5 Life Lessons I Learned on My Journey Through Panic
There was a time I couldn’t leave my house. I don’t mean I didn’t want to leave my house; I am quite literally saying, “I couldn’t”. Anxiety and panic had settled in and taken over, leaving me totally stuck, immobile and frozen. Living with panic feels like an evolving downward spiral. At first, it is the panic attack itself that is overwhelming and terrifying, the racing heart, tunnel vision, sweaty palms and feeling totally out of control. What follows is the constant worry of the possibility of another attack. The fear of the fear etches the panic neuropathway ever deeper in the psyche. That’s the thing about panic and anxiety; they have the capacity to shrink your world, pulling the walls inward, leaving you desperately searching for that space where you can finally find some sense of security. Leaving you seeking that space where tendrils of dread aren’t waiting every moment ready to weave their way and strangle all hope, optimism, ambition and sense of real purpose.
They called it PTSD. At the time I didn’t even understand what that actually meant. All I knew was I was twenty- two years old and unable to leave my own house alone, drive anywhere myself or hold down a job. Facing the dark night of my life I realized I had two choices; I could agree to define myself through fear, acquiescing to the highly intelligent medical minds who said this was my new normal, and my “work” was to get used to it; or I choose another way. I could choose a way that led me deeper into the fear rather than numbing it, questioning it rather than agreeing with it and even befriending it rather than making it my enemy.
I chose the latter. The process of walking deeply through panic was not easy. There were days I quite literally felt overwhelmed, discouraged and completely daunted by the enormity of the pit I was crawling out of. Yet, like all great challenges it was also an opportunity to discover grace, wisdom, resiliency, trust and long buried truths about myself I could have found no other way.
I want to share some of what I found during my journey through panic.
Ask for help: Please do not walk this path alone. Whatever it was that created the energy of fear within you must be unlocked and cleared to be healed. There are some great tools, techniques, support networks, practices and even medications to help you. Keep looking until you get the help and support you need.
Understand what is actually happening: It helped me to think of panic like a blocked garden hose. There was a buildup of anxiety, but the energy had nowhere to go. Just like a hose bursts to alleviate the pressure of the water, my psyche couldn’t hold the anxiety at bay, and I was flooded with sensations of its release. Fear loves to make things bigger than they are. Understanding panic as simply a physiological process of release helped allow the sensations to move freely.
Be curious rather than afraid: Fear is a survival necessity to keep you safe from immediate danger. In panic or anxiety disorders the fear instinct has been hyper-activated, typically from traumatic experiences, and fires at the very hint of a perceived threat, whether that threat is “real” or not. Through curiosity you can find the source of the fear story. Old stories can be reworked and limiting beliefs excavated and challenged.
This too shall pass: Sometimes you just have to ride it out. Fear resides in the most reptilian and primitive part of our brain. Try arguing with a lizard sometime if you want to experience how successful logic is to our limbic system. Often we simply need to compassionately ride the waves of sensation with awareness rather than judgement and with presence rather than absence, slowly forging more space between stimulus and response.
Panic or anxiety doesn’t make you weak: In fact, it is the opposite, because it takes bravery, resiliency and trust to show up for the darkest parts of our lives. It is a type of courage forged only in the fire of intensity. Panic proves you have survived something and have the resiliency to prove it.
It’s been more than 15 years since I’ve experienced panic. It’s been so long I don’t even think about it anymore; however I haven’t forgotten that time. I still proudly carry the scars of that noble struggle, and equally I carry the wisdom.
