Anxiety attacks are no fun.

As someone who has had quite a few of them, I know firsthand. They make me feel horrible — I shake, I feel nauseous, I sweat, and my heart beats fast. My mom has really bad anxiety too, and she used to get anxiety attacks every morning without fail. She’s still a very anxious person, and so am I — our anxiety actually feeds off of each other sometimes. Because of this, over the years, I’ve discovered a few techniques for how to deal with anxiety attacks that work for me, and I wanted to share them all with you.

In this blog post, I am going to go over ways how to deal with anxiety attacks.

But first, I’m going to explain what anxiety attacks are and how they affect you. Because, believe it or not, anxiety attacks are more than just a mental thing, they affect you physically as well.

So, what are anxiety attacks?

Anxiety attacks are when your feelings of anxiety become so strong that your body goes into fight or flight. The reaction gets set off, and you can feel like you’re in real danger. This causes physical symptoms to occur.

Here are some examples of the physical symptoms of anxiety attacks:

• shortness of breath
• heart palpations
• sweating
• irritability
• shaking
• nausea
• chest pain

This is just one part of anxiety attacks, we haven’t even touched on the mental turmoil yet. When your brain goes into fight or flight, you experience terror. All of a sudden, everything just feels wrong, and in extreme cases, you can fear for your life.

Why do these anxiety attacks happen? What causes them?

Anything can cause an anxiety attack — it all depends on your personal triggers. For me, my financial situation is a big thing. I am currently unemployed due to my chronic illnesses and if I think about the fact that I’m not making any money or that I’m not independent and on my own for too long, I start to get really freaked out about it.

But, like I said, this can be anything. Mine is because I have no job, but yours could be because of your job. It could be because of your family, or it could just simply be because of the state of the world we live in. It can be hard out here, it’s completely understandable why that could stress you out to the point of having an anxiety attack.

One thing I wanna say is, if you can identify your triggers, you might be able to prevent anxiety attacks in the first place with help from the techniques on this list. Keep that in mind as you read on.

As you can see, anxiety attacks are no joke. Not only do they affect you mentally, they also affect you physically. So, how do we deal with anxiety attacks?

Do Breathing Exercises

This is one of the main ones that people say, and for good reason. When you have an anxiety attack, your breathing gets all wonky and out of control. If you can get your breathing back under control, the rest of the symptoms will eventually follow suit. So, it’s a good idea to have a few breathing exercises in your back pocket to fall back on, you can pull them out when you need them.

I’ll give you a few examples of my favorites so that you can try them!

• Count your breaths. 1 on the inhale, 2 on the exhale, all the way up to 10, and then start over. Try and breathe deeply and slowly for this. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth,
• Do the 4-7-8 breathing technique. Inhale for 4 seconds, hold it for 7, and then exhale for 8. This helps reduce anxiety, and also helps with sleep if you do it at night in bed.
• Box breathing. This is when you pick a number, say 4, and breathe in a “square”. Inhale for 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, and then pause for 4 again.

Practice Mindfulness

I’m sure you’re wondering, “Why would I want to practice mindfulness in the middle of a panic attack? I don’t want to pay attention to how I’m feeling!” But the thing is, if you let yourself feel what you’re feeling, you can get through it easier. How? Let me explain. If you recognize you’re out of breath, you can slow down and try to do breathing exercises. If you realize you’re feeling irritable, you can explain to people that something is wrong. You can understand that it’s time to start doing everything on this list, and that is one of the best ways how to deal with anxiety attacks.

Begin Meditating

This one might be awkward to do if you’re in public, but if you’re having an anxiety attack, it’s worth giving a try. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to ground yourself. This is why I go on and on about meditation — if you practice it often, you’ll be able to do it when you need it. In this post, I go over a few meditation techniques you can try, but I am going to put them in this post as well so you don’t have to go hunt it down.

Here are a few meditation techniques that you can try:

“Here are a few examples of techniques. One is called “visualization” and it’s where you, well, visualize something. For example, you can visualize (when it’s time for bed), that all your muscles are shutting off for the night. Or, (in the middle of the day), imagine your body is slowly filling with sunlight and making you warm.

Another one is called “noting”. For this one, you just sit with yourself and let yourself think and feel things, and when you do, you organize them into “thoughts” and “feelings”. I like to visualize two sides in my head separated by a line, and I “slide” each thought or feeling to the side they’re supposed to go.”

I suggest “noting” for anxiety attacks. It gives you the chance to separate your thoughts from your feelings, and this gives you a chance to think critically about what is going on. This might or might not get you out of the anxiety attack, but it is a good exercise and might help you be able to prevent anxiety attacks in the future.

Talk to Someone You Trust

If you can talk through what you are going through with someone you trust, you can start to work through it. It’s like therapy — when you talk, when someone bears witness, you begin to heal. So, find someone you trust, and if you don’t have someone you trust around, talk to yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Talk out loud! It doesn’t matter where you are, you can either whisper to yourself or just think in your head. The point is to offer yourself some support.

Keep a Journal

I am always recommending this one. In this post, I go over several different kinds of journals to keep. I think the best one for anxiety attacks is a stream-of-consciousness journal. This is exactly what it sounds like — you just get out your journal and write everything that is going through your head down on the paper (or whatever medium you choose to journal with). This gets it all out! It literally removes the thoughts and feelings from your brain and puts them into the world.

Practice Self-Care

If you take care of yourself often, you’ll be more likely to have fewer anxiety attacks. In this post, I go over a bunch of different ways to practice self-care. I know we live in a world that doesn’t exactly encourage us to put ourselves first, but it’s so important! If we don’t put ourselves first, we eventually can’t do anything else. We break down, and it really becomes a problem for us.

I think a lot of people worry about doing self-care because it makes them feel selfish. I know that’s how I felt about it at first. But since my health has gotten worse, I’ve realized the true importance of taking care of yourself. It’s like that thing everyone says about the masks that come down on airplanes — put it on yourself first, and then put it on the person next to you. That’s not selfish, it’s just practical.

Be Gentle With Yourself

This one is the most important thing of all. If you aren’t gentle and self-compassionate with yourself, your anxiety attack is going to last longer. Think about it, if you keep calling yourself stupid, you’re going to keep feeling stupid (not that having anxiety attacks makes you stupid, I just know from personal experience that I’m sometimes mean to myself during anxiety attacks). If you are gentle with yourself, you’re giving yourself a chance.

In Conclusion…

I’m so sorry if you experience anxiety attacks. Like we’ve been over, they’re no fun. I hope that you’ve found something here that will be helpful for you, as they have been helpful for me.

If you’re someone here looking for information to help a loved one of yours who gets anxiety attacks, I want to thank you for recognizing the severity of anxiety attacks. They’re a very common thing, but a lot of people don’t take them seriously. Good for you for caring.

Thank you for reading!

— Bee <333