THE
PANIC MONSTER DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE!
Exploding the Mystery and Myth of Anxiety Disorders.
By Shari Schreiber,
M.A.
www.GettinBetter.com
You’re
going about your day as usual, and all of a sudden your heart starts
pounding, you break out in a sweat, you’re feeling dizzy or faint
and short of breath. You may be nauseous or feel like you’re choking--and
you think you’re having a heart attack, because there's pain or
pressure in your chest! You’re absolutely terrified by
these sensations, and almost certain you’re either dying or going
crazy. Welcome to your first panic attack.
What
seems weird, is that one day you’re fine, and the next
day you’re not. Like thousands of individuals worldwide who struggle
with feelings of panic or anxiety, you're probably wondering how
and why this has happened to you. The mystery
of Anxiety Disorder is that it appears to "come out of nowhere"
and of course, this is perplexing to your rational mind. Since
panic symptoms are unlike anything you’ve felt before and
they seem completely beyond your control, your natural response
might be to consult a physician. Once you're examined and obvious
medical concerns (like heart disease) are ruled out, the myth
your doctor may perpetuate about your condition is, "it’s
treatable, but incurable." Next thing you know, you're
leaving his/her office with an Rx for anti-anxiety meds, and questioning
if you'll always need that prescription.
By
the time you read this, you may have had a number of these debilitating
episodes, and you're actively seeking a cure--or perhaps you've
learned to "live with" this issue,
by making certain adjustments and sacrifices. In either case, you're
about to discover that you can end this
problem quickly and easily. I know you're skeptical, and that's
wise and healthy--in fact, I wouldn't expect you to feel differently
at this point. You've suffered terribly, and that's why this article
was written for you. Very specific life experiences placed you in
this position, and the insights you'll be gaining here, will be
an integral part of your healing. You'll get the
most value from this piece, if you click the hyperlinks that take
you to other pages, after you've completed this one.
WHAT'S
IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE?
Panic and anxiety impact the autonomic nervous system,
which operates your body's involuntary responses to various
stressors. These 'autonomic' responses function automatically, whether
you want them to or not (think, ‘goose bumps’ when you’re
cold or frightened, and perspiration when you’re overheated or nervous).
Along these lines, feelings of anxiety and panic are very intense
stressors, which trigger bodily reactions that are impossible
to ignore or brush aside as insignificant/unimportant--in other
words, you can't choose not to feel them!
Anti-anxiety meds interact with your brain to help calm and control
these reactions, but they do not address the cause of your
distress. This article helps you learn why you've
acquired this condition, and how to eliminate it once and for
all.
First,
try to
understand that panic and anxiety are feeling issues.
In truth, if you'd been given the kind of attention as a child that
helped you learn how to self-soothe when difficult feelings
surfaced, you wouldn't be struggling with panic attacks now. Have
you ever heard yourself exclaim, "whatever!"
in relation to an issue or person you're struggling with? If you
lacked vital tools that you needed to handle difficult feelings
like disappointment and frustration as a kid, your only option was
to repress them--or make them not matter. This reflex
has followed you into adulthood, and is the core of your panic problem.
If
you're trapped at home with agoraphobia, you may
have already explored various methods for treating it, and could
be feeling discouraged that you're still suffering. Most therapies
and 'do-it-yourself' programs are behaviorally based, and
your success depends on self-discipline (hate that, don't
you?). Unfortunately, they can't target your specific panic
triggers in ways that help you overcome them. This marketplace seems
saturated with books, tapes and CD programs that claim
to end your panic, but if they haven't worked for you,
you're probably like lots of others, who respond better to personalized
attention. All humans learn in different ways, but most of us learn
best with a little support.
FOR
EVERY PROBLEM, THERE'S A SOLUTION.
Regardless
of whether
you're afraid of driving your car (a common complaint) or performing
another task or function outside your home, these obstacles are
quickly and easily overcome. As you read through the rest of this
article, you might experience sudden sleepiness or a little sadness;
rest assured, there's nothing to fear from these sensations, and
I urge you to continue. These are somatic responses,
which means that a part of you is identifying with material
that could have contributed to this panic. It also means that you'll
benefit from my help, and full recovery is just around the corner.
I
work differently than other practitioners you may have seen for
help with this issue, and my methods have proven remarkably effective
for resolving panic and anxiety regardless of age, or how
long you've suffered. You will receive as much attention and interim
support as you need, to move past this problem. You'll begin to
feel relief during our first phone contact; there's no charge for
this, and no obligation to continue.
"WHY'D
THIS HAPPEN TO ME?!"
Anxiety
and panic don't just happen "out of the blue," even though
it seems this way to virtually everyone after their first
episode. Anxiety isn't some sort of alien entity that invades
your body, when you've reached a particular age or stress level.
