Do you struggle with panic attacks, panic disorder, or anxiety attacks? You’re not alone—and you’re not broken. Kimberley Quinlan, LMFT, is an expert in treating anxiety, panic, and OCD. In this interview I asked Kimberley the most common questions I receive from clients and followers about panic and recovery. We explored how panic disorder differs from general anxiety, how avoidance behaviors unintentionally keep you stuck, and how to stop panic attacks using CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) tools for anxiety.
Kimberley is the founder of CBT School and the author of The Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD. You can find her podcast and website at these links:
CBT School: https://www.cbtschool.com/
“Your Anxiety Toolkit” podcast: https://www.cbtschool.com/anxietytophits
In the transcript that follows, you’ll learn how to gently face panic with self-compassion, reframe common fears (like panic in public or while driving), and take your first small step toward healing. We also discuss the mindset shifts that truly change everything in recovery. Whether you’ve struggled for years or are just beginning your journey, this is for you. Panic is treatable and recovery is possible.
Welcome Kimberley Quinlan
Emma: I’m really excited to have a special guest today on our channel. It’s Kimberly Quinlan.
She’s a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she’s an expert in the treatment of anxiety, panic, and obsessive compulsive disorder. She’s also the founder of CBT School and she’s the author of the Self-Compassion Workbook for OCD and the host of Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, which has been named by the New York Times as one of the top six podcasts to calm your anxious mind.
Yeah, I’m not jealous. Okay. I love her work because she’s blending evidence-based tools with fierce self-compassion. Really excited for this interview about panic attacks and panic disorder. So let’s jump in. Kimberly, thank you so much for being here. I’m so excited to talk with you.
Kimberley: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
Panic Disorder vs. Panic Attacks
Emma: Yeah. Awesome. Okay, I love to jump right in. Let’s talk about what is panic disorder? How’s that different from panic attacks?
Kimberley: Sure. So I think for everyone, let’s just talk about what is a panic attack. So simply it’s that 10 outta 10 panic. It usually makes you feel like you’re gonna die, you’re having a heart attack.
Like often people say there is nothing more uncomfortable than that 10 outta 10 panic. Now, if you have one of those that’s really, painful, and often some people have them and they recover from them, and they just go back to their life, right? Living as they were. However, those who develop panic disorder end up fearing that panic attack happening again.
And so really it becomes this cycle of you’ve had a panic attack, now you’re afraid of having another one. And the anticipatory anxiety of having one sort of increases your general anxiety. So now that you’re more likely to have one, and then that cycle goes and goes. So typically when someone has panic, I usually say it’s often the fear of having a panic attack.
And that involves an entire day of worrying and being anxious about when is that next panic attack going to happen?
Avoidance, Rumination, and Safety Behaviors with Panic Attacks
Emma: And then that leads to a lot of avoidance behaviors. I’m not gonna go places where it wouldn’t be safe to have a panic attack, or I’m not gonna do things like activities where that might be embarrassing or dangerous.
Kimberley: Yeah. Avoidance is one of the biggest sorts of results or outcomes of having a panic attack. People start to avoid things that they’ve associated with panic.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: However, some other people just spend a lot of time ruminating about when that next panic attack is going to happen. And others end up introducing a lot of these safety behaviors, needing to have someone with them all the time or they may not leave the house, they may wanna stay there.
And again, avoiding whatever it could be that could trigger it to happen again.
Phobias and Other Panic Attack Triggers
Emma: What are some common ways people engage in avoidance with panic attacks? The first one that comes to my mind is exercise. Like some people with panic attacks, they don’t like getting their heart rate up. Because that kind of makes them worry that they might have a panic attack or it feels like a panic attack.
The way we see it without patients is it depends on where they were and what was going on when they had that first panic. Attack. So if they were flying while having that panic attack, oh yeah.
Kimberley: They might avoid small spaces or getting back on an airplane. If during that panic attack, like you said, you had some uncomfortable sensations and things like that, you might avoid those specific sensations. Some people have it with elevators. It might be the heat of wherever they were and what they experienced.
So it very much depends on where they were when they had it. And the thing to remember here is panic disorder is often associated with other conditions as well. Let’s say you have to go and get your blood taken. You’re at your annual doctor’s appointment, you go to get your blood taken, and you have a fear of needles.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: And so that’s a phobia that you may have. And then while you’re getting that blood drawn, you have a panic attack. And so therefore the phobia attacks with the panic disorder and they play off of each other. So it could also be related to something that they had a phobia about as well.
