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Let me ask you two questions…

What typically goes through your mind when you’re having a panic attack?

Do your thoughts reduce your panic and anxiety or make your situation worse?

This is an important question to ask yourself. No matter what your answer is, I’ll introduce you to a clinically proven technique (used by everyday professionals) to tame your anxiety using the power of your mind.

But first, let’s review the last lesson.

In the last installment, I explained WHAT a panic attack is… HOW it works (physiology of a panic attack)… and HOW you can reverse your “fight or flight” response to create a calm, relaxing effect during your panic attack.

Today, I want to give you another technique for recovery. While handling the physiological component of anxiety is definitely a critical part to recovery, its also critical to look at your thoughts.

That’s why today I want to discuss Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

The premise of this therapy is that our emotions are caused by our thoughts.

Basically, it means when we learn to change our thoughts, we can then change our emotions and feel better. If we do this successfully, we can free ourselves of anxiety and panic.

CBT was certainly very effective for me and many others I’ve known.

I believe anyone suffering from troubling anxiety, panic attacks or agoraphobia should consider these CBT techniques.

Researchers from York University and Dalhousie University concluded CBT is best for anxiety and more effective than other forms of psychotherapy… and in most case more effective than medication.

There’s more to this though.

Many people wonder why they were completely rational before their panic attack… but after their first attack they felt like they stuck in a constant cycle of anxiety.

When we are feeling overly anxious or experiencing a panic attack, we are experiencing the emotions of anxiety and panic because of distortions in our thinking.  Specifically these distortions are called “Cognitive Distortions.”

A “Cognitive Distortion” is an inaccurate thought about reality.  For example, feeling our heart racing and consequently concluding we are having a heart attack, when in reality our heart is racing just due to anxiety, would be a “cognitive distortion.”

The above is just one example, but in reality, many cognitive distortions can cause our anxiety or panic.

But we can dissect these distortions and substitute healthier and realistic thoughts in their place using a process called “cognitive restructuring.”

Don’t worry. It’s easy. In today’s lesson, I’ll show you what these distortions are and how to use cognitive restructuring to get back on track.

So let’s look at some specifics that you can get started on today:

First, let’s understand more about cognitive distortions — and what they mean for your current situation.

When we’re feeling overly anxious or experiencing a panic attack, we’re experiencing the emotions of anxiety and panic because of distortions in our thinking.

There are 10 of these distortions. When you feel negative emotions, we can conclude that one or more of these distortions exists in your thinking — and can trigger depression, anxiety or panic attacks.

Here are the Cognitive Distortions

1. All-or-nothing thinking – Thinking of things in absolute terms, like “always”, “every” or “never”.   Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute.

2. Over-generalization – Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations.

3. Mental filter – Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest, like a tiny imperfection in a piece of clothing.

4. Disqualifying the positive – Continually “shooting down” positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons.

5. Jumping to conclusions – Assuming something negative where there is no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:

— Mind reading – Assuming the intentions of others.
— Fortune telling – Predicting how things will turn before they happen.

6. Magnification and Minimization – Inappropriately understating or exaggerating the way people or situations truly are. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated.

There is one subtype of magnification:

Catastrophizing – Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.

7. Emotional reasoning – Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality.

8. Making should statements – Concentrating on what you think “should” or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with, or having rigid rules which you think should always apply no matter what the circumstances are. Albert Ellis termed this “Musterbation”.

9. Labeling – Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms.

10. Personalization (or attribution) – Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. When applied to others this is an example of blame.

Now, let’s look at an example to make this more concrete.
Someone having a panic attack might experience the following thoughts:

“Oh my God, my heart is beating so fast. I’m going to die”

“I feel so nervous it’s hard to concentrate what will everyone think of me?”

“I can’t seem to stop my racing thoughts.  I’m going to go crazy!”

What distortion(s) are present?

“Jumping to conclusions” and probably “disqualifying the  positive” are present.

Why?

Jumping to conclusions refers to our tendency to make negative predictions even when there is no real evidence to support them. When we state that are going to die, we’re trying to predict the future.

But what’s the reality?

We’ve all had our hearts beat fast, at one time or another, and we didn’t die.

I also mentioned “disqualifying the positive.”

This refers to our natural tendency to focus only on the negative in the moment, and forget about all the previous positive outcomes from our past.

For example, we easily “forget” about all the other times we were excited about something — but didn’t have a heart attack… or die.

Now that we’ve identified the distortions, we can go to use the cognitive restructuring to substitute healthier thoughts.

For example, we should tell ourselves that our hearts have beaten fast many times before and we didn’t die — we’re still alive. But we can also remember… other people (just like us) thought they were having a heart attack, but they weren’t — they’re still alive, doing fine and well.

You should continue to work on your thoughts each day.

Avoid these distortions by putting the cognitive restructuring to use in your daily life.

Over time, you’ll begin to feel a lot better and avoid the panic and anxiety you may be feeling today.

Don’t let your thoughts “get ahead” of you. The cognitive restructuring technique is easy to remember, easy to memorize and it can help you stay in control of your anxiety.

In the next time lesson, I’ll provide more in-depth examples and analyze some additional thoughts.  To view the next installment, click here.

Warmly,

Matthew
PanicAttackRecovery.com