Any of you who have had an anxiety attack know that it is one of the worst sensations you can have out of any sensation on this planet if you had a panic attack you know it it's a very surreal experience and it makes you feel like your life is completely out of your control So, what is a panic attack and what can we do about it? A panic attack is basically a sudden intense episode of fear fear which is coming in response to a thought which you're thinking usually a thought which is subconscious rather than conscious Whatever thought it is that you thought caused your body to react as if it was a life or death situation your body was then flooded with chemicals which are associated with fight or flight now, in that kind of a circumstance When fear is coming in response to a thought which doesn't necessarily pertain to the experience or your circumstance that you're in, your body is flooded with chemicals like adrenaline those chemicals would be normal if you're running through the woods being chased by a bear or were in some other circumstance that was a threat to your life however, when you have an anxiety attack most often those chemicals are being flooded to your system out of context meaning, there is no immediate threat that you can perceive to your physical well-being but your body is registering that there is The fact that these emotions feel as if they are out of context makes you feel crazy and makes you feel like you're losing control and that right there is really the hallmark of the panic attack because the sensation becomes what you start to fear you start to fear that you're losing control and you start to fear that you're crazy (for lack of a better word) and so that fear on top of the previous fear that your body thinks that is in a situation of life or death causes a level of fear to happen which is debilitating a lot of times you will fear having other panic attacks as well because the experience is so intensely horrible it becomes something which inhibits you in life you fear having another one to the degree where you may limit what you're doing socially you structure your life in resistance to the idea of having another anxiety attack but that fear, in and of itself can cause another one to come on and then we develop things like anxiety or panic disorders to understand some of the symptoms which might occur to you if you were having a panic attack I'm going to give you some of these symptoms now If you're having a panic attack you may experience: A sense of impending doom or danger The fear of loss of control or of death You may begin to experience very rapid heart rate You may start to sweat or tremble You may feel shortness of breath or you may have a hyperventilation problem You may get chills or hot flashes You may feel nauseous You might get abdominal cramping chest pain a headache You may get dizzy you may feel faint You may feel like your throat is closing up on you, like it's super tight and you have trouble swallowing You may feel numbness in your extremities or you may have the feeling of surreal reality meaning, that you feel like you're detached from yourself I want to reiterate that your brain has no way of distinguishing between the thoughts you're thinking and the reality which it perceives This very principle, that your brain has no way of perceiving the difference between thought and reality can work to your advantage but in the case of an anxiety attack it works to your disadvantage because your brain can't really distinguish whether the thoughts that you are thinking are real or not real everything is real to the brain so if you're thinking a thought which puts your body in panic mode your brain at that moment doesn't stop itself and say: "this is not reality" it perceives itself being in a life or death situation so it's important for those of us who have anxiety attacks to acknowledge the fact that we're not going crazy the body and the brain are responding in perfect accordance to what our thoughts are. I personally don't advocate any anti-anxiety medications that are available today unless a person believes that that is the thing which will cure them because belief is the trump card for everything.
If you feel like anxiety medication is the only thing which can help you release resistance to anxiety it's not wrong for you to go get them but in my personal opinion your emotions are the compass which are leading you through life, they're what's telling you if the thought you hold resonates with your higher self and that what you truly are, or does not resonate with who you are and what you really should be doing So, why take out the compass that's what we're doing so often nowadays in our medicinal practices is, we're basically making an enemy of the very thing which is leading us in the correct or incorrect direction and then we wonder why our lives have become numb and we wonder why our lives have become less than satisfactory In order to prevent anxiety attacks you want to avoid alcohol and avoid stimulants like coffee and like sugar. Some of us have much more sensitive systems than others I think this is a good thing, to have a very sensitive nervous system means that you have a very very accurate compass It's very hard for people who are sensitive to go on the opposite direction of what is right for them So it's not a good thing to make an enemy of a sensitive system but, it's best if you can gear your choices in life towards a diet and a lifestyle which will pacify your nervous system and nurture your nervous system so, create any kind of grounding environments for your nervous system to flourish so you're not bombarding it because your likelihood of having a kind of a panic attack or chronic anxiety if you're overloading it with stimulants is super super high Get regular exercise I know we all harp on diet, exercise and sleep but exercise is really really good for your nervous system joint impact releases chemicals in your brain which pacify your system they actually have a calming effect which is why a lot of people with anxiety disorders are addicted exercise Get eight hours of sleep a day When you are allowing yourself to go to sleep you're releasing resistance you're rejoining your Source Self perspective and in the absence of resistance well-being and health is allowed to flourish it will literally cascade naturally through your body so you're allowing yourself to reset when you allow yourself to sleep enough Find every way you can to reduce stress in your life Stress takes a toll on your body It is basically, the heart every single disorder and every single disease If you maintain a life of stress or a focus on situations which make you feel stress your likelihood for an anxiety attack increases exponentially the reason is because your body is set up for the specific chemicals that are released within it What I mean is: If you're a person who chronically fuels stress the brand new cells that are made within your body are made intact with receptor sites which are specifically designed for the neuropeptides in your body which are associated with stress and when those receptor sites get denied of chemicals they start to go into a crave type of situation where they release all kinds of information about them dying and needing that same kind of chemical so then you get into this sort of locked in cycle where you almost need to create stress because your cells are craving the stress chemical So, if you would like to live a stress-free life you need to start practicing living a life of non-stress to such a degree that the new cells within your body that are made come into this existence with new receptor sites which are predisposed towards emotions (the chemical version of the emotions) like joy rather than chemical emotions like stress In order to stop an anxiety attack you've got to find a way to get your brain to stop sending the message to your body that it's in a life or death situation, it has to stop sending the emergency message Fear is your indication that your focus or something you are paying attention to is in the exact opposite direction of your desire and your well-being and your higher self Panic and fear is one of the lowest vibrations, it's one of the most discordant vibrations in our universe In other words, when you feel fear your intention which is always well-being is colliding with your current thought or action which holds a different resonance than that, entirely. So, what do we do about it?
