Working Through Panic Attacks: 8 Grounding Skills for the Moment

One moment you feel relatively normal, and the next, your body is flooded with sensations. Your heart racing, your chest tightening, your thoughts accelerating faster than you can keep up. This is an example of how a panic attack can show up. It can feel disorienting and even scary, especially when there’s no clear reason for it.

What makes panic difficult is not just the intensity of the physical sensations, but the meaning we assign to them in the moment. A racing heart becomes “I’m having a medical emergency.” Dizziness may feel like "I might pass out." That sense of urgency builds on itself, creating a loop where the body reacts, the mind interprets, and the reaction intensifies.

Beneath all of this is something important to understand: panic is not a sign that your body is failing. It’s a sign that your nervous system is trying to protect you. It is your fight-or-flight response activating in the absence of real danger, a false alarm that feels convincing because it is happening in your body, not just your thoughts. The instinct in these moments is often to try to push these feelings away as soon as possible. It’s an understandable response! And yet, this effort to control is often what keeps the cycle going. When the mind treats panic as dangerous, the body responds as if it is.

A different approach begins with a shift in relationship and trying to use skills rather than denying the reality of what’s happening. Instead of trying to eliminate the experience, the work becomes learning how to stay with it without escalating it further. Here are some tips to work through a panic attack.

Cold Exposure

Holding ice in your hand or taking a cool shower can be a helpful way to ground yourself. There’s also a built-in reflex in your body called the mammalian dive reflex. When the upper part of your face (specifically eyes and cheeks) are exposed to the cold, it can trigger a rapid drop in heart rate. This can help calm your nervous system. How to engage this? Hold an ice pack to your cheeks, splash your face with cool water, or in the frigid winter months, stepping briefly into the cool air can activate this response and interrupt the panic cycle.

5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Skill

This skill uses our five senses to help us re-engage with the present moment. Begin by scanning your environment and naming five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. You can cycle through this sequence as many times as you may need.

Anchoring Statements

An anchoring statement is something you declare around your current environment that may help you feel more connected to the present. For example, you could state facts about where you are and what you are doing, such as “I’m at the store. It is Wednesday afternoon. It is snowing outside.”

Box Breathing

Controlled and predictable breathing patterns can be helpful for panic and anxiety. Inhale for four, exhale for four, and then hold for four. Repeat. Continue this pattern of breathing until you notice yourself feeling more grounded.

Visual Imagery

Try imagining yourself in a calm and safe space, whether it’s real or imagined. If you have difficulty with this, there are many guided meditations you can utilize to create this place for yourself.

Mental Distraction

Try engaging your brain in some mental distraction. Recite the alphabet backwards. Try to do some simple math problems in your head. See if you can think of as many types of birds as you can in your mind. Anything that may help engage your mind in some new ways while you’re navigating the intensity.

Bilateral Stimulation

Engaging both sides of your brain and/or body in an alternating pattern of “left-right-left-right” can give your nervous system a steady rhythm to follow. What does this look like? It can be tapping your knees in that rhythm, crossing your arms (like you’re giving yourself a hug) and tapping your shoulders, or a gentle walk. 

Shock Your Taste Buds

Keep some sour candy on hand! It’s hard for your brain to ignore strong sensory stimuli. The intensity can help interrupt the panic loop and shift you into the present moment pretty quickly.

If panic has been showing up more often, or starting to shape your day-to-day life, it might be worth giving 1 of these practices a try. If panic continues to interrupt your day-to-day, having some extra support from a mental health professional could be beneficial to you.