Trigger warning: I make mention of a scary experience I had, without too many details. If you’d rather not know about it, skip down to the heading STEP 1.
This question was given to me recently by someone who said they startle easily, and then occasionally that develops into a full blown anxiety attack.
I’m going to relate this to how I recovered from a big fright and how I learnt to then manage smaller episodes as they came up with some simple steps that you can borrow for yourself.
My Experience
A few years ago I was in a home invasion incident that left me quite rattled. It involved a man who was very disorientated from drug use and luckily I managed to scare him off.
In the first 72 hours or so afterward, even catching a shadow flicker out of the corner of my eye would frighten me instantly and then leave me crying and exhausted as I came down from the adrenaline response.
To recover from that incident I initially saw a counselor, but I felt that overall I was doing OK and I believed that with my knowledge and experience in managing anxiety I could steadily rebuild my confidence. And I did.
How I Recovered
The first step was to simply give myself time to be a bit more jumpy than usual.
I needed to acknowledge that I’d been through a ‘thing’, that it didn’t matter if it could have been worse or not, and it certainly didn’t matter that my response to it may have been more or less dramatic than anyone else’s response.
I decided it was perfectly OK to be a bit more flighty for a while.
It’s In Our DNA
If you tend to startle easily or seem to have panic attacks for no reason, just remember that going back to our earliest history, the people who were more anxious and on edge were the ones more likely to survive.
Startling easily was an evolutionary advantage!
That doesn’t make it any more pleasant I know, but don’t beat yourself up if it seems like you’re the only one going through it (you’re not), or if your family/friends/partner don’t understand it. I do, as do many other anxious folk, and scientifically, it’s not so abnormal after all.
Look After Yourself
I then told my husband that I didn’t want to be home alone for a little while, and I asked someone at my workplace (a yoga studio at the time) to mention what had happened to everyone so that I didn’t feel the need to explain myself, for any reason, over the coming weeks to months.
I didn’t go out for walks by myself for quite some time and I also asked the owners at the yoga studio if I could just hang out between sessions so that I didn’t have to go home to an empty house.
I did choose to continue some things that scared me – such as opening up the hall I taught yoga in at 6am in the dark, on my own…
This was a personal decision, and if I didn’t feel up to it, I wouldn’t have bothered trying to persist with it. However, I knew that if I stopped doing all of the things that made me uncomfortable, it would be much more challenging to start doing them again.
And just so you know, I had to coach myself through those early mornings for quite some time until I felt OK with them again. (Although opening up a hall on your own in the dark never feels entirely comfortable!)…
Finally, when I did get a fright or feel an attack coming with that overwhelming sense of panic, I took a few steps to “talk myself through it”.
Step 1.
I allowed myself the space to have whatever reaction was about to happen, knowing that it was my sympathetic nervous system in a fight or flight response, that my brain had instructed my body to do it, and that it had nothing to do with any conscious thought process of mine.
When the physical stuff comes up during an anxiety attack, I try to think of it like the painful part of a deep tissue massage, or the necessary sting of an injection you need to have, or even that first few moments of going into a cold swimming pool.
It’s not pleasant, but it’s happening and it will be over soon, you just need to let your body have its little ‘moment’.
Remember just like you can’t change the temperature of the swimming pool, there is no need to try to change the immediate physical response your body is having.
Step 2.
Mentally, you have to be your own parent or coach and remind yourself “it’s just a nervous system reaction”, “just breathe”, “stay with yourself here”…
Try to detach from the urge to get swept up in panic, knowing that it’s not really you that wants to do that, it’s your brain’s survival response trying to take over.
Imagine yourself as a guardian to the little person inside of you that’s freaking out!
Put your arm around that little person and just be there for her knowing that if you are calm, then very soon, she will be calm too.
This may take as little as a few breaths, or a few minutes at first, but trust in this process of parenting your inner little person and continue to separate yourself from your brain’s intention to cause panic. It’s not you.
Step 3.
Importantly, each time you get through an attack, smile BIG and congratulate yourself because you did it!
This is not just a ‘yay me’ celebration but an important part of rewiring your brain to minimise these attacks.
Smiling and celebrating releases feel good hormones that help to switch off the stress response and activate the parasympathetic nervous system that helps you relax.
Acknowledging that you overcame the attack will also help you to really cement the fact that you CAN get through these experiences. You’re giving your subconscious mind a little memo to say “Nice try! But I’m onto you, and I’m not buying into that panic stuff anymore.”
You Can Reduce Anxiety Attacks
These steps may seem simple, but by allowing the reaction to happen as if you have no control over it (because at first, you don’t), you speed up the process of getting to the other side.
When you resist the physical response, your brain and body inevitably end up in a bar fight – a vicious cycle where panic continues to build causing a spiraling effect and the attack then lasts much longer than it needs to.
By practicing these steps you will be able to get through these moments with much more control and actually begin to reduce the length and the frequency that you experience anxiety attacks because you are training your brain in the response you desire to have, instead of the automatic survival response.
Finally, if you want to go one step further and reduce your chances of having an attack in the first place, (the holy grail but so possible!), you need to know your triggers and your warning signs, and then use daily strategic steps to get your baseline anxiety level down so that the threshold to a full blown attack creeps further and further away.
Kelly Moriarty
Ex-veterinarian, women’s success and anxiety coach, yoga teacher and entrepreneur.
Kelly is the founder of The Green Body Plan and The Circle mentorship program, a revolutionary approach to healing from chronic stress and anxiety & reconnecting to your power and purpose.
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