What to recite during a panic attack

The four steps

1. Seek refuge, out loud if you can

   Say the ta'awwudh. It is short, you already know it, and saying it gives your mouth and your mind something to do other than catastrophise.

2. Breathe out for longer than you breathe in

   In for four counts, out for six or eight. The long exhale is what calms your nervous system, not the inhale. Panic makes people over breathe, which worsens the dizziness and the tingling, so slowing the out breath addresses the physical symptom directly.

3. Repeat one short dhikr

   Use la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah, given in full below. Repeat it slowly, in time with the breathing. You are not trying to feel anything in particular. You are giving a racing mind one fixed point to return to.

4. Name five things you can see

   Say them silently or under your breath. Panic pulls your attention inward onto your own symptoms, and this pulls it back out into the room. Combined with the dhikr, it interrupts the loop that keeps the attack going.

There is a reason this particular dhikr suits a panic attack so well. Panic is, at its core, a feeling of having lost control. This phrase does not argue with that feeling. It agrees with it, and then places the control somewhere safer than your own hands. Our guide to dhikr for anxiety covers which other adhkar suit which kind of worry.

When panic starts during salah

This is more common than most people realise, and almost nobody talks about it. You are standing in prayer, your heart begins to race, and then a second fear arrives on top of the first: that you are ruining your salah, or that this proves something about your faith.

A few things are worth knowing.

Khushu' is not a condition for your prayer being valid. Deep concentration is something to aim for, and its absence does not nullify what you have prayed. A distracted, difficult, panicky prayer still counts as a prayer. This single point relieves a great deal of unnecessary distress.

Slowing down usually helps more than speeding up. The instinct is to rush to the end so that it can be over. Rushing tends to increase the panic, because it confirms to your body that something urgent is happening. Lengthening your breathing in sujud, and staying there a moment longer, works better.

You are permitted to stop if you genuinely need to. If the attack becomes overwhelming, you may break the prayer, let it pass, and pray again once you have settled. For your own particular circumstances, especially if this is happening repeatedly, ask a knowledgeable person of religion rather than deciding alone.

If the fear in prayer centres on whether you performed wudu correctly, or whether your prayer was accepted, or whether you said something wrong, that pattern may be closer to religious obsessive doubt than to ordinary panic. Our guide on telling waswas apart from OCD covers that specifically.

Overthinking at night

Night time anxiety has its own character. There is nothing left to distract you, the house is quiet, and your mind starts working through every conversation you have had and every decision you are dreading.

Two things help more than most.

The first is to recite Ayat al-Kursi before sleep, which is a long established practice for protection and for settling the heart. The second is to get the worries out of your head and onto something outside it. Writing down what you are turning over, and then deliberately marking which parts are actually within your control, breaks the loop far more effectively than trying to stop thinking, which never works.

That second practice is essentially tawakkul made concrete. You do your part, you write down what your part was, and you hand the outcome back to Allah rather than rehearsing it until dawn.

What a panic attack actually is

Understanding the mechanism takes some of the terror out of it, so it is worth two minutes of your time when you are calm.

A panic attack is your body's alarm system firing when there is no emergency. Adrenaline is released, your heart rate rises, your breathing quickens, blood moves to your large muscles, and your senses sharpen. Every one of those responses is designed to save your life if something is genuinely about to harm you. The problem is not the response. The problem is that it has triggered at the wrong moment.

This explains the symptoms that frighten people most. The chest tightness is muscular. The dizziness and tingling come from breathing too fast. The sense of unreality is a known effect of the adrenaline surge. None of it indicates that you are dying, losing your mind, or being punished.

It also explains why the attack ends. Your body cannot sustain that level of adrenaline. It runs out, every time, whether or not you do anything at all.

Common questions

How long does a panic attack last?

Most peak within about ten minutes and then subside. The exhaustion afterwards can last considerably longer, which is normal and not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Can a panic attack harm me?

A panic attack itself is not physically dangerous, however alarming it feels. If you have any doubt about symptoms such as chest pain, get them checked medically rather than assuming.

Is it wrong to use breathing techniques instead of only dua?

No. Taking practical means is part of tawakkul, not a departure from it. Using a breathing technique alongside dhikr is the same principle as taking medicine alongside dua.