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You’re on a plane in bad weather. The turbulence starts slowly and then builds to a rolling wave. Soon the skinny aluminum metal tube you’re riding in is bouncing and bounding through the not-so-friendly skies and it lasts for what seems like hours. Some people keep reading their books or watching their movies, without even noticing. But if you’re like most of us, this event ranges from uncomfortable and tedious to the creation of panic-inducing anxiety attacks. The thought of these pulse-pounding times can make you afraid to fly.
One of the primary human fears is public speaking. Standing in front of a group of colleagues and having to present to them at a meeting, or worse, talking in front of complete strangers at a business conference, a community meeting, or a church service, can create the same sense of panic as being on a bad plane flight. Instead of feeling as if you’ll fall out of the sky to your death, you feel as if your ego will die, which can be just as traumatic.
As Jerry Seinfeld so accurately said, “Fear of public speaking is above the fear of death. This means you’d rather be in the coffin at the funeral than give the eulogy at the funeral.”
Your feelings on the plane are the same as your time standing at the podium, even including the same queasy stomach, sweaty palms, raised heart rate, walls-closing-in sensations, and anxious thoughts. Once you’re in that panic attack mode it’s hard to stop it until the primary stressor passes (the plane smooths out or lands; your speech is over or you never have to give it in the first place).
Using deep-breathing techniques can help if you start them early in any anxiety-inducing event. These often consist of cyclical breathing exercises – inhale for a count of four seconds, hold for a count of four, exhale for four, hold for four, inhale for four, etc. The purpose and value is to give you a distracting activity to focus on, drop your pulse rate, lower your blood pressure, and get yourself out of your panic state and back to a form of mental and physical homeostasis.
The problem with most deep-breathing approaches as stress builds is that they are often too little-too late. By the time you start the process, you’re well past the benefit stage. Your mental mind gets somatically hijacked by your physical body. You can also create a lot of double-edged doubts, by saying, “Am I doing this right? It’s supposed to work! Why isn’t this working? Maybe I need to try harder!”
Here’s another two-step approach, which you can add to your stress-management breathing process. It uses two distractions: music and bi-lateral or cross-brain tapping. (It sounds and it may even look a little goofy; but give it a chance to see if it will work for you.)
Step One: Listening to music with your earbuds or headphones in place can help to interrupt your panic patterns. Closing your eyes and playing the songs you really like, fairly loudly, may get you out of panic mode by bombarding you with sounds you like. (Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, etc. When the stability of the plane flight is less than ideal, I find Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, at full headphone volume, can get me to a better place until things level off outside.)
Step Two: With your headphones in place and your favorite music going, cross your arms over your chest, as if you were giving yourself a hug, and tap the area in front of your shoulders where they meet your chest. Tap to the music beat, at a snappy pace. Do it for as long as you feel you need to.
Looks and sounds odd, but it’s actually soothing. Besides being a physical distraction, the back-and-forth tapping process with either hand actually “taps into” (sorry) the bi-lateral processes of how our brains function. Since we know the left hemisphere of our brains deal with facts, figures, data, logic, and sequences, and the right hemisphere deals with feelings, emotions, intuition, melodies, and vibrations, the simultaneous tapping can serve as a whole-brain exercise. The combination of your chosen music, closing your eyes (to give you less to have to focus on and worry about), being seated safely and comfortably, and tapping on both hemispheres of your body, can interrupt your usual pre- or present panic responses.
As an approach to anxiety, the idea of tapping various parts of your body has been around for awhile. Roberta Temes’ book The Tapping Cure came out in 2006. Her book and others like it suggest that tapping various points (the energy points and flow channels the Chinese have always referred to as meridians) along your eyebrows, nose, jaw, chin, throat, collarbones, armpits, chest, and belly can be soothing. Tapping these various points, in a defined top-to-bottom order and in a continuous cycle several times in a row, is said to release anxiety, lower stress, and get you back to feeling more centered.
So if you find yourself in a situation where you feel the early signs of anxiety or even moving into a panic attack, find a safe and quiet place to put on your headphones, turn up the music you like the best, cross your arms, and use your fingertips to gently but firmly tap your shoulders or chest as you consciously slow down your breathing.
It gives you something to do – hence it’s a focused distraction technique. If you are skeptical and think this kind of both-sides-now tapping is some sort of placebo, guess what? Placebos work too. Can’t hurt to try.
Dr. Steve Albrecht is a keynote speaker, author, podcaster, and trainer. He focuses on high-risk employee issues, threat assessments, and school and workplace violence prevention. In 1994, he co-wrote
, one of the first business books on workplace violence. He holds a doctorate in Business Administration (DBA); an M.A. in Security Management; a B.S. in Psychology; and a B.A. in English. He is board certified in HR, security, coaching, and threat management. He worked for the San Diego Police Department for 15 years and has written 21 books on business, HR, and criminal justice subjects. He can be reached at drsteve@drstevealbrecht.com or on Twitter @DrSteveAlbrecht
