Chapter 3
Basic Calming Technique
The elevator comes to a grinding halt between the 18th and 19th floors.
You’ve heard about this glitch, it’s a loose something-or-other that the repair
person keeps saying is fixed. Last time, it took about half an hour to get
the dumb thing running. The joys of big city life. Another passenger is
already grumbling into the emergency phone. You look resignedly at the
report you were supposed to present in five minutes. The woman from the
office upstairs seems to be gasping for breath.
“Omigod,” she says, her voice thin and tight as steel cable. “I’m getting
claustrophobia. I can’t breathe. I’ve got to get out of here!”
Now what?
How do you calm someonewho’s in a panic? What you say is less impor-
tant than how you say it, and when.
Panic wells up from brain structures that evolved before words. To
understand how to calm a frightened person, we have to go back to that
far-off time and look, not at panic, but its opposite.
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