your brain starts giving you some predictions.
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  You're losing control. You're going to collapse.
• 2:02
  You could die from this. That's why panic can feel like the most dangerous thing in the world.
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  And yet, a panic attack by itself isn't dangerous.
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  It's extremely unpleasant and disturbing,
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  But the sensations themselves are simply the result of your body's alarm system
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  doing what it was designed to do, except the alarm as pain turned out far too high,
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  rather like an over-sensitive smoke alarm in your kitchen.
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  It isn't broken, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing,
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  but it's simply misinterpreting burnt toast as a house fire.
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  There's something else that's also important to understand. Panic attacks don't
• 2:49
  just keep going indefinitely.
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  They rise, they reach a peak, and then the body's arousal mechanism gradually begin to fall away.
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  Your body can't remain at maximum sympathetic arousal for too long.
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  The one thing, it doesn't have enough adrenaline.
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  So there's already a natural closure built into the whole experience.
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  The problem is that we often make the attack last longer by trying desperately
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  to make it go away, which is where the loop comes in.
• 3:24
  I describe this loop in float as an interaction between three systems.
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  First there's the threat detector, something small happened,
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  perhaps a passing sensation in your body, the door closing, entering a supermarket,
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  and a match comes up of something your brain has learned to identify with danger in the past.
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  So the alarm fires.
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  When it fires, the analyst gets to work. It starts trying to explain why the alarm has gone off.
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  But when you're firing, the analyst isn't particularly good at giving you a
• 4:01
  calm and balanced explanation. It will always give you the worst.
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  What if you're having a heart attack? What if something else is seriously wrong?
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  Maybe you should go to the hospital.
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  And then comes the storyteller it takes all these feelings and sensations and
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  reactions and thoughts turns them into a story about you and the immediate future,
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  you can't cope you're losing control this is going to get worse,
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  and then you react to that story and you become more upset and when you react
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  that way that signal goes straight back to the threat detector and it presses the alarm again.
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  The analyst notices the alarm going off again and uses it as evidence for the
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  claim that something really must be wrong.
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  And then the storyteller produces even more frightening predictions.
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  And round it goes. Alarms, thoughts, stories, reactions, more alarms, that's the loop.
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  Nothing has become more dangerous than going simply locked into a feedback system
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  that won't close. So here we have to ask ourselves what keeps the loop going
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  beyond its natural phase.
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  Well, there are four things that are going on that we should be sensible about.
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  The first one is that we begin to get anxious or panicky about the panic itself.
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  We get sensitized to it and then we start becoming vigilant for any signs that it's coming back.
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  The second one is that when it does happen, we resist it.
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  We don't want it to be there and we think, Oh, what's reacting?
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  What's happening? Why is this going on again?
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  And when that happens, we force ourselves to calm down. We try and hold our breath.
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  We grip the steering wheel. We tense up. We might tell ourselves, Stop, stop, stop.
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  And that's the resistance. and when that resistance goes out that sends yet
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  another message to the brain this really is an emergency,
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  it's a bit like a runaway horse if you try to wrestle a runaway horse you're
• 6:18
  likely to make things worse and you're likely to get injured too because that
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  horse has a lot of energy so what we do is we let it run,
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  and we let it run around and gradually it's going to run out of adrenaline it's
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  going to slow down and it's going to come to a stop That's the principle we're using with panic.
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  Now, the next thing we might try to do around panic is something called avoidance.
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  And this is possibly the most costly one over time.
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  We leave the supermarket, we pull off the motorway, we get up,
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  we lift, we leave the meeting, in the hope of doing that makes things better.
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  And as it happens, we do feel better when we do that.
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  But a problem is now created, because your brain's learning something you really don't want it to learn.
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  He concludes the supermarket was dangerous. The lift was dangerous.
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  The meeting was dangerous.
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  Leaving saved me.
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  Leaving worked. And that learning makes the alarm more likely to go off the
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  next time you're in the same situation or in similar situations.
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  Gradually, your brain will create a long list of places that you really need to start avoiding.