Emma: So in my practice, there was a client who had a phobia of grasshoppers.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: And she would avoid grasshoppers because grasshoppers would trigger that massive fear, that hit of fear, and then panic attacks.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: But for some people, do they have panic attacks without any clear trigger?
Kimberley: Equal that’s just as likely there could be a trigger and there could not be.
Often people when they come into our office, they feel so broken because they might be just sitting having lunch. And it could come on, it’s often triggered by stress and lack of sleep and maybe not eating. It could be related to that, but for some people, absolutely, out of nowhere.
And that’s what I think makes it so scary. It’s not like some people, of course, will have it during public speaking, but for others it’s just completely outta nowhere.
Safety Behaviors to Manage Panic Attacks
Emma: Yeah. Okay. So then people naturally start to want to make these not happen so much. They start engaging in safety behaviors or avoidance behaviors.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: Can you talk a little bit more about safety behaviors, what those look like?
Kimberley: So there are multiple safety behaviors that someone may engage with, and these goes for all anxiety conditions. But when we’re talking specifically about panic, it might be reassurance seeking. Are you sure I’ll be okay?
Are you sure I won’t panic? Asking loved ones, really requiring them to be there. Getting lots of repetitive reassurance seeking or good old Dr. Google, doing a lot of Dr. Google reassurance seeking, going and looking on to see what’s dangerous. Could I die from a panic attack?
If you search, “Could I die from a panic attack?” is a very common search on Google. People doing that safety behavior. Another one is carrying specific safety items with them. As a kid, we had security blankets.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: But as adults and teenagers, we might also have, I know a lot of my patients will carry ginger ale iced water because they’ve associated those as things that calm the panic.
And sometimes that might be true, right? It might actually help to have some iced water or ginger ale or Dramamine or whatever they’ve taken.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: But the problem with that is it’s training your brain to think that you can’t handle it without it. And so then you have to carry it with you all the time.
So that’s another big one. Another safety behavior I think a lot of us do is a lot of beating ourselves up. And while that mightn’t feel like a safety behavior, often people will get themselves through a panic attack by criticizing themselves and saying really mean things.
Emma: Oh, interesting.
Kimberley: Calling themselves certain names and muscling up through it. And we can talk about ways in which we could practice some of that, but not to the degree where it actually causes more problems in the long term. But they’re not doing it just to criticize, they’re doing it to push through.
And white knuckle through the panic attack.
How Avoidance and Safety Behaviors Contribute to Panic Disorder
Emma: Okay. So could we spend just a moment on how avoidance and safety behaviors contribute to panic attacks coming back or being more frequent?
Kimberley: Yeah okay. Think of it this way. If you have anxiety, 10 outta 10 or even 8 outta 10 anxiety and as you experience your brain is taking messages all the time. Is this okay? Can I handle this? Are we safe? Are we dangerous? If your response to it is, yes, this is dangerous, we need to run away, and you do that on repeat, you’re actually training your brain that panic attacks are in fact dangerous.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: You’re actually reinforcing that this is a dangerous imminent threat that we need to run away from. So what happens is next time you have even a little sensation of anxiety, your brain’s going to remember, oh my gosh, last time we did this, you told me to run like there was a wolf or a lion.
And so it’s going to send more anxiety hormones and chemicals into your body and flood you with even more anxiety because your brain is just trying to protect you. It’s just trying to keep you alive. It’s doing a great job. But if you are training it to keep pumping out this threat response, you’re training your brain to have more fear.
It’s similar to what you resist persists. It’s similar to thought suppression. The attempt to not think about something makes you think about it more. And that’s the case with anxiety as well. So while the avoidance might feel like you are keeping yourself safe from this uncomfortable feeling, you’re actually training your brain to be afraid of going out into the world.
Emma: Okay, so if you go out into the world and you have a panic attack, and then the next time you go out into the world and you start to feel like sensations of panic and you have the perception, the thought that says, oh my gosh, is panic, dangerous, and then you do some kind of avoidance or safety behavior, you seek reassurance, you make sure to leave that situation, you make sure to take your whatever, your ginger ale or whatever.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: And then perhaps you don’t have a panic attack or you do have a panic attack and you survive.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: Your brain is oh, phew! Good thing I did that avoidance behavior. That’s what kept my human alive ’cause those panic attacks, it shows your brain, it creates that connection in your brain that panic attacks are actually dangerous.
