The simple yet difficult thing is to let the panic happen. When you run away you're distracting yourself which can dissipate the panic but it only prolongs it.

The simple yet difficult thing is to let the panic happen. When you run away you're distracting yourself which can dissipate the panic but it only prolongs it. So instead of being at a 10 you're at a more manageable 6. But you're there for hours. Letting the panic happen means you're at a 10 for a few minutes tops and then you're down to below a 2 pretty quickly. I didn't come up with the tasks on my own. I learned them while working with my therapist. What seems to work for me is to run up and down a flight of stairs a 3-4 times and then breathe through a straw for about 45 seconds while holding my nostrils closed. I'm getting plenty of air but my brain's reaction is to flash panic. The first flash is around a 6 for about a second or two. Very easy to manage. But I stay present for those few seconds and even try to make it last. Try to have the panic. I do this for about 20-25 minutes every other day. In this way I expose myself to little bits of panic consciously. When an actual panic attack happens now (which it still does on occasion) its increasingly less severe than the last time. And each time I recover more quickly. But most importantly, I now know a part of me I never really knew. I have and have always had a strength I wasn't even aware of. All I had to do was look fear in the eye and watch it shirk away.