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Showing posts with the label PANIC

Sit Through the Panic: Observe, Rename

With 20 years of sponsoring folks with anxiety disorders, one thing I learned (learned it firsthand in my 20s) is that when you have a panic attack, you must sit through it, observe it, breathe; know that you won't die or go crazy and that it will come and go in a few minutes as it always does. Once you lose your fear of the physiologic symptoms and the mental thoughts, it loses its ability to be an affective way to get your attention. We feed the panic by jumping and running and going berserk. I was over panic attacks in a couple months by using good mental hygiene techniques and basically staring the beast in the eye and realizing it couldn't do more than make my heart pump hard, my blood run hot, my body feel tingly, my legs feel weak. One time on the way to a job interview as I was still in my recovery phase, I felt all these symptoms and I stopped and asked myself, “ where else might I get these symptoms? ” I realized—an orgasm or perhaps when anticipating opening a really...