Anxiety is a Spirit Guide; or How I Deal with Panic Attacks

Suffering from anxiety?  Want to learn how to deal with panic attacks without medication?

I don’t know if any of you are feeling stressed out or worried right now. I just want to offer you a little comfort, a little slice of hope.

Even when you are panicking, you’re still surrounded by Light.

The panic feels real in your body and mind.

–Maybe you are experiencing adrenaline and cortisol being dumped into your system.

–Norepinephrine is sending out the message to speed up your heart beat, shorten your breath and raise your blood pressure.

–Various parts of your brain are being triggered to subconsciously recount more stressful events that are similar to the source of the stress you are now experiencing, thus adding to your feeling of anxiety.

–Your brain and spine are sending signals to one another that are making you literally freeze up– become paralyzed with fear.

There are all sorts of crazy things happening in your body and I have really good news about it, Friend!  This stress response is your Spiritual Guidance System, and I want to give you my surefire formula for how to effectively deal with panic attacks. And remember I’m a spiritual life coach. If you need help with any of this, reach out to me.

How can Spirit teach me how to deal with panic attacks?

Every physical response that you are having in a panic attack or in anxiety is Source Energy working through you to give you an important message about something that is happening with you spiritually (or in your consciousness.)

Many people will suggest to take medicine (to medicate) when you are having anxiety or to meditate when you’re having anxiety. Sure. Both of these makes sense. But here’s the problem:

–> Medicine numbs the symptoms so you can’t feel them; or it cuts you off from the impulses so you’re unaware of them. HELLO! You’re not able to get Spirit’s messages if you’re numb or cut off! The whole reason your system has gone into panic is because you’re already so cut off from the messages that Spirit has been trying to give you. You had softer messages from Spirit that you were ignoring and now you’ve got a loud-ass message that you want to numb with medication, marijuana or alcohol. YIKES!

–> Meditation would be an excellent choice if you could get yourself quiet and settled enough to actually enter that Zen state. Personally, when I am in a panic attack, the last thing that I can do is to settle down, be still and meditate. I have waaaay too much jumpy, frightened flight-or-flight hormones coursing through my veins. If you can meditate, great! Go for it! I have never been able to move into stillness or silent meditation from panic.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though. It’s akin to meditation, but a little different. Instead of trying to calm your panic through meditation, try to go more deeply into the feelings BEHIND the panic. Did you know that there was something lurking behind your panic and anxiety? Ha! I didn’t! It took me years to figure it out!

The thing is, once you see what’s behind the mystery of your panic and anxiety, you’ll never be a slave to them again.

In this missive, I’m proposing a type of meditation that isn’t going to let you escape for a few minutes, but will actually give you a profound shift in your whole being. It won’t really feel like a meditation, but it is, and hopefully you’ll find it helpful in relieving you from the menace of panic and anxiety.

So what is anxiety anyway?

What I’ve learned in my personal experience and in my work with over 2000 healing clients is that anxiety is a cover emotion for sadness, grief or some other kind of deep emotional hurt that is really too painful for us to experience on its own. Perhaps as children, our permission to feel sadness or even dissatisfaction was taken away. For example, as a child I was not allowed to cry and if I expressed anger, I was threatened and even beaten. “I’ll give you something to cry about,” was what I heard regularly. So instead of feeling my authentic feelings, I was would suppress them and put on a happy face. That was a survival technique.

The thing is, all the suppressed emotions would roil and boil below the surface of my conscious mind– just outside of my conscious awareness. The suppressed emotions of sadness, dissatisfaction, helplessness, and hopelessness would be building up, and I would be slowly, over time experiencing a mounting sense of dread. The dread would quiet, but I would subconsciously have responses to this dread, and in my body, those chemical anxiety responses would be happening.

All of this was Spirit talking, but I didn’t know it that back then so I would ignore it and try to suppress those anxiety feelings, too! Panic attacks started setting in on me when I was a kid. I could burn off some of that energy by running and playing, but the deep hurt wasn’t being addressed AT ALL! I got on medication as an adult and that really helped me to feel better in the moment, but it did NOT help me to heal the wounded child who was not empowered to feel her feelings and express her feelings. I realized that I was better off feeling the anxiety and so I’ve been off of medication for years, preferring to grin and bear it. But it wasn’t until the last couple of years that I developed this powerful way to be with panic and to recognize it as something helpful and useful, rather than something from which I should escape.

This isn’t just true for me, friend. I think it might also be true for you! And depending on your early childhood environment, the more you suppressed, the greater the feeling of acceptance in the outside world. The greater your reliance on this familial and social acceptance, the less reliant you became on your own inner authority. Your inner authority diminished as you became more willing to sacrifice your inner needs and your true inner being.

The thing is, as a child, you knew when things were wrong. Fuck all that stuff that says kids are innocent and ignorant and don’t know things. WE KNEW THINGS!! And we were made to believe that what we KNEW was false. So, of course, that creates tremendous distrust of ourselves and as I just said, our inner authority becomes weak.

As an adult you cannot trust yourself. You have lost your connection to Source Energy.

The key is healing this fully and stopping panic and anxiety once and for all is to recognize that panic and anxiety are a powerful form of Source Energy working their way through you. Neither anxiety nor panic are an enemy, even though they feel enemitic at the time when you’re having an attack. The sooner you change your perspective (which is everything) the better!

Here’s the solution I’m proposing for how to deal with panic attacks (Phase 1:)

1. Observe the panic in your body. Notice where in your body you are experiencing the panic. For me, the first place I notice it is in the back of my thighs and in my hips. I also notice the panic as shortness of breath, and I feel tightness in my chest.

