25 Ways to Prevent and/or to Cope With Anxiety and Panic Attacks

Here are 25 self-help tips and tricks to help you prevent and manage panic attacks. Some of these suggestion might sound kind of silly and you may not find research studies supporting their effectiveness - but all of them come from real-life panic patients or experts and any one of them might be just what you need to take back control.

So read on – because none of the ideas below will cost you a cent or cause unwanted side effects and you may even find something here that really helps.

Managing Panic - 25 Tips and Tricks to Try:

4. Get a little exercise each day. Make sure it’s strenuous enough to get your heart pumping a bit. Try to get used to the feeling of your heart beating and tell yourself that it is normal after exercise to feel this way.¹
5. When feeling anxious, make a conscious effort to relax your shoulders and drop your arms down
6. When panic hits, try to stay in the situation – do not run away from it. If you run away the environment becomes tinged with fear and you may feel a need to avoid it in the future. If you stay in place until you feel better, you weaken this fear-association.²
7. Hold your breath – when you notice the fear and feel your respiration rate spike you can avoid hyperventilation by holding your breath for 10 or 15 seconds, a few times in a row. After holding your breath, try to breathe very deeply right into the bottom of your lungs, breathing in for a count of 7 and out for a count of 11.  It is impossible to panic while breathing very slowly and deeply.
8. When feeling anxious, sing a song or hymn or recite a poem that you know all the words to
9. When panic or anxiety spikes, try not to fight it. Tell yourself it’s ‘just panic and it can’t hurt me and it will pass soon.”
10. Try to stay as motionless as you can. Slow your breathing and pretend like you’re trying to make yourself disappear
11. Or try the complete opposite – when panic hits do some very strenuous exercise right away – like running as fast and as far as you can. By the time you stop (once you’re completely out of breath and exhausted) you may notice your anxiety has simply disappeared.³
12. When you feel panic coming do anything that gets your brain thinking. Try counting backwards from 300 by 3’s or doing a Sudoku puzzle
13. Talk to someone who gets it and tell them how you’re feeling
14. When feeling anxious, make yourself laugh out loud (your brain apparently gets the same benefits from  manufactured laughs as authentic laughter)
15. Visualize yourself in a safe place
16. Don’t check your pulse
17. If you’re getting anxious while driving, focus on reading the license plates of cars around you until you get out of a difficult stretch of road.
18. Think of a coping sentence and repeat it during a panic attack…”I am fine, my heart is just pounding because I am panicking” ⁴
19. Make yourself smile
20. Take a shower
21. Breathe in for a count of 4, hold your breath for a count of 4 and then exhale for a count of 4 – gradually slow down your counting speed until you’re breathing very slowly and your heart rate has slowed to match your breathing (a good one for lying in bed).
22. Meditate
23. When you start feeling symptoms draw a picture of what you look like when in the midst of a panic attack
24. Read a children’s story out loud. Read it in a slow and relaxing voice, as if you were reading a bedtime story to a small child.
25. Try to find something positive to think about after a panic attack… (That was the shortest one ever!) and if you can’t find anything good to think about, just fake it until you can. By doing this you trick your mind into being less fearful of future panic attacks – which can help you to start breaking out of a bad cycle.
26. Avoid coffee and alcohol and try to avoid heavily processed foods. Eat meals on a regular schedule to avoid blood sugar spikes and falls.
27. Listen closely to some good music when feeling panicky – anything you can do to stop thinking about yourself will help.
28. Do writing exercises. Carry a notebook around with you and when you start to feel symptoms of anxiety or stress write down how you are feeling, where you are, what you’re thinking about and what you were thinking about before you started to feel panicky. This can help give you a better idea about what’s causing your panic attacks and it can also remove some of the power from the attack as it reminds you that your fears are artificial and are just symptoms that will pass in time.