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Unlike so many people on the Internet, I don't claim to have discovered THE CURE for panic attacks and other anxiety states. I do offer you a beautifully simple insight into panic which will change your reaction to it, and let you immediately start on the path to calm. That insight?
Look at that word 'intensify'. It's about tensing up. Becoming worried and even more panicky about? What? Your feelings of panic. Once you really realise that, you'll see that they're only feelings. They can't harm you.
It seems almost cruel to tell you but if you've been experiencing anxiety and panic attacks for a while, I have to let you know that you are the main reason that your fears continue to plague you.
It is your fear of the fear-filled symptoms that keep your panic attacks fuelled. I do understand that those out-of-the-blue feeling of terror are indeed frightening. I understand that they make you feel very uncomfortable and
vulnerable. But once you truly accept that they're only inappropriate messages to your brain, they'll lose their power. Their power to keep you in what Dr R Reid Wilson calls 'The Panic Cycle'.
You're the major part of your problem. But you are also the total solution.
Just so you're very clear: tensing up and fighting your symptoms of panic (your racing pulse, your dry throat, and your queasy tummy) did not help you in the past. Tensing up will NOT HELP YOU today. It will not help you in the future.
There's a book on the Internet based entirely on that one insight, that truth. Its author claims that that revelation is his discovery and that for $47US you can buy it to send panic away. That truth about panic will set you free, and you can most certainly use it to send panic away. The real truth is that it's not new. Over thirty years ago, an Australian General Practitioner (GP) Claire Weekes, was one of many people who gave that insightful advice to people through her books, and the self-help groups she established.
She advised people who experienced episodes of panic to do the opposite of what they had been doing. Instead of fighting their symptoms, they should float into
their panic, and welcome it like an old friend.
Dr Weekes knew that if you experience those terrifying fear-filled symptoms you know that there's nothing to fear, at a rational level. At an emotional level, you still feel overwhelmed.
Fear of fear itself
Once you accept that there is no real danger, you'll see that your real fear is the fear of the panic attack symptoms themselves. If you let those inappropriate
messages of fear come and do their worst, you'd learn how to send those fears packing.
So to summarise, offer no resistance. Accept. Flow. When your pulse races, your heart pounds, do the opposite of what you normally do. Do this:
STOP..... FLOW ...... ACCEPT.....
Mimic Mother Nature – flow with the hurricane
Just as the grass and the trees sway with the wind, rather than rigidly resist it, let your fear feelings come. Then, just observe what happens without offering any resistance.
You might want to practise this at home alone a few times and you'll see how well it works. I know you can make yourself feel great fear. Bring those memories back. Feel those symptoms and now…. just accept them.
That's right. I'm not saying TRY to do anything. I'm not saying TRY to relax. I'm not saying try to divert yourself from your fear-filled thoughts.
I am saying – do absolutely nothing. Accept your feelings. Just to be clear about this, Dr Weekes was not saying, and I am not saying: "here is THE CURE for
panic attack symptoms." We can leave silly claims like that to others. The simple truth is that the way to escape fear is to float with it.
Use of Diversion
A quick note to those of you who use diversionary tactics to divert yourselves from the intense feelings of fear. My advice? It may help in the short term but all those tactics act to keep the panic with you. They can even become as much an habituated response as the panic itself.
When you recognise your role in your own panic episodes, you're 90% closer to the solution, to a life in which being in the grip of panic will be part of your past. Next time you feel the first fluttering of fear and panic think to
yourself:
"I know you. You're nothing to panic about. Come on and do your worst. I know you can't harm me."
It's all in the mind
As I point out in my self-help kit Calming Words, if you feel terrified standing in that queue at the supermarket, the feelings you feel are fine. They're a perfect reaction to danger. But there's no real danger in the Supermarket – apart from the ever-increasing cost of goods. Your mind sent the wrong message "danger, danger" to your body. Your body has then had the right reaction to that danger message.
To end with the good news: those messages can be rewritten, re-learned. That's why I wrote Calming Words
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