Kimberley: Yes. And the thing with that is, let’s say, let’s follow that plan. So you go out. You’ve had a panic attack, you are like, okay, I had another panic attack and I avoided and, or I took ginger ale or whatever it was.
The problem with that is, next time you have it, your brain is going to send you messages to do it earlier or do more of it. And so what ends up happening is a small safety small avoidant behavior, you might be like, it’s no big deal, just left for a couple minutes, turns into 10 minutes, turns into 30 minutes, turns into a day, turns into a month.
It can spread throughout little areas and take all of the joy and your own sense of mastery and confidence away when you avoid. I often say to clients, avoiding, yes, it might work, but it leaves you feeling disempowered, leaves you feeling completely not confident to manage these panic attacks.
Emma: It’s like panic attacks are like a 5-year-old. Oh, I have a 5-year-old currently, and she’s just checking everything she can push and like, how far can she go?
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: And how long can she get away with it before mom puts down the law.
Kimberley: That’s actually a really good analogy that we often use is our brain will, you always see that kid at Target throwing a big tantrum ’cause their mom wouldn’t buy them candy.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: That’s what your brain’s doing. When you’re having a panic attack. Often our instinct, if we have a five-year-old and I have two, your instinct is to take, run them back outside.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: But that is only training the kid that tantrums get them sort of what they want.
Emma: Just to get out of the store, back into the car where they’re doing their thing. Or you buy ’em a candy bar.
Kimberley: Buy the candy. Exactly.
Emma: You buy them the candy bar and then they’re like, aha! Next time, I want a candy bar and mom says, no, as long as I scream loud enough, I’ll get it.
Kimberley: Yeah. And panic is the same.
Emma: Yeah. And I don’t think it’s our brain that’s actually trying to manipulate us or be awful to us. It’s like this just our brain learns through what we show it, not what we think.
Kimberley: Yep. No. This is the thing. When you have panic attacks, it’s so easy to start to hate your brain.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: But we have to practice. It’s not that your brain is doing anything wrong. It’s not a bad thing. There’s not, it’s not broken. It’s a lot about how we train it. Like, I’m training a dog right now, and it’s a lot about training it gently and firmly and consistently, and not reinforcing behaviors that only make it worse.
Emma: Yeah. Yep. It’s just trying to keep you safe.
Kimberley: Yeah, exactly.
Stop Panic Attacks with CBT
Emma: Okay. So what does the research tell us? What’s an effective treatment to stop panic attacks? What do we do with panic?
Kimberley: Okay, so the treatment of panic is really quite fun. It doesn’t have to be horrible and that’s what I wanna reinforce, but it’s also a little, a little hard work. It’s not easy. It’s not where you go into therapy and you just talk about it and it goes away. There are really effective treatments, particularly for those who have severe, and I’ve had clients with severe panic attacks, agoraphobia, where they can’t leave the house. So we know that the research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy is one of the best treatments for panic disorders. Now, what that means is there’s a cognitive component where we look at maybe some of your cognitive errors, things that maybe your thought errors that you’re having, and one of the biggest ones is, I can’t handle this.
Emma: Yeah
Kimberley: That’s the biggest one I come from. A lot of people come in and they’ll say, I can’t handle it.
This is too much, it’s too big. It’s just impossible or I might die. So we wanna really restructure that first and look at what are the facts, what is not the facts. The second component is behavioral therapy, which is where, as you said, we change our reaction to the panic. That’s where the gold is.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: And that’s where you actually can change the neuro pathways of your brain by changing how you respond. So in the behavioral component of treatment, we actually, believe it or not, practice doing the things that may bring on a panic attack. Going to the places you might have a panic attack and I know what you’re thinking.
You’re thinking like, oh no, absolutely not. Checking out [inaudible] but don’t run away because this is where you get all your power back, all your confidence back, and you build a sense of mastery. I have had hundreds of clients go through this treatment where panic is literally like, it’s not even something that they need to flinch about anymore.