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  Though although the avoidance makes you feel better now it made the panic more likely later.
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  So what can we do? What is the float away?
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  Well the basic answer is not to struggle with anything. Stop feeding the panic.
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  And there are four useful things here that would be good to remember.
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  The first is just to practice awareness and notice what's happening neutrally.
• 8:02
  Reminding yourself this is just a loop. But then you give it an accurate name,
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  And it's really better not to call it a panic attack Because nothing's under
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  attack It's just a misfiring brain signal,
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  So why not call it there, the loop And say to yourself The loop is back That's
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  all You don't have to analyze it You don't have to work out why it's happening,
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  Just call it the name The loop is back.
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  And the second one is allowing what's happening to happen. Now this can be tricky,
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  because the sensations are great.
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  However, you can remind yourself that this is a misfiring signal.
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  This is the loop and you can notice your heart going at its own rate.
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  You can maybe notice your arms or your body shaking.
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  You can notice your breath getting faster or slower. You can let thought come and go.
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  Just like you're watching it on a movie you don't have to like the movie you don't have to want it,
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  but you don't have to argue with it either it's just your alarm going off and
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  it's just the body doing what it's doing and it's just creating a loop.
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  And related to that is what we call witnessing and I hinted at this earlier,
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  it's really like watching the movie and stepping back from it you don't have
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  to believe everything that's going on in the movie You don't have to believe
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  every thought that comes along.
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  You don't have to believe any of those predictions.
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  And you can watch the three systems doing what they do. You can watch the storyteller,
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  giving you all these dire predictions.
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  You can notice the analyst producing a stream of worrisome thoughts.
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  You can notice the threat detector pressing the feeling of alarm.
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  And you don't have to stop any of that. You can just watch that movie.
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  And it's rather like watching a storm from inside your house.
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  You look up and the wind blows The rain falls The thunder rolls And you're not
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  going to stop the storm You're just going to watch you pass.
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  And that brings us to letting time pass.
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  This is surprisingly important because it has to do with giving your body,
• 10:17
  your brain, time to slow down, time to run out of juice, time to go back and reset the alarm.
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  But when you're panicking every second can feel like a long time because what
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  we want is we want everything to stop now and we get impatient when it does not.
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  So that becomes another form of resistance and it's time to let it go and it's
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  time to let time pass And to remind yourself this will rise,
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  it will peak and it will fall And you remember your nervous system already knows
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  how to slow down if you give it time and space And lastly, float.
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  That's the title of the book, Float.
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  We're not fighting the wave, we're floating past it. We're not trying to control
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  the wave, we're floating through it.
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  But we're not lying down and giving up either. We're simply allowing the wave
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  to pass through and continue with whatever is safe and appropriate to do in the moment.
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  So if you're in a supermarket, you can move forward with the cure.
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  If you're in a meeting you can let the meeting continue if you're in a lift
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  you can let the doors open and close if,
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  you're driving and it's safe to continue you can keep on driving and you don't
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  have to prove anything not because leaving is forbidden but because staying
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  rather than exiting gives your brain an important lesson,
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  when it sees that you're not struggling when it sees that you're not trying
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  to fix anything when it sees that you're not reacting,
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  when it sees that you're not avoiding anything.
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  Then you are confined to switch off and those feelings will fade away.
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  None of what I've said today means the next loop, if there is one, will be pleasant.
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  I'm not going to pretend the 5th of 13th of suddenly turn a huge series of adrenaline
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  into a relaxing experience.
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  They won't do that. But what they
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  will do is to stop your adding a second layer of anxiety to the first.
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  And in so doing to prolong the loop longer than it needs to go.
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  Just remember, the loop has a beginning, it has a peak.
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  And it will come to an end however if your panic attacks are frequent if they're,
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  beginning to seem a little too overwhelming and you've started avoiding more
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  and more places or situations because you're frightened of having another one,
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  then you don't have to deal with it on your own,
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  you can speak to your GP or you can speak to a therapist to understand panic
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  disorder or agoraphobia and can help you release it You really don't have to do this on your own.
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  I wish we pierced a nervous self-right.