I can not tell you how many times people ask me for instructions on how to do the right thing when they panic so that they can “calm down”.
Look I totally get this. Panic is terrifying and disturbing. When it happens, you just want it not be happening, and you want that immediately. So the knee-jerk reaction is to try frantically to “use the tools” so that you can calm down. I’m not blaming anyone for wanting it to be over. Everyone wants it to be over. That’s OK.
But that being said. Here is a thing that you need to hear even if you don’t want to hear it.
Stop trying so damn hard to calm down. You’re making things worse.
Panic is a physiological thing. It’s biology. It’s chemistry. When you enter into a state of full blown panic your body is responding to a threat that your brain thinks may exist, so it sends all kinds of signals that fire off all kinds of chemical processes that create the state we call panic. When that happens, there is no magic kill switch that makes it go away within seconds. Those chemicals have to circulate and be metabolized. The kill switch is time. It’s a gradual drop off, not an instant change of state.
When you see that you are about to panic or in a state of panic, it’s simply too late to “calm down”. That ship has sailed. The launch sequence has been activated. The only thing you can do is ride it out.
Trying to remember how to calm down is like trying frantically to teach the sun how to set at the end of a day. You can do that if you want to, and you can claim credit when it happens, but we all know that the sun was going to set no matter what you did. In the end, panic is going to end no matter what you do. It can take longer to end, or it the ending can come sooner. That kinda depends on you. But it will end. Your body is designed for it to end.
Where then, does “calming down” enter into this? It doesn’t. When you thrash about and desperately try to do special things to stop the panic and achieve a state of calm, your body isn’t listening. It’s already doing what it does. It’s too late. Adrenaline and cortisol are are in your bloodstream and they’re going to do what they are designed to do. You know what is listening? Well not really listening, but feeling and experiencing? The fear center in your brain. Here’s the sequence when it comes to trying to calm down during a panic attack:
Panic, followed by “OMG I must calm down!”. This is followed by a bunch of rituals or techniques designed to produce calm. This is then followed by a checking mechanism that scans to see if said calming is actually working. Since it doesn’t work because of the aforementioned physiology, that checking mechanism signals that you must try harder to calm down because clearly this is a “bad” attack and you are in peril. So you try harder, then you quickly check to see if your extra effort is working. It’s not because … chemistry isn’t done yet. Because you’re signaling that the danger is still here and growing by the second, you are inadvertently begging your fear center to keep sounding alarms. The harder you try to calm down, the “worse” things get.
Sound familiar?
Ultimately, you run out of things to try. You get to the endgame where you wind up in an ambulance or in the ER, or swallowing a pill, or laying on the floor waiting to die. There’s no more calming down to do, so the cycle starts to run out of gas. The attack begins to subside. Chemicals do their job, then aren’t needed any longer, so they dissipate and you start to feel better. The attack ends. Just like the sun will set today.
Looking at “tools” as instant calming tricks is not a good strategy. I keep repeating it, but the tools we talk about are navigation tools, not eradication tools. Trying to calm down when panic strikes is not required because your body already knows how to end a panic attack. It happens naturally, and it happens naturally faster when we just let time pass and let that process play out as designed.
When you want me to tell you again how to calm down when you panic, I will tell you to not calm down. I will tell you to just let it happen. This is why I use the term surrender so often. It’s accurate, and it speaks directly to what I am writing about today. Is this easy? Hell no it’s not easy. But it is the better way. In the face of a panic attack that exists for no real reason (there’s no angry bear or person with a gun trying to shoot you), allowing, surrendering, and letting it play out naturally will get you where you want to be, and it will get you there faster while also teaching you a valuable recovery lesson.
The next time you hear me tell people that my now rare panic attacks last maybe 10 minutes, this explains why I say that. Because I learned that the best way to calm down is to stop trying to calm down, and that lesson has served me well ever since.
176. You Don't Have To Calm Down