hi: Well done! It's like an acceptance of it and not fighting it. So if the fear of the fear is not there, it will fade. Like paradox, tell your heart to go ahead and beat faster, you don't care. Tell your legs to feel wobbly, you don't care, you'll wait it out, etc. I first did this yrs. ago when I was extremely busy and had lots to do. As I was working at it, a panic attack was starting. I still remember to this day what I did and said out loud. It was in a fed up, sarcastic kind of way: "Go ahead, do what you have to do, I'm busy, I'm doing what I have to do", and it vanished.
i really like this and actually used it today too, i had my first panic attack in a few weeks and sat down and collected my thoughts as why my symptoms were occurring, and just affirming that i survived way worse than this and my attack stopped dead in its tracks.
I just went a whole six days without an attack. Ah, that feels great! :D My anxiety level did sometimes raise to a 3 or 4 on those days, but I was able to use breathing and coping statements to calm myself down really easily. Today I ended up having a panic attack around 5:30 PM, bummer. It got to about a 5, maybe a 6, sometimes its hard to differentiate. They sure are hard to deal with when you haven't had one in a while. This one was a bit unexpected, I felt a spike in my anxiety, but then I thought I had calmed it down. But after about 5 minutes or so I noticed it a bit too late I suppose. I was able to stop it from going any higher though. I journaled, but this time I took a different approach. Usually I just journal what happened a bit before the attack and what is going on at the time. But this time I journaled about why I get the symptoms, how I don't have to worry about them, that they are not harmful, that I can accept that I'm having an attack and I'm having these feelings and thoughts, that me going through them and knowing that I am fine is just reinforcing that fact to my brain, and I can get through them now and in the future. It worked pretty darn good, a lot better than my earlier journaling. And then another attack tried to spring up on me around 8 PM, this time I was a bit more prepared for it and it only got to around a 3 or 4, but I did my new journaling technique and that's why I was able to keep it from going any higher and it was over with pretty quickly too.
I wanted to share this so that people could see what I started doing for my journaling, and maybe add this kind of technique into their current one or start doing something like this instead. And also for the new people in case they wanted a bit of insight of maybe how they could do their journaling. I hope this thread can give some good information and most importantly, some hope! :D
