Hi Jazz, I might have missed if you take any meds to help with relaxing you. Therapy was not very helpful and meds pretty well eliminated the actual attacks for me. What I still experience, is that up and down of fears and worries. That at times does give me strange effects, including shallow breathing, sweating, and trembling. There are many methods of options to help. Sadly there are so many different types and triggers for anxiety. There are a couple of really good resources here (people) that could share some helpful information. I'll pm you a couple of names (links) that you might want to friend. Hugs!

I get that, thankfully I'm mainly at home when panic attacks happen so I lay down on my bed and wait it out, I get really light headed and dizzy so it's just as well I lay down.
If I'm out in public though, I'll just stop and find a quiet place and try and calm myself.

Yes, that is super normal. I will tell you the two things that stopped my panic attacks. I used to get them terribly and I never get them anymore. Now keep in mind, that nobody ever likes this advice and it makes people want to throw rotten fruit at me, but this is what worked for me.

First thing that helped me was just saying "If I'm going to panic, lets go big or go home. Lets do it."

And I would stop whereever I was, at the store, at home, wherever and just say "let's panic and lets make it a good one". And then I would wait for the massive storm to come and prepare myself to for the ultimate freak out.

And it never came. As soon as I abandoned my fear and just completely gave myself to go batshit panicky, pardon my language, the urge to panic died down almost immediately.

Now I know that not everybody is going to be down with that. 95% of the people I tell that to, think its a terrible idea and say "Well I can't do that. There is no way I could let myself freak out like that. What if I never stopped? What if somebody saw me?"

But I finally got to the point where I was so tired of running from that beast that I faced him head on and he is just a big coward because as soon as you turn around and look him dead in the eye and say "Bring it on,"...he backs down. But you have to commit to this with your heart and soul and it takes a certain level of disgust to get to this point, and fortunately for me, I hit that low point and I didn't care who saw me, or what happened to me, I was not going to be a prisoner anymore.

So that's the first thing I did, and that worked great for a while, but then i just educated myself and grew as a person and I woke up one day and I realized that the best way to stop a panic attack was to simply stop panicking.

That's the part people REALLY hate to hear, so please don't send me nasty messages because I already know what most people think of this idea. I've heard it all.

But honestly, I don't believe in panic attacks. I don't think I was being "attacked" by anything. I think I was just overly sensitized and in a hyped up state all the time from all the adrenaline I was making and I think I was freaking out all the time over nothing. I mean literally, nothing. The tiniest thought or feeling that I may not even have been aware I thought or felt, would be enough to send me into hysterics.

And one day I just thought, I wonder what would happen if I just calmed down. There is a novel idea, right? And it was just like a lightbulb moment I had, and the next time I started getting panicky, I calmed down. I didn't just say "Oh I wish I could calm down. " I mean that I calmed down. In the verb sense. Calming down is something you do and I did it.

And ever since I made the connection that I was not being attacked by panic and that I was literally just panicking the say way that everybody panics, only over smaller stuff, then I completely quit having panic attacks because they never became out of my control again.

I never knew WHY I was panicking so I assumed my brain must be panicking, not me. But it was me the whole time....it just all happened so fast that I never knew what I was panicking about. .So I assumed I had nothing to do with it.

But now I know that all it takes is one bad thought, one bad feeling, even if I am asleep, one subconscious thought could be enough to wake me up and feel odd and start freaking out. And the whole process from thought or feeling to straight up panic...could happen in a nano second practically.

So to summarize, if you are still reading this and didn't quit reading this three paragraphs ago, there is nothing physically I did to permanently stop them. It was all mental.

Really..... just calming down and taking care of our mental health and recognizing the fact that we are very sensitive people who need a little extra TLC when things get rough.....to me that is the secret to gaining control of and living with anxiety. .

I'm not here to tell anybody that they don't have chemical brain imbalances or misfiring parts of their brain that make them panic because if that is what you believe then that is none of my business and you know what is best about you and your brain.

But that is what helped me and my panic and anxiety.

That was too long. Sorry.

Fleurdelisa27,
No rotten fruit here. I agree that the mental aspect has a lot to do with overcoming panic. I have had panic attacks and driven to the ER parking lot if Im not too far away. Not actually going into the ER , just sitting outside until it passes. If it were purely physical this would make no difference. The feeling of security helped me calm down..all mental.
So what happens if nowhere near anything that makes me feel secure?
I plug in my I Pod with very calming music , breathe slowly and deeply,
2 seconds in , 4 seconds out. I find an object and make myself name ten things about it. There's a tree.. it has gray bark, it has rough bark , it has leaves, the leaves are green. it's very tall , etc.
These are about taking back control of my mind which started the attack in the first place.