Last month an essay on panic [1] in Brownstudy (a blog by Mike Brown) led to a neat list of cognitive distortions:
- All-or-nothing thinking ("always", "every", "never", ...)
- Overgeneralization (making too much of isolated cases)
- Mental filtering (focusing only on the negative)
- Disqualifying the positive (shooting down good possibilities)
- Jumping to conclusions
- Magnification and minimization (exaggerating some aspects of the situation, ignoring others)
- Emotional reasoning (relying on intuition rather than reason or evidence)
- "Should" statements (looking at wishes rather than reality)
- Labeling and mislabeling (naming things instead of understanding them)
- Personalization (blaming oneself or others for random events)
Brown suggests that when you feel panic you might try:
- classifying the scary thought(s) via the above taxonomy
- looking at feelings and rating the level of discomfort
- jotting down disturbing thoughts and refuting them
Brown also cites [2] (in Alex Lickerman's blog) which in turn suggests:
- Carry anti-anxiety medication with you
- Don't fight panic—accept it
- Rate the severity of your panic moment by moment
- Look for mistakes in the thought process that led you to panic
- Desensitize yourself to situations that induce panic.
And of course there's my favorite strategy: try to identify what causes panic and avoid situations where it might arise.
(cf. BlameStorming (1999-05-15), KnowHowAndFearNot (1999-11-19), RepoMan (2003-03-10) SalmonOfDoubt (2005-07-07), ...) - ^z - 2010-11-17