They still might have anxiety.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: But they know that as soon as they have it, they have these skills and tools to ride it out. So that’s the big piece—don’t run away.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: Don’t leave the room, don’t flee. We wanna stay where the panic is and allow it to rise and fall on its own, which it will. In fact, the less you fight it, the faster it will rise and fall on its own.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: And so we do that, the thing to remember is we do that gradually. We don’t throw you into the lion and the wolves right away. We do it in this compassionate step-by-step way where you build a sense of mastery over facing those things that you’re afraid of having a panic attack around.
Emma: Can you give us an example?
Kimberley: Sure. I could give you so many examples. So airplanes is probably the most common that I get asked about, so I’ll use it.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: So let’s say you’re on the airplane, you’re watching a movie, you know you’re tired, you don’t really wanna be there, you don’t really like flying, and all of a sudden you have a 10 out of 10 panic attack.
You’re so anxious. The minute you get off that airplane, you promise yourself you will never do that again. And wherever you are, you drive home. So let’s say you’ve flown from California to Denver. You rent a car and you drive home. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this story. So what we might do here is we will first do a lot of education around panic, giving you lots of mindfulness skills, lots of compassion skills, and also help you to learn how to down regulate, meaning not hyperventilate. We’re gonna look at your body language a lot. If you’re tensing tight and you’re gripping onto it, we’re gonna practice not doing that. And then we are going to slowly but surely expose you to small examples, maybe first videos of an airplane, the sounds of an airplane. Maybe you go to the airport and you just sit in the airport for a little while if that’s something that triggers that memory of you having a panic attack until you slowly start to have more and more experience with planes. My husband had severe panic disorder on an airplane. We did a couple episodes with him and what we ended up doing is he associated everything that created panic for him, and he worked his way up.
And what he ended up doing was flying from LA to Sacramento every weekend. It’s like a 40 minute flight. And he practiced and he practiced. He had some not so great ones. But over time he can now fly to Australia, which is where I’m from, which is a 14-hour flight and even if he has panic, he’s oh, that was a big one, but I handled it. No problem.
Allowing the Panic Attack to Happen
Emma: Like he allows the panic to come. Like the goal isn’t to fly without having a panic attack.
Kimberley: No, quite the opposite. If your goal is to not have one, you might be more likely to have one.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: It’s actually the biggest thing we wanna say here, and we say it a lot on my podcast, which is, it’s a beautiful day to do hard things.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: We wanna bring it on. So this is where I was talking about getting aggressive. If you’re getting aggressive with panic, but you’re doing it in a white knuckling way, you’re probably gonna have more anxiety. But if you’re aggressive in the form of bring it on panic! Bring it on, give me your best panic attack. That is where it’s as if your brain is oh, she’s not scared anymore. Okay. All right. Maybe I don’t need to send all this anxiety. She’s showing me that she’s not going to back down. She’s showing me that we’re not treating this like it’s an imminent threat anymore. And that’s where the brain changes.
Emma: It’s so cool. And I’ve seen it too. I’ve seen it happen and it works. Like it’s awesome.
Kimberley: Yeah. Yeah.
Interoceptive Exposures to Panic Sensations
Emma: So with that first thought of I can’t handle it, like how would you work with someone who is no, I can’t handle feeling that way. Like I have to at all costs, avoid and white knuckle myself into never having those feelings of panic. I can’t handle it. If I had a panic attack, what then? I just I would, I don’t know. I would explode. I don’t know. That’s the belief, like this idea of I can’t handle this. How do you work with that cognition?
Kimberley: I think there’s a couple things we can do. We could try to correct the thought. But if you are adamant that you can’t handle it, we would actually move back to the behavioral model.
So there’s a type of practice called interceptive exposures, which is where we actually expose them to the sensations they feel when they’re having a panic attack. So I’ll often say to a client, okay, pretend I’m an alien that came down from a planet, and I’m across from you, and I’ve never heard of a panic attack.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is this thing called a panic attack? Tell me exactly how it feels. And you might say, first I notice a knot in my throat and then I get this tight chest and then I get dizzy and then it’s all over. Then I’m fully into panic and I’ll be like, okay. So it’s the knot in your throat and the tightness in your chest and the dizziness that we need to change how we react to. Instead of having that and running and being like, oh my gosh, it’s coming. It’s coming, right? What we’re gonna do is we’re actually gonna practice having that sensation on purpose, one at a time.
