Panic pizza, a simple method for overcoming panic attacks. a panic attack is a sudden strong feeling of fear. It can come without warning, and people worry that they have a serious medical condition or they will die. trestle triggers cost a survival mechanism in the brain to falsely fire dangerous signals. The symptoms are uncomfortable, but not dangerous, and we have to reset the survival brain. Imagine a whole pizza.
How easy is it to eat at home, it would be difficult and very messy. Now let's try cut it in half and then in half again. So you have cut it in quarters. Now cut it down again into eight pieces so that we can eat it easily. When the pizza is in spices, we can consume it much easier. One pizza slice at a time.
We're going to do the same thing for a panic when we cut it down into manageable sections. We can challenge each piece and so take care of our entire panic pizza. Some of these slices are going to refer to things that happened to our bodies, like having a rapid heartbeat. And the negative thought that comes with it is I'm going to die. Perhaps we're experiencing shortness of breath, and feeling like going to go crazy. Or you're having a headache, and you believe I can't leave the house.
Or you're sweating and trembling, and you fear being humiliated in public. We will consumer panic by challenging each of these slices of sensations and scary thoughts. Let's go ahead and do this now. Pause this video and get a piece of paper and pen and draw a large circle and then section it off to look like a pizza. You can write a negative sensations and scary thoughts into each triangle section. You might put physical symptoms like a rapid heartbeat, sweating, shortness Breath, trembling, chest pain, nausea, and so on.
You can also put negative thoughts and behavioral symptoms, like fearing losing control, being embarrassed, avoiding activities, situations that might cause you to have another panic attack. These are all very common symptoms experienced by people who have them, but they can get hidden in shame. Now take another look at the list section by section. You might feel some anxiety as you do this. tell yourself that it's just words on a piece of paper and you're not going to have a panic attack. Take very deep breath as needed.
The fact that you feel any anxiety during this exercise is proved that your brain sends you false signals. the brain's purpose is to protect you from harm, but there is nothing harmful. It's just a pen and a paper exercise. There is no actual threat. Why do we feel anxious or fear having a panic attack during this exercise Because our brains are hyper vigilant to triggers. So an increase in heart rate can start a panic, sweating, do an exercise will trigger an attack.
But it's important to start being aware that most of the time there isn't any real danger. And this allows us to challenge our slices of sensations and thoughts. Every thought that comes with a slice of penning pizza is an exaggeration. And exaggeration is defined as an enlarge or altered thought. beyond what is normal, it is Miss proportional. Putting your thoughts into correct proportions is the secret sauce of the panic pizza.
Our first step is to be very specific. It's hard to challenge something that is abstract. Make this personal by using an if statement. When referring to the thoughts and sensations of each panic pizza slice. For example, I can feel my heart beating faster and I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. This will reframe the attack Something that you notice, there's something that is merely happening to you.
It's easier to control what you have ownership over. In addition, you will find more help with this step in the section on spiritual identity and meditation strategies to help you notice what's happening to you and around you. The second step is to challenge the thoughts to reduce the exaggeration. Part of what you are experienced might be true, but is it to the extent that you feel like it is. For example, you could say I know these attacks don't last longer than 10 minutes, so it'll be over soon. I don't need to call an ambulance.
Or my heart is capable of beating rapidly for a long period of time without any damage. So I know I'm not going to have a heart attack. Although this is very disturbing, it isn't dangerous. You can get more insight into how to challenge your thoughts in the lesson on ants or automatic negative thoughts and in the lesson on safety behaviors and the exposure hierarchy, engaging in these actions tivities will feel counterintuitive. Why would you want to move towards something that has created you pain? This is part of the third step finding balance.
This is covered in more depth on the lesson on finding your anxiety, balance, acceptance and change. Let's take a quick look at it as it relates to panic attacks. If we accept, we have disturbing sensations and scary thoughts, we can stop fearing them and start working on change to eliminate them. Fear of their recurrence is what perpetuates a cycle and exaggerates the survival brings vigilance for danger. It could come at any minute, right? Wrong, or Yes, that's right.
But we have already accepted that, that we will have these attacks and we already accepted that they are disturbing, so we don't need to fear them more. Our energy is now on concentrating on change. Change comes from learning new skills listed here in the freedom Anxiety program. This step uses principles of mindfulness. By accepting and noticing the sensations and thoughts. Research demonstrates that mindfulness coordinates all the areas of the brain and shuts down the overactive survival brain.
These principles teach you to observe the fact that if you feel sweaty, you have, you have a shortness of breath, and so on. Don't judge it. Don't fight it. Don't hyper focus on it. Just notice your slices of pizza. It's kind of like you're watching a movie of your life.
On a large screen. This isn't distraction. It's a mindful detachment. If you can observe your sensations and thoughts and not react to them, you can use freedom skills, to eliminate panic, one slice at a time.