Stay cool and survive
In a flying career spanning 31 years I have been in tricky situations a couple of times. That set against nearly 20000 hours of safe flying.
Many years ago I suffered a total engine failure in a light single at 3500 feet. The engine simply stopped dead and wouldn't restart, thus a routine local flight became an instant emergency. If panic had taken over at that point a safe landing would have been difficult if not impossible due to the terrain and housing around the area. As the training I had received kicked in I took a concious decision to keep calm a "fight" the situation, thus I worked through the forced landing checklist whilst transmitting a distress call and looking for a patch of green to land on.
The outcome was a safe landing -no damage or injuries - later that day I did reflect that it was a close call but took comfort in my performance and the outcome.
Later in my career I had to shutdown one engine on a Kingair over a long sea crossing which triggered a rapid response from ASR services but again worked hard at getting safely to land. A positive decision not to panic was the key.
All pilots are different and I would not exclude panic from the list of possible accident causes but keeping calm and following practiced procedures is one way to keep it at bay.....