In this short from Episode #5 on Mindfulness Chris shares a process to use Mindfulness to help if you are having a panic attack.
Show Transcript
Hello Through a Therapists Eyes tribe. This is correct, Craig Graves, your co-host coming to you today with a short again from Episode five on Mindfulness.
The last one we did, the last short we published was also from Episode five. Encourage you to check that out.
In this one, Chris walks through a process where you can use mindfulness to help yourself if you’re having a panic attack. And again, folks, this is not therapy or or treatment of any fashion.
If you’re having panic attacks, you should go see your doctor.
What he does is he shares a process that he steps his clients through to manage panic attacks and is very interesting to me because I had some experience personally with panic attacks 20 years ago or so.
And the default for me was was drugs, which I think it is for many people.
It was also interesting to me that I have a friend whose doctor did not prescribe drugs to her for panic attacks, but stepped her through a similar breathing process to the one that Chris is going to share with us on on this short segment.
So it’s about five, 10 minutes long. Check it out. Hope you enjoy it. And I’ll see you on the other side.
So how do we use that in therapy, I mean, we we can use that in regular everyday life. I wanted to comment about how we use that in therapy because it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a good thing to have is as part of your repertoire, if you’re a therapist out there really thinking about mindfulness.
We haven’t talked a lot about anxiety on the show yet. We definitely will. But. If you think about what happens with somebody that has anxiety, it’s it’s like almost the exact opposite of being mindful, you know, your thoughts are are. We’ll talk about how anxiety works. But trust me, it’s a biological process and in many instances and you start freaking out when you begin to become anxious. I mean, one thought leads to another, to another, to another.
And it bounced into other thoughts, that ramble all through your head.
And that’s like one of the worst things that you can do if you have anxiety is keep it ensnared in and trapped in your head because it just exemplifies it or that’s a bad word, accentuated, builds it up, makes it louder even to the point of having a panic attack. So there’s a cool, sort of trick, if you will, that I have gone through individually with people to demonstrate how mindfulness, but we hadn’t thought about it as mindfulness.
But it is how mindfulness can absolutely diffuse a panic attack, for instance. Mm hmm. So when you have a panic attack, your, you know, your heart rate goes way up and your blood pressure goes way up. You start feeling hot and clammy. You really get like, intensely panicky, thinking the world’s going to end or some disastrous thing is going to happen. He’s got to get out of this room. You feel claustrophobic. I mean, it’s scary.
People have gone to emergency rooms thinking they’re having a heart attack with it. So what? What we teach people, what we show people is to use your senses. To bring yourself because you get sort of disassociated and leave the room almost that you want to you want to bring your senses. Use your senses to bring yourself back into the room. So when you’re breathing hard and short of breath and freaking out, you look around in very clear detail what you can see and you say, even out loud, five things that you can see right now.
I can see the red button on that piece of equipment beeping. I can see the white piece of fabric on the red fabric we have here in the studio. I can see the rope on the blind over on the other side of the room and I can see your red hair. Right in the middle of you, for it was you must be imagining things. Then you go to your hearing and you listen. I can hear a hum from what must be air.
I heard my finger move. And I touched a chord. I heard that slight bump and then you move to your smell. You can maybe smell things. It’s good to bring a rose or a flower melet. Then you can get taste. Right. So you use your senses and then you repeat that if you’re still freaking out. Three more things that you can see. Three more things that you can hear. Three more things that you can feel in my pants leg.
Feel the chair. And you’d be amazed, like it snapped people back directly out of a panic attack, brings them right into the room. And that’s really the power of mindfulness. For people that have stressed out scary, intense panic attacks.
Interesting.
Yes. It’s really it’s like almost magical. Yeah.
Yeah. Personally, I’ve experienced panic attacks myself in the past year. Fifteen, twenty years or whatever. And normally what I’ve my experience with that has been people have, you know, people who have panic attacks or have had panic attack normally get prescribed drugs really quick.
Yeah. So to hear that there’s a way just to kind of bring yourself back into the present moment to deal with that is very interesting. And I do know somebody who went through an experience, panic attacks. And instead of putting her on a prescription, her doctor prescribed breathing. In order to focus on her breath.
And that’s the way that she was able to lick the panic it back. You know, if you will.
Breathing is a big part of that, too. There’s a few other things that, you know, you just try to get yourself reoriented. Right. Because, you know, when anxieties pass, you know, pack and fall that way, it’ll just take you away. I mean, course, you know, future disastrous event is about to happen. Yeah. It’s just not. That’s true. Mindfulness is a cool way to incorporate into not just daily life, but, you know, specific mental health factors that people are struggling with, but also personal relationships.
Let’s pivot and talk about that.
So how to use mindfulness to manage panic attacks. Folks, we hope that helps. We really do appreciate you guys tuning in. And if you haven’t heard, there’s a new way to support that, do it. Therapist as podcast. Chris and I have partnered with a company called Whole Family Products. If you go to our Web site through a therapist, does dot com click on the link there. There’s a little graphic.
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You can shop for nutritional supplements. Whole family products has CBD creams and oils, natural hormone creams, anti aging nutritional supplements, weight loss and sports nutrition. There’s one hundred and twenty six products there on that Web site.
And these are high quality products, guys.
I used to sell these on Amazon when I did an Amazon business and I got great reviews from some of the creams and products there. And have you some of their products myself.
And I can attest to the fact that they are high quality products. OK, that’s it, guys.
If you want to give us some feedback, you can e-mail Chryste directly at contact at to a therapist does dot com. Or you can go to our Web site and click on the Contact US link, where you can send a message anonymously or you can fill in your information there.
And Chris tries to respond to those e-mails promptly. OK, thanks a lot. And we’ll see you guys very, very soon.
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