Panic attack

Hold Ice cubes, dunk your face in cold water, take a cold shower, temperature change is your best friend.

Grounding exercises like the 5-4-3-2-1 (listing things you can identify with your senses)

I’ve taken valerian root when I’m very anxious and it helps calm me down. I’m so sorry you’re going through that.

And physically writing down any racing thoughts / anything you wish you could’ve spoken on in therapy.

The grounding exercises didn't help me but the ice cube did the trick!! Thank you so much

I try to close my eyes and lay on my back with my feet flat on the floor, knees up. Then I try to identify 3 things I hear, 2 things I smell, and 1 thing I feel. And then I breathe in for 5 seconds, hold it for 3 seconds, and breathe out for 10 seconds

I’m not a professional by any means this is just what I do to try to calm down. You’re doing great

The ice / any temperature change is the fastest way to hack your brain out of it 🫶🏼🫂 glad it helped! You can change up the placement next time too! I put ice cubes behind my knees and squeeze sometimes that helps a lot too

Thank you everyone for your advice. Im crying because of all of you who care enough to help me. Im writing all the advice down for the next one as well. I hope you all have a wonderful week. 💙💙💙

I know you don’t want meds but I had propanol - they stop your heart from racing which did the trick for me. Then it got to the stage where I just needed the tablets *with* me and that was enough, now I occasionally think about them x

I also did the thing where you think about your toes, how do they feel, then my ankles, my calves, my knees - by the time I got to my thighs I was ok again usually. More grounding techniques like the ice etc!
Buuuut I will say I had a root cause of the panic attacks and really the only thing that truly solved it was solving that (in my case, domestic abuse) - but I know it’s not always that simple sometimes, our brains are so tricky sometimes. Sending big huge hugs x