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The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Trick That Stopped My Panic Attack in Seconds!
You won’t believe how simple it is.
It has been a while since my last full-blown panic attack.
Many times in the last couple of years I’ve felt panic attacks coming on, but I’ve been able to calm myself down before it reached the ‘clutching my chest, unable to breathe’ stage by using the 5–4–3–2–1 technique I learned in therapy.
Now this technique might not be 100% effective or a magic cure for anxiety, but it can definitely bring you down from a level 10 panic attack to a much more manageable level 4.
It works by grounding you in the present moment.
It involves acknowledging:
- 5 things you can see
- 4 things you can touch
- 3 things you can hear
- 2 things you can smell
- 1 thing you can taste.
It so happens with me quite often that whenever I am in a hyper-anxious stage, I get confused about how many times I need to see or hear or what’s the correct sequence, and honestly, that’s okay.
Even if you mix it up, it still works.
The entire idea is to bring you back from the edge and ground you in the present…
