Panic Attacks: Cultivating Safety

A FRIEND ONCE TOLD ME an alarming story about staying in an old empty hotel in the southern United States. At dusk, she and her partner were strolling across the dilapidated landing on their way to grab a bite. At once, small black forms began wriggling and dropping down from the Spanish-style rafters on glistening threads. Spiders. Large ones. Some lowered themselves slowly from their nests. Others fell in a jagged motion, jerky – remarkably fast, like a living curtain – toward the couple’s faces.

They did what anyone would do in such a waking nightmare. They yelled, raised arms over hair and eyes, and ran.

This couple had a natural body response to a fear. Hyper-alertness. Tightness of breath. Sweatiness and dizziness. A drive to seek safety now.  If you have a panic attack – the most acute form of anxiety – your body experiences similar shocks. Terror. Difficulty breathing. Sensations like, well, frantic legs crawling over your back… your neck. The difference? There’s nothing threatening you.

What – no actual danger?

Confused? It’s no wonder people with acute anxiety attacks also report feeling “unreal,” “distant,” “crazy,” or as if they were “floating.”

How would you even begin to talk about these phantom fears with someone? And how can you get support for fears that don’t appear to exist?

The Basics

Before we look at those questions, we need to calm our high-octane hearts.

• Take a deep breath. Shallow breathing will only add to dizziness, trembling and a greater sense of unreality.
• Use your senses to ground you. Smell whatever is nearby—flowers, pine, sulfur, dust, cloves, cleaners, peppermint tea.
• Touch a rough cushion, a cool magazine cover or stubbly carpet fibers.
• Taste an olive. A ripe slice of tomato with pepper. A chunk of fresh, cold apple.
• Remember that your heart is not in danger. Panic feels much worse than it actually is on your body.

So, there’s a start. Perhaps you’ve reduced that fear by a degree. But what now? One of the central difficulties of managing an acute anxiety episode is its apparent strangeness. Let’s face it: it can feel freakish to have our fear responses strike out of nowhere.

I want to remind everyone reading this who has had a sudden moment of acute anxiety: you are not weird. You are not strange, and you are not going crazy. You are normal. Something (and this is the phantom part) has tripped your safety switch into survival mode.

Before we seek that unknown, a few more hints:

• Name what is actually happening. “OK, I’m feeling pretty scared / bad / nervous right now…” Turning toward what you fear instills inner courage and control.
• Whisper or say these above words to yourself.  Spoken words sooth simply by being real and concrete.
• Share at least the basics of your feelings with someone. Try risking, “I’m feeling really lousy right now.” Anxiety is an animal that feeds on secrecy and shame. Once it’s outed, it begins to shrink and shrivel.

The Magic Of Words

Here’s a short experiment I did with a class at the University of Toronto a few years back. What happens when you read over these two words slowly?

                discomfort

                                                                                                                                            panic

How do you feel reading the first? Then the second? To me, I can feel a slight difference in my body—a true gut reaction—with each word. It’s no wonder that sorcerers used phrases to cast spells: our words and names for our experiences have subtle and, strangely, immense power.  I have trouble with the term, panic and panic attack. The hard syllables. The military resonance. The catastrophic urgency—it seems a done deal. Ah! I’m panicking! It’s all over. 

When you name your experience, try, “I’m a bit shaken up.”

Or, “I’m really uncomfortable right now.”

Try humour. “I’m pretty whelmed.” (Who needs the ‘over’?)

If your inner hyper-vigilant voice screams out, “You’re dead meat,” get logical. Talk back. “Dead meat? That’s redundant! I’m quite alive, thank you.”

And it helps to keep an ear on all those seemingly insignificant phrases we turn on ourselves: So stupid. Messed up. I’m f*7cked. We can choose instead a calmer discourse to narrate our daily lives. Then, when moments of intense anxiety arrive (as they usually do at some point for all of us) we’ll already have some safety and comfort from our more playful autobiography.

Case-Study: Origins

So, words can have a negative impact. But where else might this phantom discomfort come from?

A few years ago a client I will call Benjamin had been avoiding grieving his father’s death. He had become struck by increasing anxiety, especially when he was away from his house or a “safe place.”

Out jogging one day, Benjamin was filled with a sudden intense fear and dread. He turned around to sprint back to the “safety” of his house, a dizziness coursing through him. He then stopped and said out loud, “Tonight, I’m going to take some time and look at pictures of my dad.” He told me (in amazement) that his anxiety stalled and he felt a minor sense of calm in his chest. He took a breath. Slowly his confidence returned and his heart rate slowed. In a few moments, he turned back around and jogged away from his house, feeling more in control after making a deal with himself to acknowledge the unknown of his grief.

“It felt like my anxiety,” he said, later, “was trying to get my attention.”

In this case-study, acute anxiety shook Ben (hard) and woke him up to grief. It was as if his body had become an alarm. For everyone, this alarm will sound for something different. In other words: our anxiety is as unique as our lives.

But I have noticed a theme: take control over what you can.

We cannot live our lives safely all of the time. There are real and imagined spiders in the rafters. But our task is to cultivate safety in little ways. Breathe deeply. Speak to yourself gently. Grant exercise, sleep and healthy food the exalted place in your life they deserve. And take the time to turn toward, and attempt to feel, what you are avoiding. Face what is there to be faced. It is less fearful than what the dreamspace of our minds will imagine.

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A Few Points On Professional Help

• If anxiety is draining joy from your life, seek help sooner rather than later. Over time, we can become afraid of becoming afraid. Afraid of how we will look. Will we scream? Pass out? Lose control? Our fear then often morphs into an avoidance of certain public spaces, or becomes attached to objects or situations.
• I offer specific support for these challenges, and here are other resources in Toronto. Our common practice in supporting panic attacks is through a mixture of exposure therapy & systematic desensitization, psychotherapy, relaxation and meditation.