Quick solutions for panic attacks?

[Bamboo]

This may sound silly....but it's helped me on numerous occasions. I literally start naming things to myself from my surroundings. Everything. Even if happens when I'm driving. In a store? I look at a person and start this dialogue with myself. In short, descriptive words.
There's a lady
She has dark hair
She got it cut yesterday
She is wearing boots
She ordered them online
They came in two days
The boots are brown
She has a blue purse
Inside the purse is lipstick
Inside the purse is a wallet

And so on
I know it sounds silly but if I do it in slow short sentences to myself....it pulls my brain away from the panic.

Sometimes if it happens in a therapy session, my T has had me name things in the room. Or he has me spell words. It helps me

 

[enough]

@Bamboo
yep. I can name all fifty states in alphabetical order, all thirty teams in the 3 divisions of the american and national baseball leagues, lots of stuff that has no excuse for taking up room in my memory except that if i try to do it to stop a panic attack, by the time i am up to north dakota I will wonder if i got new Hampshire AND new Mexico and now my count is off and i have to start over or risk getting to Wyoming with just49 fingers. And now I have moved all of the 23 different tracks in my brain that were all headed for a panic attack into thinking all together: 1 Alabama, 2 Alaska, and by the time i am done i am hopefully reigned in and ok.
A useful tool.