We’re not here to flood you and overwhelm you.
Emma: Yeah. Yeah.
Kimberley: But what maybe if it’s tightness of chest, we might wrap a bandage, an ice bandage around your chest really tight or you might tighten your bra straps or whatever. And you might just sit here with me and let’s actually just observe what it feels like to have this tight feeling in your chest.
Emma: Yeah
Kimberley: You can actually handle it. All right. How long do you think you can handle it for? And they might be like, oh, like 30 seconds. Let’s try. They might breathe through this tight feeling in their chest, that the bandage is so tight. We’re not doing anything to harm them, by the way. We would never do anything against their will or anything like that.
We’re doing this really for the sake of curiosity.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: And then we’ll say, okay, could you do another five seconds, another 10? Could you do another minute? And so really then they start to notice like, oh, there are some of these sensations that I’ve interpreted as dangerous, but maybe I can tolerate them.
Maybe they’re just discomfort. Maybe it’s a tolerable discomfort instead of labeling the whole thing as intolerable. And we would slowly work up to where with dizziness, we might spin you around in the chair.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: Again, nothing where we’re going to make you pass out or anything.
Maybe five times. And then we’d sit there and be like, okay. What is it like to be dizzy?
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: Could you have a different response to being dizzy? And usually we kind of giggle and it’s funny and so forth. And so we play around with those sensations. And to be honest, once you’ve had some success with feeling those sensations, people start to realize they can tolerate a panic attack.
Emma: I love that. I heard a thing by Carl Jung the other day and he said overcoming anxiety, people have to transition from control to trust.
Kimberley: Yes.
Emma: So they go from where they’re trying to control these sensations. Force them to stop, avoid safety behaviors, control. So they shift to trusting themselves to have these feelings.
Kimberley: Yeah. Yeah.
Emma: And still be okay.
Kimberley: Trust usually, and that’s where a lot of my clients, I can hear what they would say to that. They would be like, “But I can’t trust myself.”
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: My brain is on fire and so this is where I’ll say, yeah, but with practice. We only learn to trust ourselves by practicing doing hard things, that you’ll master these baby steps by dipping your toe in the discomfort just a little bit at a time and building up as you go. I often say that really the work here is curiosity. Can we be curious enough to see just, we’ve determined we believe that we can’t handle it.
Emma: Okay.
Kimberley: But could you be curious about the idea that maybe you could handle it just for five seconds? Then you can go back. I might even say, you can use your safety behaviors. But can we just stay here for five, 10 seconds? A minute, three minutes? How long could you stay before you use that safety behavior and slowly, incrementally work your way up there with that as well.
Willingness to Experience Discomfort with Anxiety
Emma: I love it. That’s so cool. And there’s this feeling that internally shifts when you, it’s like, I don’t know how to describe it. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it’s called willingness.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: Where you drop the struggle and you say, I’m gonna allow myself to, I’m willing to feel this.
It doesn’t mean liking, wanting, enjoying. It’s just like I’m willing to feel what I am feeling.
Kimberley: Yep.
Emma: And when that happens, I’ve found like through experience, not through academia, through experience, when I do that with my sensations, they generally melt. And if they don’t melt, because I’m not resisting them, they tend to resolve more quickly.
But even if they don’t, I just, I’m like, oh, at least I’m not struggling while feeling this.
Kimberley: You bring up a beautiful point. So old school, CBT, we always used to, as they were doing exposures with their panic, we would, I was trained when I first was trained as an intern, to check for their units of distress.
So like out of 10, how uncomfortable are you out of 10? And over the last decade we’ve shifted that to, instead of asking how uncomfortable, ’cause that shouldn’t be the problem, right? It shouldn’t be the goal. We actually say outta 10, how willing are you to be in this discomfort? And that little shift of check, instead of checking levels of distress to willingness, that actually improves somebody’s ability to stay in that discomfort. To stay with it. To make some space for discomfort, which is really what this is about.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: And often someone will be like, oh, I’m at a six, and then I’ll pause and say, what can we do to get you at a seven, eight, and nine? Because that’s where we wanna be.
Emma: Of willingness.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: Not of anxiety. Yeah.
Kimberley: No
Emma: That’s so cool.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: I love that technique. I’ve never heard people using it that way.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: But I love it.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Self-Compassion to Reduce Suffering Long-Term
Emma: Huh. That’s so cool. Okay. I guess I wonder, does self-compassion play a role or is there another way to approach this?
