What Is The Best Way To Overcome Anxiety and Panic Attacks??

Take it from someone who knows. Pain attacks suck.

One minute you’re going along reading an email or driving to the market or contemplating your navel and the next you’re in full-blown freak-out mode.

When extreme anxiety hits, all we want to do is stop it. To have it stop. To stop the mind-numbing, body paralyzing, fear-inducing panic. The energetic stampede that has our breathing labored, our heart pounding, our palms—and the rest of us—sweaty, and our minds shut down as if all its circuits have been slashed.

But then what?

Getting through a panic attack and making it to the other side when you’re sure you’ve stepped off the cliff for the last time is no small feat. You feel as if you’ll either be stuck there forever or that you’ll surely die from lack of oxygen. And yet, if you’re reading this, you have actually gotten through the panic. And not just once, but probably many, many times.

If this is you, as it was me, the time comes when you realize the following:

1. If you’ve been hiding these attacks, you won’t be able to do it for much longer. Hiding is killing you as much as the attacks themselves.
2. That these attacks are due to stress. Unfortunately, you don’t anticipate the stressors and triggers of the stress to magically disappear any time soon.
3. You need help.

The question becomes, exactly what kind of help?

There’s the psychological approach: Talk Therapy. Find out what’s happened in your past to understand who you are now. Dig deep to roll it around, look at it from all the angles, and chew on it until, at some point, it’s supposed to help you process your trauma.

I like this approach…to a point. Just the opportunity to share your innermost thoughts and emotions with a nonjudgmental practitioner can be validating and door opening.

Then there’s the medical approach: Meds. This approach is based on the assumption that you have some kind of chemical imbalance that needs righting. Some kind of genetic propensity that has been passed down and into you. Something in you that is not your fault, but that is not at all a good thing, and so needs fixing.

I’ve deep-dived into meds, so I know this path as well. I know that my first experience felt a-MA-zing. I was being treated for “chronic depression and anxiety.” Getting out of bed in the morning without groaning and wishing I never had to get up and face another day again was nothing short of a miracle. So, yeah, not a bad way to go.

Sigh. Unfortunately, one med led to another and another over time as they stopped working. Plus, there were all the side-effects to put up with. Things like sleeplessness (take another drug for that) and diarrhea (take another drug for that) and…and…and….

Which often leads back to talk therapy. I mean, there had to be something keeping me from being okay. There had to be something wrong with me that I couldn’t fix it.

Then there are alternative therapeutics. Things like Reiki and soul retrieval and acupuncture. So many therapies, all with meaningful processes that can help shift the energy in the equation that is you. Once again, take it from someone who has explored everything from past life regression (that lifted a great weight from my chest once and for all) and sound healing in Bali (that virtually levitated me out of some deep layers of grief after the death of my husband).

First, let’s just say this: Whatever works. That’s the bottom line.

Still, I’m here to suggest something different.

You might not like it or understand it (yet) or want to explore it. In that case, no judgment. We are all on our own path as humans down here on the physical plane.

I am only suggesting that there are ways to approach the “reality” of what’s happening. To experience it differently.

I still struggle from time to time with bouts of sadness and brief moments (usually at 3 a.m. when I have a bad dream or some noise wakes me up) of panic. This is true. And I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t tell you that they are not comfortable and I don’t like them. At all.

Still, coming out the other side—and knowing that I will, and soon—changes everything.

How Do You Get There From Here?

Here is my experience tied up in a couple of suggestions if you are dealing with similar issues.

1. Begin to interpret your panic attacks for the indicators they are: Signs of resistance. Resistance of your intuitive self. Of your authentic self. Of your expressive self. Of your creative self. Of who and what you really are.
2. See panic attacks as indicators that you—your subconscious self—is pushing you to have the energetic opening you need. We learn to shut down so many things as we age. It’s like a dam waiting to break so we can break into our true selves.
3. Recognize that the reason for your heart pounding and difficulty breathing are also indicators that your Higher Self is trying to get through to you and your resistance is what’s causing the rift.

There’s energy in everything. In the form of drugs, talk, or any other methodology.

The energy of panic attacks is simply the energy of resistance waiting to stop resisting.

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