So a few weeks ago,
My husband and I were taking a hike up here in Tahoe,
And I almost had a full-blown panic attack.
And I want to talk about why this happens and what you can do to prevent it.
But if you're new,
My name is Michelle Ferris.
I'm a psychotherapist,
And I love helping people create relationships that work.
So we were hiking in the mountains,
And it was a paved path,
And then suddenly,
It wasn't.
And it was very rural,
Lots of rocks on the ground.
And all of a sudden,
I started to panic.
Thank God I knew what to do and that's what I want to share with you is what you can do when you instantly feel like you're going to start having a panic attack because you can prevent it.
So it all started with a match thought and how I define a match thought is it's any word or phrase that immediately sparks intense feelings of anger or fear.
We all have them but we don't necessarily pay attention to them and that's what we're going to talk about today.
These are words like always or never which make people get defensive,
Or phrases like,
I feel attacked,
You should or you shouldn't.
Those are all words and phrases that I consider match thoughts,
That definitely will ignite the intensity of your emotions.
So back to the story,
As we're walking,
I had a totally random thought,
Which is,
There might be bears up here,
Because there are,
I've had some visit my house,
And immediately I felt my heart racing,
I felt myself going to fight or flight,
And I knew this was gonna happen really fast.
Luckily I've been doing this work a while and I knew how to get myself out of it because the next thing I had to do was catch that match thought and that's what we have to do whenever you find yourself in a position where you're suddenly feeling freaked out,
Panicked,
Or on the verge of having a panic attack.
You want to look back to what you just told yourself because that's what did it for me.
I was in Tahoe,
My happy place,
But that didn't matter.
What mattered was what I was telling myself and how I was perceiving that situation.
Maybe you can relate.
If you've ever had this happen,
Say me too in the comments.
I'm right there with you.
So the first thing I did was I told my husband,
Hey,
You know what?
I'm really scared right now.
What if there are bears?
And that was the first thing that helped me calm down because what we don't want to do when we start panicking is hold it all together,
Isolate,
Pretend everything's okay when it isn't.
We really want to be able to acknowledge our feelings,
Ourselves and to the person we're with.
Now,
If you don't feel safe to do that with the person you're with,
Then at the very least you want to be acknowledging what your emotional experience is in that moment.
Because we want to validate what we're going through,
Not shame ourselves or tell ourselves things like,
Well,
We're being too sensitive.
Because right there in the moment,
I thought I was going to die.
It was that intense.
But I knew better.
I knew that that was my negative match thought that I had to change quickly.
Or else I was gonna go into a full-blown panic attack,
And thank God I didn't.
So what did I do?
I immediately brought myself back into the present.
I started breathing and I started saying things to myself like,
I am safe.
I'm okay.
Now,
Was I walking faster to get home?
Yes,
I was,
Because I was scared,
But I was able to prevent myself from having a full-blown panic attack.
And what's important is that everyone has what I call the first random thought,
Which comes out of nowhere,
And we're not necessarily even meaning to think it.
It's just sometimes when you're out and about in your life,
You may have a weird thought for no good reason.
So we may not be able to catch that first thought,
Absolutely catch the second,
And that's what I did.
I noticed the first thought,
There might be bears here,
And that's when I started kicking it into high gear and using some of these tools.
When you're dealing with anger,
Identifying the early warning signs of anger is the most effective way to control it.
Because it's much easier to stop yourself from having a full-blown panic attack or a full-blown rage attack if you're already at a 5 or 6 on the anger scale from 1 to 10.
It's much easier to control our emotions when they're just beginning.
And that's why catching your negative thoughts is so powerful because it's one of those early warning signs of anger that we don't necessarily pay attention to because we're busy.
We have stuff going.
We're watching kids.
We're at work.
We have things to do.
But let's face it,
If you can start paying more close attention to what those thoughts are,
You're going to be much more able to start changing those thoughts.
And that's what I want for you.
Because I was super grateful that I didn't have to have a full-blown panic attack in the middle of the woods.
That would not have been fun.
The other thing I want to mention is there are certain things that make panic escalate faster.
One of them is believing that random thought,
Letting that thought take you down a rabbit hole,
And create more negative thoughts.
Isolating and not sharing your emotional experience with the people you're with.
Pretending everything's okay when inside you feel totally freaked out.
Those are all things that I don't recommend doing when you start noticing that you may be having a panic attack.
The other thing you can do is bring yourself into the present moment.
That's one of the other things I did,
Which is Feeling my feet on the ground,
Taking a breath.
Telling myself I am safe,
Looking around in the forest and realizing there weren't any bears,
To really ground myself in the present moment.
Because part of why anger gets so difficult is that we don't pay attention to it until it's too late.
The tools I'm going to be sharing in the workshop are going to all be about how you can identify feelings of anger and stress early so that you can deescalate them quicker.
Because when you're a little bit annoyed,
It's easier to do something about it.
When you're already yelling,
You're already too far gone,
And it's way too hard to rein yourself in.
So for me,
The key to managing anger is to catch your early warning signs and they're individual for each person.
So I hope you found this video helpful.
I hope you've enjoyed being in Tahoe with me.
Thanks so much.