Number one Never force yourself through the action if you're feeling a panic attack and never try to avoid the sensation trying to avoid a panic attack or trying to ignore a panic attack once it has happened and force yourself through the action the panic attack has occurred because of is the worst thing you can do it will not work So, What I want you to do if you're having a panic attack is: close your eyes and I want you to take five very deep deep breaths Breathe in to the extent where you're filling your lungs entirely up to their full capacity and then I want you to hold that breath for eight to ten seconds and then release the breath. Remind yourself of what is going on you can tell yourself: I am having a panic attack That will help pull your brain out of the catastrophe thinking into the reality which is current, which is: I am having an anxiety attack That's way better than thinking I'm literally in life or death situation Next I want you to do something very counter-intuitive I want you to turn your focus in towards all of those sensations Resisting the sensations will make the sensations worse because whatever we resist, persists. That's the vibrational law within this universe.
So, we want you to embrace and dive into the emotions and the sensations of the experience of the panic attack. It may be the very last thing you feel like doing but it will be your key to set in free of that panic attack. When you embrace and you welcome the sensations of an anxiety attack it changes your point of power It's a conscious change of your attitude towards the experience which then changes the chemicals which are released in your brain.
Those sensations are there for a reason they are meant to be acknowledged and they must be acknowledged if the experience is to be fully processed. Begin naming what it feels like for example you could say Sensation you feel heavy and stinging you feel like metal you feel like you're trying to eat me I want you to name whatever sensations you are feeling within your body Then, I want you to take it one step further I want you to invite the feeling to become worse ask it to get more intense ask it to feel more This step removes all remaining resistance that you have to the experience When the fear is no longer being fed by the mental resistance it will dissipate What's better than that is, your confidence will begin to kick in it will tell you guess what? !
you're in control of the experience rather than the experience being in control of you which is how panic attacks get you. They convince you that you're not in control of your own life Then I want you to ask the sensation what it needs you to know what it's trying to tell you Acknowledge those feelings and acknowledge the fact that you hear them and you feel them and you understand them also acknowledge that you have gratitude for them gratitude for the fact that your system is giving you totally accurate feedback to the thoughts that you're thinking then I want you to look deeply to try to identify what it was that you were focused on before having this panic attack Once you identify it you want to look for evidence and proof that undermines that thought that you were thinking Then you want to begin looking for thoughts which feel better to think so for example If I have a fear of going on an airplane and I'm experiencing an anxiety attack as a result of being on an airplane I want to begin to come up with as many thoughts which both undermine my thoughts which are aligned with the fear of being on an airplane and support the idea that it's an enjoyable experience and a safe experience For example, I could think thoughts like: planes get safer and safer every single year or, pilots are trained specifically for any kind of emergency situation so I am actually in good hands or, all you hear about on the news is the one plane crashes and not the millions and millions and millions each month that takeoff with no problem If you have problems with negative focus chronically or you consider yourself a worrier it's a really good idea to bring with you something called "The positive aspects journal" What a Positive aspects journal is is basically a journal where you write down a subject so, if I have a fear of flying I could write down flying on an airplane and then you write an entire list of all the positives which you could think about the situation "flying on an airplane" any thought which makes you feel better. It's a really good idea if you have a chronic worrying problem and you know that you're headed towards a situation like flying and you've already made the decision that you're gonna go through with it to write down as many things like that as you can possibly focus on so that during the experience you already have a list to look at so you can be attuned in the get go, right out of the gate with positive emotions and positive sensations rather than running the risk of spiraling downwards and getting yourself into a situation where you're experiencing a panic attack It's impossible to have a panic attack when you're focused positively the reason is, is that your emotions are your indication of the exact thought which you are holding So, if you hold a positive thought, negative emotions can't occur within your system The reason that panic attacks feel like they're "out of the blue" is because we move through life in a first-person perspective Seldom do we ever step back and really watch the thoughts that we're thinking So often, when we walk into a situation like getting onto an airplane, we have so many negative thoughts that are rapid-firing and that we have no conscious awareness of when we get hit by the panic attack we're going: "I don't know where that came from it just came to me from nowhere" without acknowledging the thoughts which we thought leading up to that experience Sometimes taking an action like going someplace or meeting someone is not in line with our well-being That will come across as the intuitive feeling of something not being right for you The problem is, when you have that intuition of something is not entirely right for you often we start to pile really negative thoughts on top of it which spiral into fear and spiral into panic attacks So once you go through these steps that I've outlined and you pull yourself out of the catastrophic thinking you can find that place which is your thought stasis and once you're in that thought stasis you can distinguish whether that action is correct for you or whether the action is wrong for you.
Once you have pulled those thoughts of fear away from the very root which is usually an action that you're thinking about taking you can ask yourself Is this action right or is this action wrong for me individually? Is this action in line with my highest good? If the answer is yes then you want to try to pull your thoughts into vibrational alignment with the decision you've just made if you make any decision, you want to start thinking thoughts which lineup totally with that decision so you don't experience any opposition and any resistance If the answer is: no, it's not right for me then don't do it you cannot expect yourself to do something and just get used to it it's not going to happen You can't be living a happy life while simultaneously going upstream all the time in your life Fearful thoughts can be like weeds which grow around a flower a flower which represents something which is right for you to do, or think, or be in this life.
