There is nothing fancy about this idea, but it works very well. In the POEM system the important idea is to “snap yourself out of it” so to speak. With the POEM system you are focusing your attention at the end of a panic attack.

You are treating the end of a panic attack as a moment of opportunity. This moment of opportunity is when you say to yourself, “Wow! That was a drag and no fun, but no big deal. I’m just going to get my body moving, and shake it off.

Literally Shaking off Your Anxiety Attack

By “shaking it off” I mean literally shaking your body. Flail your arms and legs out and shake them vigorously. It looks quite ridiculous but it feels good, and it’s gives you a feeling of jolting yourself out of a bad thought, and anxious thought. I’ll post a video example of me doing the shake so you can see what I mean.

You can do this before what seems to be an oncoming panic attack. I’ve stopped a downward spiral into panic and anxiety many times using this shaking. This shaking of your body and limbs can help you when you are in medication withdrawal mode too.

Rebooting Your Brain

What I do, if I feel some severe anxiety coming on, is stand up right away and shake all my limbs, shake my head and make lip roll sound like I was stepping into a freezer. Sort of shake up and rattle your body to reset your thinking. Like a reboot, so to speak.

Reboot your brain, reboot your thoughts. You are a very special creation – a perfect machine created by universal love and compassion. You have just bought into your own fear, or the fears others (including the media) have pushed upon you. Do a simple reboot of your brain, and when you reboot it, turn off all the needless thinking that is sucking up your resources. Uninstall all the crap programs that are dragging you down, slowing you down, and making you tired. You don’t need fearful and negative programs running in the background of your beautiful, and pure, God-given brain.

Uninstall the newspapers, television news, cranky people, angry people, doom-and-gloom people. Uninstall all your guilt and fear of a bad future. Uninstall all of the negative viruses that have infultrated your thought patterns and your natural processing bus.

Clean and defrag your mental hard drive of all the useless files, folders, and applications of guilt and the past.

If you ever feel frightened, scared stiff, or just plain depressed – SHAKE IT OFF and REBOOT your brain.

It’s not a bad world. You are wonderful person born into a world of love and compassion. Everywhere we look around this world, the vast majority of people are beautiful, loving, caring, kind, compassionate, understanding, and loving. Don’t let the massive amount of negative and worrisome incoming data skewer these truths.

Ever wonder what happened to the bird-flu virus. Hmmmm….where did that go. Every wondered what happened to the imminent terrorist attack that was coming……been a while and we’ve been waiting. Ever wondered what happened to you through all these years of worrying, stress, anxiety, and panic attacks…….you’re still here and you still have a choice to make every day.

Choose to tell yourself that you are going to be just fine. Tell yourself that you will eventually be anxiety free and drug free. Tell yourself that you are going to change the way you look at life and all the other humans sharing your space. Tell yourself that you can control your thinking and change how you feel. Tell yourself that day-by-day you will learn to reboot your brain and shake off anxiety. Tell yourself it’s all going to be OK. You will my friend.

God bless……now let’s go do the shake!!

Jacob