Like another type of stance that you do encourage your clients to take.
Kimberley: So I do a lot of work around self-compassion. I have a book about self-compassion. It’s a huge piece of the work, but we have a huge misunderstanding of what self-compassion is. Self-compassion is not rainbows and bubble baths and like taking a nap.
Emma: Positive affirmations all the time.
Kimberley: Yeah. It can be those things.
Emma: Okay.
Kimberley: But compassion, the true definition of compassion is doing what reduces your suffering. Doing the thing that takes care of the long-term Kimberly, not the short-term Kimberly. But what really fosters long-term longevity and wellness in my body.
So when we think about panic in the moment, often clients will say, I was so self-compassionate, I left. I was in a lot of discomfort and I did the self-compassionate thing and I left the building and I didn’t do it. And I’ll be like, I’m so glad you know your limits. However, I’m wondering if we were to look at that, does that really serve the long-term you? Is that the real compassionate act?
Emma: Yeah
Kimberley: Because often when it comes to anxiety, the most compassionate thing we can do is to lean into anxiety and have more of it. I say to myself, and I’ve had my own share of anxiety, there is no discomfort I’m not willing to feel because I know that as soon as I run away from it, that discomfort has power over me.
And so that compassionate piece is a gentle voice. It’s a gentle hand on your heart. You’ve got this it’s the cheerleader that encourages you to stay.
Emma: To keep going.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: The most caring thing a parent can do is to like, see the potential their child has and still hold those boundaries and expect them to like hard things and level up sometimes.
Kimberley: Yeah. Yeah.
Emma: Fascinating. Okay.
Kimberley: So it’s this balance between a kind voice, a kind body posture, a kind tone. But bring it on. Let’s go. Let’s have this discomfort.
Emma: Yeah. If I were to ever get a tattoo, it would be one of Dr. Amen’s, he said if he only had two words for parenting, and I feel like this is how we treat ourselves too, is firm and kind.
Kimberley: Yes.
Emma: Firm and kind. I would get a tattoo right here that says, “Emma, be firm and kind with your kids.”
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: Be firm and kind with yourself.
Kimberley: Yes. It’s true. It’s true. That is compassion. Compassion is only, it’s only 50% then the soft nurturing side. The other 50% is that unconditional stand-by-yourself-through-the-hard-times mentality.
Emma: Yeah. And those aren’t two opposite things on a spectrum. They’re completely compatible.
Kimberley: They’re leading you in exactly the same direction.
Baby Steps with Anxiety
Emma: Yeah. Oh, cool. Okay, great. So what’s one small step someone who’s experiencing panic attacks could take today that might help them make progress?
Kimberley: Sure. Not long ago I actually went through my own little blip with anxiety again. I’ve had multiple little blips with anxiety, but one of the things that was most powerful for me, being someone who has treated anxiety, knows what to do, knows what not to do is I asked myself, what is the bravest thing I could do in this moment, just this moment? Because when anxiety comes, all we wanna do is run away and we have to get super present with this moment and just make baby moves, baby steps. So it was, how can I make this my bravest minute? And that question shifted things for me of okay, maybe there’s just one little thing. It doesn’t mean doing it perfectly. But how could I just make this minute just a little more braver?
Like the willingness question, right?
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: How can I just make this a brave minute? And that just shifts the mind just enough to be curious about is there another way to handle this? And it’s a little bit, it’s very empowering. It’s just a little bit of a move you can make to one small step in the right, in that direction where you’re not running away.
Panic Attacks in Public
Emma: Yeah. Ooh, I love it. Okay. What do you say to clients who are afraid of having a panic attack in public places or they avoid certain places because of that fear?
Kimberley: Sure. I say practice going to that place where it’s not high risk, meaning you don’t need to do it. Okay, let’s say a client says to me right where I am, right across the street is this outdoor mall, and we do a lot of my sessions, not here in this office, but out in the mall. So we’ll go to a place and practice having anxiety and panic at that mall. Now, I’m not gonna send them to their supermarket where they might know a bunch of people because that might feel like too much. We wanna get some mastery over these smaller baby steps. So go to maybe the next city and practice being in public.
