Helen’s post in full:

Every since my daughter was little she has suffered with anxiety/panic attacks triggered by alarms/loud noises or in large environments where she is not comfortable like airports and supermarkets.

A few years ago she was in Sainsburys when they did a fire alarm test and it completely traumatised her. It took 2 years to get her to go back into sainsburys and even now we have to ask if there are any schedule alarms before she will venture around the store.

Today we went and did a bit of last minute shopping and as we were at the checkout they dimmed the lights to indicate the store was closing soon. Immediately she started panicking as she thought an alarm was about to go off she wanted to run and got extremely upset.

The lady working at the checkout could see something was wrong as I was trying to comfort her to allow me enough time to pay for the shopping. I explained the problem and how the lights dimming had caused her to panic and she was just so lovely.

She came around the checkout and asked my daughter to help her scan the shopping, coaxed her into her seat whilst we dried her tears and completely distracted her by letting her scan all the food.

“I cannot tell you how much this meant”: supermarket cashier helps young girl through panic attack