2. Say, “Yes.” This is going to feel totally contrary to what you want to say! You’re going to want to say NO! But by saying yes to the feelings, you are moving into a positive state of affirmation which is empowering and compassionate. Watch! You’ll notice an immediate easing up of your anxiety, like a door just opened and some of the pressure has been released. Now, don’t get sucked into trying to relax… that’s actually resistance to the panic. LOL! I know I sound crazy! But trust me on this. Forcing relaxation on yourself when you’re upset will actually cause more resistance and more panic. So don’t do it. Now is not the time to try to get the panic to go away. Remember that panic is your Spirit Guide and it is trying to show you something important inside your self (inside your being) that wants healing. So by saying yes to the feelings, you’re actually becoming a willing partner in your own healing and you’re uniting with the Spirit Guides that actually love you.

3. Experience the feelings. Whatever you’re noticing in your body, just be with it. Don’t try to change it, and for gods-sake, don’t try to analyze it! Not right now! Don’t let your mind come in and hijack you your attention from your body! Stay in the experience of whatever you’re feeling. If your body temperature is rising, just feel the heat. If your heart is racing, just feel it race. If your breathing is short, just allow it to be. If you notice twitchiness, just feel it twitch. If you have racing thoughts, don’t latch onto them and keep them going. Do your best to let go of the reigns of you thoughts and come into your body. Do your best to NOT analyze and don’t try to change anything. Believe it or not, these things are going to change on their own– just by you being present with them!!!! Too often we’re so busy trying to change how we feel, that we don’t allow the emotions to run their course, and so the emotions are stuck and so are we right along with them. By allowing your emotions to run their course, by allowing your body to have its reaction to the emotions, you’re actually creating a gateway for them to run their course and for you to be free. But keep in mind that your mind blocks this process! So experience the feelings, but keep your mind quiet for a minute.

4. Notice the thoughts that are coming up. Notice but don’t latch on and start thinking them. Here, it’s important to NOTICE the thoughts, but not to think them. Let me try to give you an example that might help you here. Imagine that you’re standing in the middle of a field and there’s a beautiful horse running circles around you. You are an expert wrangler and you could chase after the horse, reach out and grab the reigns, hop on, and drive him. OR you could just stand there in the field and watch and observe the horse as it does its thing, running its circles. I want you to do the latter. It is normal during all meditations to have thoughts that arise. Your job is to not chase the thoughts, and to not become so preoccupied with what you’re thinking that you actually leave the experience of your own body in the panic state. So as you are experiencing the feelings, just gently let the thoughts float by you like wisps of clouds in a summer sky (or like a crazy horse running circles around you in a field.) You do not have to analyze the clouds (or the horse.) You can just let them pass while you stay present experiencing the sensations in your body.

These first four steps you’ll want to do for several minutes (say 5 to 10 minutes, or longer if you can.) The longer you stay with the sensations, the more they will finish out their course and you’ll get free. Personally, my most powerful healing comes when I sit with this for 45 to 90 minutes.

Now, here comes the fun part of how to deal with panic attacks (Phase 2:)

5. Ask Spirit what it wants. So after you’ve gotten yourself into the rhythm of the sensations in your body, and you are not resisting what you are experiencing, you can now ask Spirit what it is trying to tell you. The way you do this is to focus on a sensation and while you are connected to it, simply ask, “Why are you here?”

6. Listen to what Spirit has to say. Spirit is going to answer you immediately, usually in the form of thoughts and images. It is VERY important that you don’t deny any of the messages that come through because Spirit doesn’t fuck around. Spirit isn’t the one who is mysterious. It’s your brain that doesn’t want to hear what Spirit has to say. That’s what keeps you in mystery about what’s going on with you. I’ve seen it thousands of times with my clients. We’ll be in session and the client is connected to the sensations and they’ll ask Spirit what it wants and then there’s a long pause. I ask my client, “What are you seeing?” Client says, “Nothing.” I say, “Nothing?” Client says, “Well, it doesn’t make sense. I’m seeing myself as a little girl sitting by herself in a patch of grass.” I go on to ask the client to feel how they feel in that moment and very often it’s some kind of deep hidden emotion that they want to deny like loneliness or dis-empowerment. When we go into the message that the little girl has to deliver, it is usually a suppressed aspect of the client who was embittered by something that happened to them at that age. That innocent child had been stuck all these years and the anxiety that the client was experiencing today was a direct offspring of what she had experienced so terribly at that time in her childhood. The thing is, the client’s first reaction to the thought was to try to deny it because it didn’t make sense to her lower mind. But the lower mind is the one who is afraid of Spirit and the deep emotional self. Don’t let it hijack your connection to yourself!

7. Get out your journal and write. After you’ve sat with these feelings and asked these questions and gotten your responses, pull out your journal and write about what you experienced. Writing is also a good way to communicate with Spirit. Our Spirit Guides come through us very easily when we write. Don’t know what to write down? Well, you can start by writing down what you experienced or what you saw in your mind. You can write about the image Spirit showed you or you can even ask more questions on paper and then ask Spirit to write the answers. It might seem like you’re asking yourself, but of course, you are. Spirit is YOU. You have all the answers, but Spirit Guides are extensions of you that are not locked down in the same mindset that make up your reality. Hey, you are Divine and Almighty. You are the Light and the Way. It is exciting!!! Be it, my friend!

Okay. So I hope this little tutorial is helpful. It works wonders for me and helps me KNOW my connection to Source even when I am experiencing anxiety and panic!

If you are ready to get the help you need to get unstuck so you can THRIVE in your life, then book yourself in for a complimentary Discovery Session and let’s talk about how we can work together.

You are so loved, my friend. <3