You can’t control when you have an anxiety attack, but you can discover ways to handle it discreetly. While mental health issues aren’t something that anyone needs to be ashamed of, many people don’t want anyone outside of their trusted support circle to know about them.

Anxiety Attack

So when you have one, there are ways to privately handle it. You might not be in a position to leave where you are sitting or standing in and sometimes that’s not even the best idea. But if you can’t or won’t leave work, then go somewhere else in your mind.

You can beat the sense of doom and overwhelming emotions often associated with an anxiety attack by focusing on something. This can be an object such as a picture on the wall or something on your desk that becomes your go-to focus whenever you feel anxiety coming on.

Experiencing A Real Danger

An anxiety attack is a reaction to perceived fear. Your brain doesn’t know that this perceived fear is a result of anxiety and it tells your body to react as if you were experiencing a real danger.

This is why your heart rate speeds up and you can feel like you’re losing control, start to tremble or think you might pass out. To handle an anxiety attack at quickly and discreetly, you want to change the nervous system response.

When you alter something dealing with your senses, it can trigger a change in the nervous system. For example, if you put a cold cloth on the back of your neck, stick your hands in cold water or splash it on your face, your body changes the reaction.

It automatically reduces how fast your heartbeats. During an anxiety attack, your thoughts can be in a jumble. The fear that you’re experiencing, while not actually happening, doesn’t change the fact that you think it is.

Your Brain Is Perceiving The Fear

What you have to do is to change how your brain is perceiving the fear. You can do that by quickly jotting your thoughts. One example of what some people think during an anxiety attack is that they’re going to die.

By jotting down what you’re thinking, it helps you see that your brain’s perception is off-kilter during an anxiety attack, and this helps to calm the body. You can also jot down truths that you repeat to change the anxiety thought such as, “Everything is going to be okay.”

Make sure that you breathe in deeply and exhale slowly. This can calm both the body and the mind. Pay attention to the time. While an anxiety attack might feel like it’s lasting for hours, it usually only lasts a minute or two. You can focus on your watch and count down the seconds. This redirects your mind and helps you stay aware that the anxiety does have a limit for how long it will last.

You have got this! be the boss of your mind and body!