And practice having the panic being around that, those sensations. And then what you can do is practice from moving up from there. Now, often people will say to me like, what if I’m on an airplane, like I’m sitting next to a stranger? They’re gonna see me breathing and crying and hyperventilating. In that situation, just let yourself panic. It’s okay. We don’t have to be perfect. Yes, they might, maybe they’ll even say, “I get you. I understand you. I’ve been there,” and they’ll comfort you. If they’re gonna judge you for that, let that be about them. There are circumstances where, yes, we do have to have a full blown panic attack in public.
Yes. But if you can try to practice and cope ahead by practicing and giving yourself lots of opportunities to be in public where the stresses are less.
Emma: Yeah. I love that. I love one of the things you said, it wasn’t, you said, we take ’em to the mall and we practice having panic and anxiety.
Kimberley: Yeah.
Emma: We practice getting better at panicking.
Kimberley: Yes.
Emma: We practice not panicking and were not locking down. Yeah.
Kimberley: Yes. Clients will come to me often and I always joke with them about this, and they’ll be like, “Kimberley, you’d be so proud of me. I didn’t have any panic attacks this week.” And I’m like, “Boo, I want you to have panic.” Like I want, not that I ever wish a panic attack on anyone, and they know that.
Emma: Yeah
Kimberley: But I wanna hear, when I know a client is ready to terminate out of treatment is when they said, Kimberly, I had a panic attack. I wrote it out. It wasn’t easy, but it did not stop me from doing the things I value. Then we are ready to start the termination process of booster sessions and so forth. That’s recovery.
Shifting Mindset to Overcome Panic or Anxiety
Emma: That’s so cool. I love it. Okay, so if someone were to shift their mindset to help them overcome panic, what would you say is like one of the most helpful ways to do that?
Kimberley: Okay. Bring it on. The biggest panic attack I’ve ever had was at my mother and father-in-law’s house.
Emma: That’s relatable for me.
Kimberley: It was actually because we were going through really bad fires here in California. It wasn’t the recent fires in California. It was the one three or four years ago. One of the biggest panic attacks I had and I knew that if I was gonna fight it, it was going to keep going because there was an actual real stressor happening that was causing this panic attack.
Emma: Oh, yeah.
Kimberley: So I went and laid down on the bed. I went full starfish, hands out, palms up, laid my body out, and I said, bring it on. Let’s go. Let’s have this panic attack. And it is the most powerful shift you can make in your brain because all of a sudden your brain starts to shift into, oh, she’s in charge.
She’s got this, she knows what she’s doing, and everything started to just [inaudible] slowly. Now, it did take some time for that cortisol and adrenaline to drain out of my body. But that bring-it-on approach will change everything. Don’t let things, don’t let panic stop you in your life. Bring it on! Clients of mine, we make out our list, a menu of all the things that you would do in your life where a panic attack wouldn’t bother you, and we go and do those things.
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: You don’t wanna go on a rollercoaster ’cause you’re afraid of having a panic attack. Let’s go. I’ll meet you at the rollercoaster, right?
Emma: Yeah.
Kimberley: You don’t wanna drive. That’s fine. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. We will drive. Like that bring it on. That is the way out of this condition.
Your Anxiety Toolkit - Kimberley Quinlan's work
Emma: Oh my gosh, I love it. So helpful. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. Can you tell my audience where to find you in your incredible work?
Kimberley: Thank you. I have a podcast called Your Anxiety Toolkit. The whole goal was to have a toolkit for people on how to manage anxiety.
So if you want more from me we have a podcast talking all about anxiety, all the different conditions and so forth. If someone wants to get a little taste tester, we actually have over 400 episodes. And so we’ve actually created top hits. So if you go to CBTSchool.com, CBT for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, so CBTSchool.com/anxiety-top-hits, you’ll get these six most listened episodes on anxiety, so you won’t have to fumble through 400 episodes.
Emma: That’s awesome. And I will make sure to link those in the show notes and in the description on YouTube so people can find you. So thanks. Oh, thank you so much. Honestly, it was a pleasure. So much fun.
Kimberley: Oh, thanks. You. Thank you. I hope it’s helpful.
Emma: Yeah, I’m sure it is. I’m sure it is. Yeah. Hi there. If you found anything in this video helpful, I would really appreciate it if you could give it a thumbs up or share it with someone who could benefit from it today.
