today i'm going to be talking about a thinking strategy
that can help you stop a panic attack before it happens
hi everyone in today's video i'm going to be talking about something called overestimation of
threat which is a thinking strategy that can tend to contribute to and make a panic attack happen
and how to stop overestimation of threat but before i get into that
just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province of
british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended
as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional now
with those two things out of the way let's start talking about overestimation of threat
so this is a part of the series on panic attacks and managing panic attacks in panic disorder
and what i encourage you to do if you haven't already is to watch a previous video that i
did about the fear of fear model of panic because that's absolutely critical for understanding
uh how challenging overestimation of threat can actually be helpful in terms of preventing or
warding off a panic attack so the key thing to review and the key thing to
recognize is that panic attacks aren't caused by the physical sensations of anxiety
panic attacks are caused by the way we interpret those physical sensations of anxiety those uh-oh
thoughts that can really drive or fuel a panic attack now there tend to be two broad categories
of uh-oh thoughts one is catastrophizing or seeing the potential negative effect of the
panic attack as being sort of this catastrophe essentially making a mountain out of a molehill
and the other is what i'm going to be talking about in today's video which is overestimation
of threat which is essentially overestimating the likelihood that something absolutely horrific
or catastrophic would actually happen so uh overestimating thoughts tend to focus
on those uh-oh thoughts that are more physical in nature where if it were to actually happen
it would be catastrophic it would be awful so things like uh i think i'm dying or what if i'm
having a heart attack what if i'm having a stroke what if i lose control while i'm driving on the
highway and i crash my car what if i'm going crazy and i lose my mind so these are these are often
very common types of feared outcomes in uh that people have while they're having a panic attack
and you can imagine that if i were to notice that my heart is racing and i start to think to myself
uh-oh what if i'm having a heart attack well how am i likely to feel i'm likely to feel
really anxious i'm going to feel really scared but what's that going to do to the physical sensations
well my heart's going to beat even faster it's going to be even stronger which now makes me
even more afraid it's almost like it's it's reinforcing the idea or providing evidence the
idea that i'm actually having a heart attack which makes me more anxious and there i go i enter into
that panic attack just like we described in the fear of fear model
so overestimating is key it's key to challenging it's key to recognize how overestimating really
fuels and kicks in this fear of fear model so the question is how do we go about challenging these
thoughts so if i'm thinking that in the midst of a panic attack i'm having a heart attack
how do i convince myself otherwise that i'm not if i think i'm having a stroke
what do i say to myself to reassure myself that i'm not having a stroke
so this is where challenging overestimation of threat comes in and so the idea is the
first thing is to imagine the worst case scenario that you that you fear so um
worst case scenario is uh i have a heart attack and i die worst case scenario is uh i lose control
as i'm driving the vehicle and i drive my car off the road worst case scenario is um i have a
panic attack or in them this isn't really a panic attack this is me going crazy and i end up in an
institution because i've lost my mind well if you think about those outcomes if they were to happen
those would be absolute catastrophes they would be terrible things that uh that could happen to you
but once you think about and once you're aware of the worst case scenario
that you're fearful of the idea is to treat this kind of like a hypothesis
that's open to be tested and to look at the information or the data
to either support the likelihood of this possibility or to discount the likelihood
of this possibility so what i often encourage my clients to do is to ask themselves three questions
and the first question is to think about uh how many times in my life
have i had a panic attack or how many times in my life have i had these panic-like sensations
that i've experienced and that i'm fearful of
the second thing to ask myself is in all these times that i've had
these physical sensations of panic or i've had a panic attack how many times
have i had a heart attack how many times have i had a stroke how many times have i lost control
of the vehicle and drove it off the road how many times have i lost my mind and gone crazy
and the third question then is okay with that in mind what's the likelihood or
what's the probability that the next time i'm experiencing these physical sensations of panic
what's the likelihood that i actually am having a heart attack i am having a stroke i am going crazy
so let's say for example uh i go about answering these questions how many times
have i had a panic attack in my life uh i've had a thousand panic attacks in my life or
there have been a thousand times where i've had these physical sensations of panic come on
well in those thousand times that i've had a panic attack or had these physical sensations of panic
how many times have i had a heart attack well none i've never had a heart attack during uh during a
panic attack it's always been a panic attack okay so with those two pieces of information in mind
what's the likelihood that the next time i have a panic attack or i start to have these
panic-like sensations what's the probability that that time i'm actually having a heart attack well
at the very worst case scenario it's one in a thousand and one that's the probability
at the absolute worst case scenario well one in a thousand and one that's that's pretty
slim odds it's pretty rare odds that i'm likely to be having an actual heart attack
instead of this just being a panic attack and so what we're doing here is we're we're really
putting the probability of the feared outcome into context and essentially convincing myself through
my experiences that it's highly unlikely that these physical sensations that i'm experiencing
are indicative of a heart attack a stroke me going crazy because i've had these sensations
lots of times before and it's never ended up in those scenarios and so to be able to remind
myself when i start to feel a panic attack coming on when i start to feel these physical sensations
to be able to walk myself through these questions i've had these physical sensations thousands of
times before not once in those thousands of times have i actually had a heart attack and
so the probability that this time i'm having a heart attack is one in a thousand and one
and so by thinking that way what i'm doing is i'm really making these physical sensations less scary
and so i don't get as anxious about it the physical sensations don't increase
and i don't enter into that fear of fear spiral that drives a panic attack
so really by challenging the overestimation of threat you're targeting those uh-oh thoughts and
preventing those uh-oh thoughts from contributing to or causing a panic attack
so i hope that makes sense i hope uh you found this information helpful or useful i
would love to hear your thoughts and comments about this so please leave me some comments
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so thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one