The poet Muriel Rukeyser once wrote: “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” Among the many stories that shape the human experience, those involving panic add a particular disorientation, intensity, and unpredictability to the narrative of any moment.
Growing up in a chronically run-down building in New York City during the late 1900s, I found panic in an elevator. The fluorescent light would often burn out and go unreplaced for weeks at a time, leaving me to ride in complete darkness to the upper floor where I lived.
As I rode the elevator in a panic, my heart pounded, my body trembled, my breath shortened, and at times I even dissociated. What always struck me, though, was the ease of the other passengers—family members or neighbors who reached their floors without issue, never showing any signs of discomfort or panic. I marveled at such courage and chided myself for not having it. Although my distress tolerance improved as I got older, that dark elevator remains my reference point for the panic all of us suffer at one time or another.
“Panic may feel overwhelming, but it does not define who we are.”
Panic is a valid and natural experience. It can be life-sustaining when it arises in response to real danger; however, there are times when it is unfounded. Certain practices can help ameliorate the more negative effects of panic.
A holistic model of well-being is the bedrock of my work in chaplaincy and mental health. Engaging with panic naturally draws us into relationship with our biology, psychology, social connections, and meaning-making frameworks. Addressing panic effectively requires practices from all of these domains, including religious, spiritual, and psychological perspectives.
In fact, some of the most effective approaches to working with panic are rooted in sacred practices—particularly Buddhist ones, which have been incorporated in mainstream psychology, including mindfulness-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (MCBT), dialectical-behavioral therapy (DBT), and narrative therapies. What follows are best practices, some Buddhist-inspired, that can help you navigate day-to-day life in more adaptive ways and meet moments of panic with greater steadiness.
Mindfulness is the practice of holding awareness of what arises within us, such as emotions, sensations, and thoughts, while suspending judgment. In other words, mindfulness is seeing what actually is without sprinkling judgment into the picture, at least as best we can.
In the face of panic triggered by events, thoughts, or bodily sensations, mindfulness can make a meaningful difference. For example, when you’re triggered into an escalating panic response, it can help to bring your attention to five things you can see in the current moment. This creates an inner distance between triggers and your reaction to them. Even a few seconds of space can interrupt habitual patterns and open the door to more flexible coping. In that space, one can even begin to question whether the panic is grounded in credible information.
By taking mindful breaths or “box breathing” you can steady yourself during episodes of panic. Box breathing entails counting to four as you inhale, holding the breath for four, exhaling for four, and holding again for four before repeating. This is a technique that Navy SEALs have adopted in their training to help during periods of high stress.
Mindfulness helps us regulate emotion and chart a steadier course. Instead of running from panic, we learn to swim alongside it, even to question it. What does this look like in day-to-day life? Mindfulness need not be some grandiose meditation on a remote mountaintop. Just integrating a few mindful, grounding breaths when stepping onto a bus, into a car, or even into an elevator can normalize mindfulness as a daily practice. Then when stress or panic begins to rise, those same breaths can disrupt the surge of stress hormones like cortisol and soften the body’s alarm response.
Another practice worth exploring is rewriting the narratives we live by into more empowering stories. When panic or anxiety manifests, we often slip into unhelpful self-talk: “I’m just naturally an anxious person,” “I will always be this way,” or “Something must be inherently wrong with me.”
But all beings possess buddhanature. Embracing this inner goodness allows us to externalize panic as a temporary condition and not part of our core self. We are people who experience panic but are not panic itself.
When we pause to rescript our self-critical narrative, we become aware of where we minimize our strengths, amplify our challenges, and form cognitive distortions that obscure our view of our inner goodness, wholeness, and uniqueness. Then, from this clearer vantage point, we can respond more authentically and realistically to our needs in moments shaped by panic and see the broader truth of who we are. As we rewrite the narrative threads of our daily lives, we begin to recognize how far we’ve come as the main character in our own story. Self-compassion and care can more naturally start to become a part of the narrative as well.
A multisensory approach offers another way to partner with our bodies when we’re in the throes of panic. It involves engaging our senses—sound, sight, taste, touch, smell—to help regulate the nervous system and anchor us in the present moment. By experimenting with different sensory strategies, we can create our own “mix tape” of what helps most when panic rises. The body has a tremendous memory, and building a personal sensory library of best practices can go a long way toward flipping the script when panic begins to build.
For example, self-soothing through sound might include listening to music that engenders hope, stability, and renewed energy. One of my psychology professors in graduate school loved playing the theme from Rocky before big presentations or when feeling deflated in the face of a self-perceived failure. It was a reminder that life knocks everyone down, and what matters is how we get back up.
Another sound-based strategy is using our own voice as a source of grounding. Reciting a mantra—such as “this too shall pass,” “I am not my panic,” or, in my own tradition, “Namu Shinnyo,” meaning “I take refuge in the true nature of all things”—can steady the mind and reconnect us with the wisdom, loving-kindness, and compassion that permeate the world.
Carrying an aroma stick or essential oil can provide scent-based soothing in a moment of stress. I bought a sandalwood aroma stick in Thailand, and it accompanied me on planes, trains, and automobiles, providing quick moments of refreshment that helped me rewrite the sensory script when panic approached.
One last suggestion is to learn TIPP skills—temperature, intense exercise, paced breathing, and paired muscle relaxation—which can create a calming effect on the body in short order. Doing push-ups, splashing cold water on your face, or embracing a bag of frozen peas, for example, can help slow the heart rate, quiet the alarm bells sounding throughout the nervous system, and soften intense emotions.
Panic may feel overwhelming, but it does not define who we are. When we meet it with mindfulness, compassionate self-talk, and the wisdom of our senses, we begin to reclaim agency in moments that once felt uncontrollable. These practices do not eliminate panic, nor are they meant to. Instead, they help us relate to it differently—with curiosity, steadiness, and a growing trust in our own resilience. Over time, we learn that even in the darkest elevator, there is a part of us capable of reaching for the light.
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