Two speakers explain how gratitude and focusing on the present moment can ease anxiety and panic attacks. They suggest reframing a diagnosis as a gift, keeping a gratitude journal for everyday things like breathing, and using a grounding technique of noticing what you see, smell, feel, and hear to shift out of worry and into your body.
This is actually a gift that I now have a diagnosis and I, I get to take care of myself. So if you can reframe it with an attitude of gratitude, you're already conquering it, right?
And like Ashley said, learn to look for the gratitude. Gratitude journaling is huge. There's a really short book and it teaches you to look all around you and see the just like the miracle of taking a breath, like what's happening on a level to make that breath happen? Or you go outside, what, what miracle is happening to make that grass grow? Like, you can, you can get small, you can look. Oh my goodness, there's so many blessings, so many miracles all around us. We just have to take time to look.
That action of like paying attention to the present moment is actually how you get yourself or someone out of a panic attack. So if you have anxiety to the level that you are hyperventilating, your heart is racing, you're physically feeling that anxiety of a panic attack, it is because you are worrying about something in the future that hasn't happened. And the solution is to pay attention to the present. What do I see? What do I smell? What can I feel? What can I hear? And you get oriented back to the present moment and get into that attitude of gratitude. Your body will shift out of that panic attack. And so it's like we need to do this on a micro level, as soon as the anxiety starts. And so if you do it every day, you won't go into crazy anxiety and panic, hopefully, unless there's a medical issue going on, obviously. But so much of this is controllable. And I want you to be encouraged that we have way more control over our body than our doctors make us think that we do, right?
