Resources

Belly breathing for calming

1. Sit or lie flat in a comfortable position.

2. Put one hand on your belly just below your ribs and the other hand on your chest.

3. Take a deep breath in through your nose, and let your belly push your hand out. …

4. Breathe out through pursed lips as if you were whistling. …

5. Do this breathing 3 to 10 times.

Coping with panic

Get out of your head, get into your body.
With each breath, shift your attention onto what is happening externally.
Activate your senses. Look around yourself, listen to the sounds, touch your surroundings, notice what smell passes into your nostrils, what taste do you have in your mouth ?

If you are catastrophizing in your thinking:
1) Say “Stop” out loud. Remember the sound a CD makes when it’s scratched?
2) Focus on ‘what is,’ rather than ‘what if. ‘
3) Get physical. Stomp, jump, shake.

Obsessive, compulsive and intrusive thoughts

Mindfulness and relaxation meditation can provide relief.
There are a lot of good guided meditations on Youtube.
Here is one :
Malia Yoga Guided meditation for intrusive thoughts, OCD and anxiety

Cognitive Behavioural exercise for refocussing

The following is extracted from “the HeartMath Solution”

The head can easily get locked into set patterns. If an old emotion has become familiar, we often respond to new, similar situations with the same emotion, whether it makes sense or not.
By shifting focus toward your heart and away from whatever problem you face, you divert energy from your perception of the problem

1. Make a sincere effort to shift your focus away from your racing mind or disturbed emotions to the area around your heart. You can pretend that you’re breathing through your heart to help focus your energy in this area. Keep your focus there for ten seconds or more.

2. Recall a positive, fun feeling or time you’ve had in life and attempt to re-experience it.

3. Now, using your intuition, common sense and sincerity – ask yourself, what would be a more caring and efficient behaviour in response to the situation, one that will minimize future stress, for yourself and anyone else involved?

Emotional energy grounding

There are many grounding exercises freely available online.
This particular one starts at about 7 mInutes into the clip.
Spiritual Online Activation Retreat