Panic Attacks

Quick response is panic is the state we have when we fear that "I am powerless to control/overcome/change the unmanageable consequences of a circumstance". The inside work is to examine what the true worst case scenario is of that event and recognize how the fear feels; reflect on whether it will be a physical, emotional and/or spiritual pain of things going the worst way. Then internally challenge your perceived inability to handle it. You will realize that the outcome is actually manageable (all are, though it may still be uncomfortable to deal with).

All outcomes are impermanent, except for death, so even the hardest, most painful consequence passes. It changes and you change from it, and maturity is the desire for, rather than the fear of change. After you've accomplished knowing the outcome is manageable, maybe even necessary, you check in with your body and see where you feel it when it's building and hurts. Familiarize yourself with that experience. For example, I get nauseous, my chest is tight, my throat feels stuck,etc. Then expose yourself to that type of experience unfolding in your head, and slowly process the sense of feeling that you will be okay, whether or not the worst happens.

It is not happening to you, you will happen to it and unfold together. Think of all the experiences you have had and overcame, when you never imagined it would be okay. In fact, many of those experiences were those that you likely panicked about while they were impending. Think of it as practice for being a whole and healthy human. These challenges can make us see life as bigger and brighter as we add more and more width and depth to the people we are in the world. "Health" is awareness that I am not my circumstances, I am bigger than my circumstances, and I welcome all of them in the best way I can as they will make my life richer and more colorful. When you practice that enough, it builds the spiritual muscles of inner discipline, peace and well being. Those are the experiences that we can choose to welcome in, process, and grow from. We decide how we will approach life, or life will decide for us.

Most people believe that good things happen because of me and bad things happen in spite me. The truth is that all things happen in your experience because of you. What you let in and keep out is always a choice. We may not want our girlfriend to leave or our economic security challenged, but they will likely happen in a way we feared they might. It is not just how we respond to these events that determines our experience, that myth is perpetuated ad nauseam. It is more about how we approach them. If our goal is to experience all of the flavors of the world and develop as conscious beings, our life will unfold in color. If we fear that we will be dominated by discomfort and pain, that is what we will get. All the things we resist get bigger because they grow to make them selves known, where they have become so big there is no possibility of resistance and we must eventually incorporate them into our experience.

When we have an ankle injury that is painful, we may try to put it out of mind (sometimes that is an effective approach). However, we may also find that continued use resulting from our resistance to acknowledging and adapting to it can cause the ankle to swell and ligaments and bones to lose their integrity. When the problem has grown that much, we are forced to acknowledge it and usually with a greater consequence than if we had taken the time to acknowledge, process, and address the condition beforehand. Maybe we could have simply focused on how we are moving, applied some ice or sought treatment, and deferred to a practitioner of all things ankle. We often do not do this for the same reason; we resist giving deference to someone else, believing I will appear weak or they are just out for money. If we approach everything as if it were a conspiracy and a trap trying to undermine our enjoyment of life, we have already undermined it ourselves.

Going full circle, we panic because our fear of an experience makes itself larger as a result of our efforts to resist its existence in our life. Whatever it is, it is there waiting for you to decide to see it, process it, and deal with it. It is the stuff of life, most people who care to minimize the panic they feel, are aiming to enjoy themselves and experience well being, and they will find it. It's those people who believe the problem lies outside themselves and therefore they are stuck in swallowing hard and sucking things up in order to just deal with them and that leaves them with a life that they get to deal with rather than enjoy.