How to Do Panic? 5 quick (though not easy) steps to heal.

All those t-shirts and coffee mugs stating keep calm and carry on… well that’s really not helping people with panic. The fact is, you need to DO panic rather than achieve the opposite. That is, Keep Panicking and Don’t Carry On! Simply panic, watch it’s magnificent impact on your body and wait for the show to end. Once it is over, then you can carry on.

Easy words to say, quite terrifying to do. But unfortunately, there is no choice. Panic grips the hearts of the fearful. Thus the fearful need to stand up, be brave and face the near death experience of the body’s very own fireworks.

The content of this article is written in comical form. The mindfulness based cognitive behaviour therapy model it draws from is indeed very much evidence based and peer reviewed.

Here is the following strategy for panic management:

1. Welcome your anxiety with open arms. The symptoms, the cognitions, the lot! Befriend it, it is your body, your mind after all. (Not doing so fuels anxiety further – so you really have no choice here, you are stuck with her/him, so embrace it).

2. What is your relationship to your anxiety? Is it hateful, regretful, fearful? Change that at once. Use understanding, compassion, respect.

3. Walk with your anxiety. Notice it in your body, name the feelings. Embrace the feelings.

4. Don’t run away. Your anxiety will follow you. Don’t wish it away as soon as possible, it will take offence and come back with a vengeance.

5. Anxiety is a wave, it builds, it peaks, it crashes. And then it passes. Be patient, wait for it to run its course. Don’t hurry it along… or there is a similar consequence as in step 4!