The roots of this problem actually go way back to early childhood,
and if you've become a People
Pleaser, you're at much higher risk for acquiring
this disorder, because you’ve lived for many years with fear or
self-judgment about feeling and expressing certain emotions. Metaphorically
speaking, after sweeping all those feelings 'under the rug'
for so long, you're now having to maneuver around on very
lumpy terrain. As this cannot help but impede your personal and
professional strivings, how could you possibly feel safe
or secure about much of anything?
GOT
OPTIONS?
When
you've been diagnosed with Anxiety or Panic Disorder, at some point
you'll probably be asking yourself at least one of the
following questions: "Do I have to take pills the
rest of my life, so I can get through my days without these disruptive,
debilitating symptoms? Should I buy tapes or CD’s that train me
to talk myself through panic episodes, so I can (eventually) manage
them? Do I have enough patience/discipline to actually use
these techniques, and will they heal my condition? Is behavioral
modification or 'self-talk' a permanent solution for this
issue?" And finally, "What the heck caused
this in the first place!?"
MYSTERY
IN A NUTSHELL:
Insight
begins with discovering that panic and anxiety are nothing more
than very powerful feelings, that are able to break through
all emotional controls you've built throughout your lifetime. Essentially,
having learned how to escape certain feelings, or make them "not
matter" is at the foundation of all panic and anxiety
issues. The reasons you might have had to do this are detailed
below, and keeping an open mind will be useful in helping you mend.
For now, let's respect that you've acquired some terrific coping
skills that have helped you get through various challenging or difficult
situations. These skills have served you in important ways, but
at this point they're working against you, and contributing
to your panic attacks! Hang on, this is about to make much
more sense . . .
THE
ROOTS OF A PANIC TREE:
As children, we all needed the kind of attention that would
help us develop healthy self-esteem; if/when we didn't get enough
of it, we began to doubt our value and lovability. As we grew, our
parents may have punished or ignored us, just for expressing feelings
that were inconvenient or unpleasant for them to accommodate. So,
in order to get vital supplies of acceptance and approval, or (at
least) avoid alienation, we learned to appear and act a
certain way around Mom and Dad--and some of us still do!
Repetition of these experiences made us learn to suppress
the feelings that our parents treated as negative or "bad,"
such as sadness, frustration, anger, etc. And what was our reward
for learning to control those emotions? At times, we got
the attention we needed, so we could feel better
about ourselves, and get by.
For
many of us, suppression of difficult feelings developed into a pattern
of accommodation (or people pleasing).
Without competent help, this tendency remains alive forever, and
impacts every aspect of our existence. In worse case scenarios,
it prompts/perpetuates agoraphobia. As an agoraphobic,
you're terrified of leaving your home, for fear you'll experience
total loss of control (and humiliation) in the midst of a panic
attack. But in truth, since virtually all unfavorable feelings
have been repressed during your life, you're now imprisoned by a
limiting disorder that keeps you homebound. Tragically, if you've
never had a chance to learn how to deal with your feelings,
your feelings will deal with you!
GOOD
OL' HUMAN NATURE RIDES AGAIN:
We're
all equipped with an instinctual impulse to survive. This
is with us from from the time we're born (or maybe, beforehand),
and is sometimes referred to as our fight or flight mechanism.
As kids, it probably felt too dangerous to take a stand and fight
with our parents, so we fled. We may have
done this by spending a lot of time in our room, or hanging out
with our friends and their families. But aside from these
childhood 'mini-escapes,' it didn't seem practical or possible
to leave home physically, so we found ways to do it emotionally.
We did this by gradually shutting down/denying certain feelings
and needs, 'cause when these weren't adequately responded to, we
were left with anger, frustration or sadness. Since these emotions
felt bad, we came to judge them as bad or wrong, and
methodically trained ourselves to avoid them! Each time these emotions
surface today, you might judge yourself
as wrong for having them--which reinforces your impulse to push
them further away.
Emotions
are often referred to as "feelings," because we feel
them in our body. They are all extremely valuable and necessary,
because they help us respond in appropriate, emotionally congruent
ways to different situations. All feelings (including physical
ones) are impacted by repression and denial; you cannot decide to
'kill off' feelings you think of as "negative,"
and expect the positive ones to remain alive or vibrant!
In short, when we squelch our pain or rage, we also
squelch our joy--and this of course, fuels depression and sensations
of emptiness.
When
you’ve been programmed since childhood to believe that certain kinds
of feelings are bad or "unacceptable," you'll have a tendency
to reprimand or diminish yourself whenever they start to surface.
This can certainly motivate you to get rid of those feelings, but
what do you suppose happens to them when they're discarded,
and where do they go? If you've been a fan of HBO's The
Sopranos, you may have learned this answer, when Dr.
