During a panic attack, your body struggles to differentiate between what’s dangerous and what’s safe. The acidity of lemon can help you ground yourself and stay present in the moment, breaking the loop of negative emotions.
Panic attacks affect millions of people and can be experienced by those who don’t typically deal with mental health issues. Symptoms may include sweating, tingling in the hands, rapid heartbeat, trembling, feelings of impending doom, and fear of death.
Naturally, no one wants to experience this feeling, but it’s not easy to overcome it. That’s why Jennifer Anders, a psychologist from Colorado, who runs the Instagram account The.Anxiety.Doc, shared an unusual method for stopping panic attacks. A video she posted last summer has garnered 2.7 million views and tens of thousands of likes and continues to be shared widely.
Acid can help you
Dr. Anders recommends cutting a lemon into slices and putting a piece in your mouth the next time you feel a panic attack coming on.
The way lemon works is that it brings awareness into your body, keeping you in the moment, serving as a grounding tool, Anders told HuffPost.
Think about it: when you suck on a lemon, the acidity makes your mouth pucker right away. This distracts your mind from negative thoughts.
Simply, your thoughts stay in the moment, not stuck in a loop of negativity, helping you connect with your surroundings – which, in this case, is the lemon, says Anders.
The point is to pull your mind away from thoughts and bring awareness into your physical body whenever you feel a panic attack coming on. Dr. Anders says that if you don’t have a lemon handy, the method also works with sour candies.
How lemon helps
Our sympathetic nervous system is a network of nerves that helps us react quickly to a stressful situation. Any sensory intervention, such as using taste or smell, which can pull you out of a fight, flight, or freeze response, will be useful.
Sensory tools are great for this because our brain uses these sensors to determine whether we are actually in danger or not, said American psychotherapist Victoria Riordan.
But during a panic attack, it’s challenging for your body to distinguish what’s truly dangerous from what’s safe. You might be in a perfectly safe environment, but your brain and body interpret the surroundings as threatening. This is where a sensory tool, like sucking on a lemon, comes into play. This method is also known as grounding technique.
When it doesn’t help
Dr. Anders emphasized that this method isn’t suitable for someone having a panic attack due to a severe trauma they’ve experienced.
Anxiety as a response to something terrible and tragic is a normal and, in fact, justifiable reaction. In a way, having that surge of adrenaline can be useful as it’s part of the fight or flight response, it drives you to take action. What we don’t like is when the body produces this physiological experience in the absence of a stressor, says Dr. Anders.
Seek help
The fact is, you can’t go through life carrying lemons in your pocket to deal with panic attacks. Seek help from a professional to learn how to manage your panic attacks, rather than them controlling you.
While the lemon trick can sometimes be helpful, it won’t help you address the root of the problem, which is an essential part of your mental health journey, added Anders.
