If you've ever had a panic attack on a
plane or just panic attacks in general, you're going to want to hear about the
story sent in from one of my viewers. So we're going to go through his story step
by step, and I'm going to show you exactly what he did to end his panic attacks after
30 years of panic disorder. And by the end of this video you'll have a blueprint
you can follow to help calm your panic attacks. So here's the problem: most of the advice
you've been given about panic attacks backfires. So think about it. You're in this intense, panicky
state, and everyone tells you that you just need to take slow breaths to calm yourself down. Who's
ever teaching people that they should just focus on their breathing while they're having a panic
attack, I'm pretty sure you've never had a panic attack in your entire life. And if that actually
worked you wouldn't be here watching this video. The sneaky thing about panic attacks is that
the more you try to to control your symptoms, the more you accidentally tell your brain that
those symptoms are dangerous. And it makes your heartbeat faster and your breathing speed up
and you start to feel dizzier and more panicky. But this guy figured it out. And I love how he
explains it. So here's what Jon wrote me. He said, "I have suffered with panic disorder for 30 years,
usually triggered by travel. And I've been told over and over again that I needed to learn how
to calm myself down. So I learned to meditate, to use breathing techniques. I spent countless
hours in therapy. I tried hypnotherapy, EMDR, EFT, etc., but nothing worked completely. I certainly
became a more chilled and mindful person, and I got better at managing the symptoms.
But I still lived in the fear of the what-ifs, the super panic attack that my skills couldn't
control." So Jon got all the common advice you'd expect about stopping a panic attack, which
basically consists of, "Geez, just calm down, bro. Take a deep breath." And this is like
surprisingly common advice which those of you watching this video already know is unsurprisingly
unhelpful with panic disorder. But then Jon had this realization. So he said, "I had read the
advice of running toward and embracing anxiety in the book Dare by Barry McDonagh, but now I
realize I didn't get it at all. I was trying to embrace it by being zen-like, by observing
and letting the feelings move through me, but I was still giving the feelings ultimate
control and treating them as something to endure. So 2 weeks ago I was due to fly on
a family holiday from the UK to Austria, and I was beside myself with anxiety. A fellow
panic disorder sufferer even gave me some Valium, which I was planning to take as a last resort.
But the day before we left I stumbled across your video, and it finally clicked. Stop trying to
calm yourself. Stop trying to distract yourself. So I wrote down my panic stories and I gave them
numbers." Okay. So let me explain what Jon is talking about by first by explaining what panic
stories are. So panic stories are the stories, the lies that your brain starts telling you when
you start to experience the physical symptoms of panic. So here's some examples. Um let's say
you're stressing over a deadline at work and you start to feel nervous in your body. And your
panic story may sound like, "Oh, it would be awful if my anxiety took over right now." Or if you have
a fear of spiders and you're staring at one right now and you notice your breathing is becoming
quicker and more shallow. So your story might be, "What if I pass out?" Maybe you're trying to
get healthy by starting to work out again, and you notice that your heart is pounding. So
your panic story might be, "I'm having a heart attack. What if this is a heart attack? What if
I die?" Right? and then another panic story is, "Oh, I have to make these feelings go away. I
have to force myself to calm down." So these panic stories typically follow a pattern. There's
there's the trigger - like from these examples, the work deadline or the spider or the workout
- and then there's the physical symptoms - so the nervousness, the shallow breathing, the heart
pounding - and then there are the panic stories, which are your brain trying to convince you that
those sensations, those feelings in your body are dangerous and that you have to control your
physical response. But trying to control your panic just makes your brain feel like you're
in more danger, so it increases your anxiety, and that spiral fuels panic attacks. So the
first skill is learning to recognize these thoughts as being stories and that they're not
necessarily true. So going back to Jon's story, we know he gets triggered when he flies on
a plane. When he's on the plane he starts to experience physical symptoms of anxiety. And in
the past he's tried all kinds of strategies to calm down, but that fueled the panic attacks. So
this time he tried something different. He said, "I got on the plane, and as the door closed the
anxiety began to rise." He started thinking, "Uh-oh, I'm feeling my heart pound. What if I
have a panic attack? That would be catastrophic. I have to make myself calm down." But instead
of believing that he just labeled it. He said, "'Ah, this is panic story number two.' And I
looked up. I turned off my headphones. And I started pumping my legs and tapping my knees,
trying to get myself agitated so that I could create this fabled super panic attack." But the
more before he tried to feel that panic attack, it never came. "The anxiety slowly drifted away,
and I went back to watching Netflix." So that's the second essential skill. Instead of engaging
in a massive struggle with your sensations, trying to force them to go away, you show your
brain that you're actually safe by just saying, "This is a curious sensation. I can handle feeling
my heart pound. I can handle feeling dizzy. Bring it on. Let's see if I can make it more intense.
Let's see if I can make my heart pound harder. Let's see if I can make myself dizzier." So if
you want to stop panic, you have to be willing to have it. So you can break the cycle of anxiety
and panic by just trying to make yourself feel panicky. What you're actually doing is quenching
the cycle of accidentally telling your brain that those sensations are dangerous. So that's how
Jon did it. He said, "I repeated this exercise every time I felt my panic rising, and when the
plane landed, my mind was blown. I had just flown without having a panic attack. how is this even
possible? There were more occasions during the holiday when anxiety threatened me with a panic
attack, but I dealt with it in the same way." The more I willed it to happen, the more I tried
to create it, to grasp that panic attack, the further away it felt. I almost cannot believe it
was so simple to confront. All along it was just a paper tiger. So thank you so much for this video.
It sounds trite to say it has changed my life, but it really has. I grieve for the experiences
I have missed and the time I have lost to panic disorder, but I can now look to the future with
hope. Jon." So just to summarize, here's what Jon did: one, he learned to question his stories about
panic, that the physical sensations are dangerous or that feeling panicky is catastrophic. And
then number two, he dropped the struggle to force himself to calm down, and instead - number
three - he said, "Bring it on" by willing himself to have panic symptoms. And by doing that he showed
his brain that these symptoms are actually safe. And doing that stopped the panic attack cycle. This
is so cool, Jon. So thank you so much for sharing your example. Um if you want to watch the whole
series that Jon was referring to you can just Google "therapy in a nutshell panic attack playlist,"
or you can click the link in the description. And that's where I teach the difference between an
anxiety attack and a panic attack, um how to make space for your sensations, and how to break the
cycle of anxiety and panic. And then I've also got two extra videos. They're walkthroughs um so that
you can practice the two different approaches to managing panic attacks. And um if you found this
video helpful and you want to learn more about how your emotions work or how to deal with your
own anxiety or depression, be sure to check out my courses How to Process Emotions or Breaking
the Anxiety Cycle. Okay. Hope that's helpful. Take care. [Music]