Melfi explained to Anthony Soprano that "depression is
rage turned inward." By the way, James Gandolfini's character
began his psychiatric treatment, for help with panic
issues. Repressed anger, resentment or hurt also prompts
passive-aggressive
behavior, which undermines you and your relationships--but let's
come back to this later.
ANXIETY
EMBRYOS GROW INTO PANIC MONSTERS.
When certain feelings get disposed of in order to have
a better experience with Mom and Dad, it's pretty common for children
to mentally 'fast-forward' and envision a brighter future,
to escape emotional pain/discomfort in the present. The adaptive
reflex that most kids acquire is; "when I grow up, it'll
be different!" This reflex is attended by fantasies of
what adulthood will be like, and what we'll have or own in terms
of a child's notion of happiness. Another
of these reflexes that helped us regulate internal tension and divert
childhood pain, was drawing comparisons to others who had it "much
worse" than we did. Our parents may have had a hand
in creating this one; "I cried when I had no shoes, until
I met a man who had no legs," or you may have heard, "keep
this up, and I'll give you something to really
cry about!" These remarks were supposedly intended
to obliterate any difficulties we had to endure, and help
us cope--but instead, they forced our feelings underground.
Sadly,
there are inherent problems with these coping mechanisms, as they
can easily sit for years (like land mines), waiting
to blow up. On one hand, they keep us from experiencing
uncomfortable, but authentic feelings. On the other,
they set us up for disappointment and shame when we're
grown, because our adult life may not feel much
better than when we were kids! This is when long held hopes, fantasies
and beliefs are challenged in a way that makes us think that having
failed to reach our childhood vision, is all our fault.
This terribly erroneous assumption has influenced your ability to
thrive, rather than survive. Discarding this esteem-damaging
belief allows your present reality to become far more gratifying.
Automatic,
self-deprecating thoughts can be paralyzing. At the very least,
they compromise our energy and impetus, and inhibit/derail future
strivings. Still, these fast-forwarding and comparison impulses
have become part of a default survival strategy, that's embedded
forever--or until we're strongly motivated (perhaps by
panic attacks) to change it. Furthermore, this default strategy
has combined with disappointing childhood experiences, that left
us with limited resources in our emotional
toolbox for building healthy adult attachments.
If you've never had opportunities to recognize and honor your
own feelings or needs, how can you effectively
respond to someone else's?
SELL
THAT @#$+%^&* CRYSTAL BALL!
Fast-forwarding
and scanning the horizon for disaster, are learned control
reflexes. As previously mentioned, we may have cultivated these
very early, when our home environments felt unstable or
held unpleasant surprises, and we had to manage our feelings
about that. This tendency is magnified if there are attention
deficit issues, because this neurological condition makes
mood and motivation cycles dauntingly unpredictable! We've learned
that 'scanning' might ease our anxiety, as it helps us envision
as many different outcomes as possible, which reduces the potential
for unpleasant suprise or shock. In essence, when we prepare
for the worst and determine how we'll handle that,
we believe we can handle anything else that comes up, which
gives us a sense of safety. By the way, fast-forwarding impulses
also creep into our relationships, which gets us into a whole
lot of trouble.
Try
to realize
that the future is uncharted territory, so it naturally
contains elements that are unknown and unfamiliar to us. Whether
we've struggled with panic attacks or not, when we project our focus
beyond today, anxiety will always
be invoked, because we can't predict precisely
how 'tomorrow' is going to look or feel to us. Of course we can
speculate, but Life doesn't allow us to completely envision
much beyond this present moment in time--and would you really want
to know everything that's up ahead, even if you could? The upshot
is, while we're trying to mentally choreograph our way through this
unknown terrain to help ourselves feel more "in-control,"
this is ironically what triggers our anxiety! Seems pretty
self-defeating, doesn't it? Alas, there's a big difference between
planning ahead to try and bring about the best outcome, and living
in the future to try and control it. Learning new tools
that empower you and replace these impulses, will banish the "what-if's?"
from your psychic vocabulary.
Learning
to stay in the moment and tolerate difficult feelings,
means letting go of platitudes you may have learned in
childhood, or gotten from self-help books that used to
help you cope. Anxiety-provoking tendencies will vanish forever,
when you begin to experience your feelings, and start to trust that
you can hang out with 'em and survive! This is when intense,
uncontrollable feelings (panic sensations) will quickly
dissipate.
THE
LASAGNA PRINCIPLE:
There's
no denying that this is an extremely multi-layered issue, but we
tend to learn about our emotions (or the lack of 'em) from
our parents. Still, gaining access to a full repertoire of different
feelings (both light and dark, positive and negative) and experiencing
them without self-judgment, keeps us out of the panic zone.
