Emotional Self-help: How to Deal with Anxiety Attacks at Work

You’re sitting at your desk. The Slack icon flashes. Before you even click it, your heart starts racing. You click and read: “Hey, can you come to my office?” Just those seven words. You stand up and walk a few steps toward the manager’s office. Your legs feel weak, your palms are sweaty. On the way, you quickly think back – did you do something wrong last week? You knock and go in. The manager says, “I just wanted to ask, would you like to grab a coffee?”

Have you experienced this? More than once?

Right now, you can do three things. No one will notice.

Your tongue is more useful than you think.

When your heart starts racing, your throat tightens, and you feel like you’re about to lose your composure – your mouth is actually the easiest part of your body to control.

Just do this one thing:

Press your tongue hard against your upper jaw – that hard area right behind your teeth. The harder, the better. You’ll feel the root of your tongue ache. Then hold it there. Don’t let go. You’ll notice something magical: when you press your tongue against your upper jaw with all your strength, your breathing slows down – because you can’t gasp while you’re pressing. Last time you panicked in the conference room, you did this for three seconds and then found you could speak normally, instead of shaking your head and saying “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Let me tell you in advance:

Don’t press so hard that your jaw gets sore. Moderate pressure is fine. Don’t make a “tsk” sound in your mouth – that means air is leaking through your teeth, not your tongue pressing the jaw. Move discreetly. No one will know where your tongue is.

Your thermos is missing three ice cubes.

When you feel your whole body starting to “float” – cold hands, hot head, shallow breathing, as if your body isn’t yours anymore – what you need isn’t to think of something, but to be pulled back to the ground. Just a few seconds after this feeling appears, reach for your thermos.

Just do this one thing:

Pour out an ice cube (or two or three) and squeeze it as hard as you can in your palm. If you’re wearing long sleeves, you can hold the ice against the inside of your wrist – the skin there is thinnest and cools fastest. Just clamp it there. And then? After forty seconds, you’ll find your breathing is smoother. Remember that time you suddenly panicked while presenting to a client? You pretended to flip the page and put your hand in your pocket to squeeze an ice cube. By the time you got to the next slide, your voice had stopped shaking.

Let me tell you in advance:

Don’t use paper towels or gloves – stick the ice directly on your skin. Don’t squeeze for more than two minutes – you don’t want to freeze your fingers. If your fingers turn white or purple when cold (you know if this applies to you), don’t use ice. Instead, run cold water from a faucet over your inner wrist – it’s less effective but safer.

Your mind is missing a string of useless numbers.

When those thoughts – “it’s over”, “what do I do”, “am I going to be in trouble?” – scroll across your mind like bullet-screen comments, your brain is too idle and is looking for a job to do.

Just do this one thing:

Silently repeat a string of meaningless numbers in your head. You don’t have to recite pi to many digits – just make any string up. For example, “3.1415926535”, or the last eight digits of your phone number, or “13791379”. Repeat it in a cycle. Don’t stop. Notice what happens: when you’re busy memorizing numbers in your mind, the voice saying “I’m going to die” has nowhere to linger. Last time you had a sudden panic attack on the subway, surrounded by people, you didn’t dare do anything – you just silently repeated your house number and zip code. After five cycles, you realized your heart had slowed down.

Let me tell you in advance:

Don’t say “calm down, calm down” – that doesn’t work, because when you say “calm down,” you’re still thinking “I’m not calm.” If you’re going to repeat something, it must be truly useless, emotionless, purely digital garbage that takes up mental space. Don’t say it out loud – repeat it silently in your mind, otherwise your colleagues might think you’re casting a spell.

Alright – press your tongue, squeeze an ice cube, repeat numbers. It costs nothing, hurts no one, and no one will notice.

They won’t help you for a lifetime, but they can get you through the hardest three to five minutes. In those three to five minutes, you only need to do one thing: press your tongue against your upper jaw, or hold an ice cube, or repeat a few numbers in your mind. When you’re less busy, you can gently ask yourself: what’s been making me so nervous lately? You don’t have to rush to find an answer, and you don’t have to force yourself to change. Just take it slow.

You’ve been doing a great job.