You see the feeling worsening yet you are helpless to stop it.
An anxiety attack can be overwhelming, if you let it.
And that's the big problem with them.
The take over your mind so that you cannot think of anything else.
Quickly, you become tense and fearful, and your body reflects that fear.
Your heart feels like it's going to jump right out of your chest.
You feel your body heating up and you might even start trembling.
Before long, you are fully into the attack.
Suddenly, your confidence is shattered.
You have no idea how to defend yourself.
You know that running away is not going to help because this is a threat that exists within you.
What are you to do? First of all, stop thinking.
Turn off your mind.
Refuse to give any attention to your anxiety or the fear associated with it.
You see, when people go through an anxiety attack, they feed into it.
That just makes it worse.
They focus on the fear, on what might happen, and maybe even if you will survive.
You do feel threatened, because you feel so helpless.
It's like being attacked from the inside by some unseen alien force.
How do you defend against that? Well, one thing you can do is get angry at it.
Turn up the heat and go after it, rather than shrivel under its influence.
Scream at the top of your mind for it to go away.
Tell it that it cannot harm you.
Demand it to obey your wishes.
Really feel that anger, the intenseness of your demands.
Let it fill your entire body.
That's the problem, we do tend to withdraw from this fearful event known as anxiety.
We try to make ourselves as small as possible and therefore less vulnerable.
It doesn't work.
The anxiety will run its course and end when it gets tired of the process.
By turning against the anxiety to scare it away, you are distracting yourself from feeling fearful.
That is one of the fastest ways to get over your fear.
And you can do it instantly Compare it to a situation where you feel threatened by another human being.
What is your first instinct? Do you cower in fear? Or do you stand up and defend yourself? Most of us will speak out in an effort to make the threat go away.
We yell at that person.
"Go away! Leave me alone!" It's interesting that in this type of situation, we are more likely to fight back in the face of the perceived danger.
But when it is in our minds, as with an anxiety attack, we shrink from it.
Next time you feel an anxiety attack coming on, throw it off kilter.
Distract it by turning against it with anger and your own demands to be left alone.
That is how you can stop an anxiety attack dead in its tracks.