Your heart is racing. A tightness grips your chest. Catastrophic thoughts wash over you and you don’t know why. Or perhaps it is more diffuse: a dull worry that colors every day, an anguish you cannot name, a feeling that the world is moving too fast, too badly, too loudly, a physical or psychological pain.
This is an alarm signal your body is sending you: something is wrong. Something does not suit you. And it is frightening. You are experiencing an anxiety attack, generalized anxiety, or panic.
The Panic Attack
During a panic attack, the body goes into survival mode. The amygdala — the area of the brain responsible for detecting threats — triggers a cascade of reactions: adrenaline, cortisol, a racing heart rate, shallow breathing, tense muscles. Your organism prepares to flee or fight a predator. Except there is no predator.
This is the paradox of panic: an alarm that triggers without a fire. And what makes it so terrifying is precisely that — the absence of a visible reason. Why now? What’s wrong with me? What if I don’t get out of this?
Gestalt therapy offers a different reading of what is happening. The panic attack is not a dysfunction. It is an extreme reaction to stress that has been ignored or absorbed without being digested for too long: major life changes, an accumulation of micro-tensions, an old trauma resurfacing in an apparently harmless situation. The body, overloaded, switches to emergency mode. It is its only way of saying that something requires your full attention.
There is often also a dissociation — a gap between what is actually happening (you are safe at home) and what the body feels (absolute terror) and what the mind tells (imminent disasters). The brain, overwhelmed by emotions, fabricates stories that have no connection to the reality of the moment.
What to do when panic strikes?
The first thing — and often the hardest to accept — is that fighting panic only feeds panic. Telling yourself to “calm down” or trying to rationalize what is happening activates the alarm system even more.
What helps is the opposite: welcoming it. Telling yourself “this is a panic attack, it is unpleasant, but it will pass, I am not in danger.” Not to convince yourself that everything is fine — but to stop adding fear to fear.
Next, return to the body. The 5-4-3-2-1 method is simple and remarkably effective in emergencies: name 5 things you see, 4 you touch, 3 you hear, 2 you smell, 1 you taste. This sensory grounding brings the nervous system back to the present moment, where there is no danger.
Slow breathing can complete this return: inhale for 4 counts, hold for 4 seconds, exhale for 6. This cardiac coherence sends a safety signal directly to the brain.
And if possible: do not stay alone. Saying aloud “I’m having a panic attack” to a trusted person breaks something — the isolation that panic creates around you, that impression of being the only human being experiencing this.
Eco-anxiety: when it’s the world that weighs on you
There is another form of anxiety, less named but just as real. It is called eco-anxiety, or eco-distress: a chronic fear linked to environmental degradation, fueled by images of natural disasters, news about the extinction of species, and consecutive climate alerts.
What is important to understand is that eco-anxiety does not only concern those who directly experience the effects of climate change. Even following the news, or simply seeing shocking images, is enough to generate emotions of distress, helplessness, grief, and anger. These emotions are not irrational. They are proof of a deep sensitivity to your surroundings.
Eco-anxiety is also fueled by something specific: the feeling that we are partly responsible. If human negligence contributes to climate change, do we not bear a share of responsibility? This feeling of guilt can significantly increase anxiety.
The symptoms resemble those of classic anxiety — irritability, insomnia, accelerated heart rate, panic attacks, persistent sadness. The difference lies in the source: it is collective, planetary, and cannot be resolved by a simple change of personal perspective.
Transforming helplessness into momentum
Eco-anxiety is not a mental illness. It is an emotional response to a reality. And like any emotional response, it can become a source of action rather than paralysis.
Concrete engagement is one of the most powerful antidotes to helplessness. Joining an environmental association, participating in local initiatives, gradually changing your eating or consumption habits — all this directly fights against passive guilt. Acting, even on a small scale, makes the responsibility habitable. We don’t solve the global problem, but we are no longer just spectators.
Reconnecting sensorily with nature, too. A park, a forest, the sea — this connection reminds us that the earth is alive and beautiful, and that the relationship with the environment can be a source of healing as much as anxiety.
What psychotherapy can bring
Whether it involves repeated panic attacks, a diffuse anxiety that colors your daily life, or distress linked to the state of the world, therapeutic support can profoundly transform your relationship with anxiety.
Not by eliminating it — that would be like wanting to unplug an alarm system rather than understanding its cause. But by seeking out what feeds it: old buried fears, accumulated untreated stress, the dissociation between what you feel and what you allow yourself to feel.
In Gestalt therapy, we work to build more inner safety. This safety first comes from the body — learning to feel it, to listen to it, to trust it rather than fear it. The body is not your enemy when it panics. It is trying to speak to you. Therapy creates the space so that you can finally hear it.
Panic attacks, terrifying as they are, are not inevitable. Eco-anxiety, invasive as it is, is not a life sentence. Both are invitations — to slow down, to turn inward, and to take care of what, within you, needs to be heard.
Sources: André, C. (2004). Psychologie de la peur. Odile Jacob. / Clayton et al. (2017). Mental Health and Our Changing Climate. APA. / Mairesse, Y. (2012). Apport des neurosciences affectives. Cahiers de Gestalt-thérapie.
