Anxiety and Panic Attacks
Do you struggle with anxiety and possibly panic attacks? Is this struggle recent, like within the last couple years? And maybe you’ve never had to deal with this before?
This may sound like the beginning of an infomercial, but I’m genuinely curious.
I also want to ensure you that you are not alone. Many individuals are currently experiencing this kind of internal energetic shift, most especially in the last couple years to match the global energetic shift occurring. Not to get all woo-woo, but seriously, can’t you feel that some shit is getting restructured? Old ways of being are falling down, and new ways of being are sprouting up. Many of us are left in the air without a sense of grounding - but we’ll return to this in a moment.
Regarding the anxiety, it’s a call. It’s something begging for attention and awareness. I’m not always comfortable with making such declarative statements, but I say this with confidence because I’ve known it firsthand, and it took me a couple years to understand not only why it was happening but what I could do to find resolution.
I started working with surface anxiety three years ago, and because it was so foreign to my system I didn’t necessarily feel any kind of way about it. It was just like, “oh weird.” Then it wouldn’t go away. Then it got louder, and made even simple tasks monumental. It’s difficult to put into words. Some days I felt like everything was so wrong and broken there was no possible way it could ever get better, and other days I honestly felt like I was going to die. Like walking up the hill was going to kill me, like listening to the music too loud in the car was going to prevent me from hearing something pummeling towards me, like leaving the house was too dangerous, like eye contact meant someone was about to attack me. Fear and paranoia turned up to 11. If you’ve gone through similar experiences I know you can relate, and if you haven’t (happy for you) you’re probably like what the hell is she talking about.
From the outside it can seem as if nothing is going on at all because it’s a totally interior set of sensations.
That is, until it becomes the full blown panic attack. Heart starts racing, feels like there's a boulder on your chest, it’s hard to breathe, hard to swallow so you can’t even get a sip of water down, you want to cry and scream but at the same time you don’t want to be heard or noticed so it comes out as little whimpers while you back yourself into a corner or a bathroom, hands and feet go numb, your mind can’t stop so it’s like the lyrics to a thousand songs and nine hundred memories and every single imagined scenario you’ve ever had are flashing through your head at once. You try to close your eyes to block anything out but then light starts pulsing behind your eyelids as if there’s a rave inside your brain. You feel alone. You feel like you could never feel any other way. Totally helpless, absolutely terrified.
And from the outside, to people who don’t navigate this level of anxiety, a panic attack might just look as if you’re having a bad day and possibly overreacting to your circumstances.
It’s rough to not get the kind of sympathy and care such an event calls for, especially from the people closest to you. It could encourage you to ignore your anxiety, to do anything to numb it out, which is wild because your body and nervous system are literally SCREAMING IN YOUR FUCKING EAR. They have gone to the utter limit to get your attention, to tell you something is not right, something is out of balance, something needs to change.
Of course, sometimes we do get the sympathy and care needed, and what a beautiful blessing to have someone who supports you regardless of whether or not they understand. I hope you remember the feeling and pass on such loving kindness as often as you can.
My surface anxiety turned into panic attacks after about a year. I wasn’t really listening, therefore I wasn’t making any meaningful adjustments. I was trying to numb it out. I did superficial things thinking that was managing it. My “solutions” were things like more naps, cancelled appointments, less caffeine, more workouts. These were not bad choices. I was exhausted and I did need more sleep. I was overworked as a small business owner at the peak of Covid so I did need to back off a bit. Changing my diet around did regulate my blood sugar. Exercising did help pent up and stagnant energy move through my body. These choices, however, did not address the cause(s) of my anxiety. They were addressing only the intensity of the symptoms.
Listening, learning, getting real… that shit’s hard. Especially because once we know better we have a responsibility to do better, and it can seem easier to stay in the dark, to disempower ourselves and say that we don’t have any options because the options we actually do have feel monumental.
When we haven’t learned how to navigate and process our emotional states and past and present experiences, it is monumental to get started. And, like anything, we will get better with practice till it becomes like riding a bike - automatic.
If your nervous system chooses anxiety and panic attacks to talk to you, it needs immediate and consistent soothing and release. Grounding exercises, intentional movements, and breathing techniques exist that 100 percent create beneficial change in the moment, so right away you can start to feel better. Simple, sure. Easy, hell no.
Grounding is important because when anxiety strikes we can feel like we’re floating, as if our feet aren’t on the earth and there is nothing to hold on to, no port in the storm. To ground is to steady ourselves and to stabilize our physical and energetic bodies. This can be frightening because it will bring us back to the place where we are feeling the intensity, but it is only from inside, only from connection, that we can change the environment. If we disassociate, we lose power.
Moving in specific ways can help release pent up energy in muscles that get overloaded with an activated stress response. So instead of trying to hold back a raging river in our bodies, we can let it flow through and out back towards a calm current.
Breathing immediately affects our nervous system. If we want to settle the nervous system, which will help both our mind and body find a sense of ease and peace, there are different breathing techniques to take us there.
There are multiple varied scientific studies that support the above statements, just Google it. Or reach out and I can point you in the right direction. For now, know that you can empower yourself when anxiety arises or a panic attack starts. You can move through them and past them. Remember, the more you do these things whether or not you’re feeling anxious, the easier anxiety and panic attacks will be to navigate.
Alllllllll of this is to get to here: when we have techniques for managing our anxiety, we don’t stay mired in the surface of it. This means we can start to look at things like, what triggered it? What is my mind continuously repeating - as in, what am I scared of or worried about? Is what I’m worried about actually real? What is my preferred situation? What am I capable of doing right now to move away from the scenario in my head? There are countless questions to ask and there is no specific way they need to be answered. Whatever comes up, whatever you feel, is valid and very real, which is why it needs to be looked at. We need to hear what it has to say if we want anything to change.
This is what our brains were made to do (among like a million other things). We are fully capable of perceiving and processing our emotions. Making adjustments and activating healing is completely possible. It’s not like a light switch, it’s more like a winding trail. Ups and downs, hard to follow at times, but always there, always leading you towards expansion. This is a serious leveling up. Take a moment right now and imagine the version of yourself who can manage their anxiety with an open heart. How do they feel? How do they engage with the world? This person is you! You are them. It’s not a far reach, you can do this.
I still feel anxiety. I still get scared it might get as bad as it’s been. But those are moments, and they, like all things, pass. Now I find a place to sit or lay down and I think to myself, bring it on. Not because it’s big and bad and I’m so hardcore I can just take it, but because I know it’s a message, that there is something important for me to understand, and once I do I will feel better. I would also like to make clear this took me a few years to be able to do comfortably. Everyone’s journey is different, the adjectives slow and fast won’t help you here. It takes the time it takes, and there is no time like the present to start.
Below is a 45-minute practice that contains grounding, movement, and breathing techniques that can help you in your process of managing anxiety. There are many more exercises that can help too, so please connect with me if you want to talk more about it, if you have questions, or if you’d like to set up regular practice, either in-person or online.
*This is not an alternative to medical or mental health care or assistance! Sometimes having a guide, as in a therapist or counselor, walk alongside us for part of the journey is absolutely critical. These practices are supplemental modalities to the deeper work of self-reflection and self-responsibility, with or without assistance from a professional.