Unfortunately, Judeo-Christian principles strongly oppose this view;
they want us to "turn the other cheek" when we've been
wronged or violated, and instill in us the belief that
darker thoughts and feelings are evil. Some religions
take this even further, and neutralize the distinction
between thoughts and actions. According to them, it's as
vile a sin to think something mean or hateful,
as to carry out a heinous act against another. From where I sit,
this is a form of mind control that undermines our emotional and
physical health--and that's just plain wrong.
It's
very important to note, that whatever material is not 'permitted'
by your conscious mind during waking hours, will be processed by
your subconscious mind during sleep. Recurring dreams and/or
disturbing nightmares can easily result from repressed thoughts
and feelings, which lay the groundwork for sleep disorders. A lack
of deep, restful sleep referred to as REM (rapid eye movement) or
dream-sleep, reduces the availability of brain chemicals
that are supposed to calm and soothe you! Any shortage of these
neurochemicals can prompt depression and anxiety. Exploring
the meaning behind these dreams helps us make conscious
connections to discarded/buried material that could actually be
feeding your Panic Monster.
Aside
from religious convictions and childhood events that paved the way
for panic issues, our parents may have insisted we yield to their
notion of Who we should become. This can have
us discarding various personality facets, and abandoning desires
or goals that have special meaning to us. When aspirations must
be surrendered, it wounds our spirit and gives birth to inner emptiness.
Self-medicating our emptiness or anxiety, may take the
form of compulsive over-eating,
or addictions to other substances and/or behaviors. Rediscovering
our passions and reviving them, helps
us heal, and create a life worth living.
"COULD
I HAVE INHERITED THIS?"
Yes,
it's entirely possible. While considerably less common, some of
us have suffered from generalized anxiety our entire lives.
This type of disturbance isn’t necessarily attached to specific
fears or phobias, or prompted by panic attacks. It feels more like
an underlying sense of danger or lack of safety that pervades every
realm of our existence, as far back as we can remember.
Research
suggests that emotions are transmitted from a pregnant woman to
her fetus; if an expectant mother feels generalized or specific
anxiety, such as fear of miscarrying or threat/danger from something
(or someone) in her environment, these sensations can be absorbed
by her unborn baby. This acquired condition (I call it 'womb anxiety')
can be reinforced throughout his childhood. When a mother is over-protective/enmeshed,
she may discourage her child's autonomous growth, which disrupts
his individuation or launching phase toward independence.
This developmental detour inhibits his ability to confidently negotiate
various personal and professional challenges, which reinforces his
disempowerment and anxiety.
While
this disturbance is inherited or acquired genetically, it's typically
been exacerbated by environmental influences that programmed
a panic sufferer to make his/her feelings "not matter."
Once this difficulty has been resolved, symptoms are permanently
eliminated.
THE
BOTTOM LINE:
We
are all attracted to "quick fixes." Mastering behavioral
techniques and/or taking medication can help quiet our symptoms,
but neither eradicates panic tendencies that can re-emerge
during various events or life transitions. More importantly, these
methods fail to touch on critical underlying issues, like fear of
confrontation, diminished self-worth, and abandonment concerns that
drove your feelings underground, and spawned this anxiety
in the first place.
As
an adult, you're finally at the helm of your own ship--so whatever
choices you make concerning this issue, must serve your
peace of mind and personal orientation. You may decide to take anti-anxiety
meds, or drugs such as Celexa or Lexapro that manage anxiety and
depression; these Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors ("SSRI's")
also provide some relief from obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but
they can inhibit libido and ability to reach orgasm. Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder or OCD, is a reflexive
control issue you may have acquired in the process of shutting
down emotional awareness. This extreme outcome results from
bypassing feelings to the extent you've dissociated from
your body, and are functioning on 'automatic pilot.' To put this
differently, if you're asleep at the wheel, your
need for a system that helps you
feel safer or more secure, is enormously heightened.
As
an effective/life-enhancing alternative to options already mentioned,
we will end this panic, rather than just managing the symptoms
of your 'dis-ease.' This approach mitigates your need for various
medications, eliminates panic triggers and enriches every aspect
of your life. You'll learn how to identify and respond
to your feelings, rather than burying them. As you gain
enhanced verbal skills and begin letting go of self-defeating patterns,
your lifestyle and relationships get healthier and more productive.
On average, even Agoraphobia can be healed within
eight weeks. Regardless of the means you choose to overcome this
issue, I truly hope you're symptom-free very soon. In the interim,
try and remember; if you’re not living fully with all
your feelings, anxiety and panic will stop you from fully
living.
If
you're seeking assistance with this issue, or your group/organization
would like me to speak on this topic, feel free to contact
me.
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