Panic Attack Coping Strategy: Use Wide Angle Vision
This is one of the best panic attack coping strategies for fighting episodes that most people have no idea about! The main idea is that when an episode hit, you’ll be looking through your eyes using your peripheral vision.
Rather than just focusing on one thing, you should widen your gaze and include things in the corners of your eyesight. One way to use wide-angled vision is to extend your hands out to either side with your arms straight.
Now wiggle your fingers and try to watch them wiggling out of either side of your eyes. By doing this, you’ll be able to steer clear of the tunnel vision which comes from having panic attacks. Simultaneously, this provides feedback to your autonomic nervous system.
Because you aren’t intently focused, it indicates that you aren’t in immediate danger, and this will make your heart rate slowly go back down and return to normal, especially if you combine this technique with some of the others we’ve mentioned.
