"Dear Anxiety, shut up!" or How do you keep your perspective when you're having panic attacks?
When the brain sets off a false alarm
I didn't realise it was a typical anxiety attack until many years later. The cardiologist, to whom I ended up a few days after a visit to the emergency room, where they found nothing, did obliquely suggest that I might have similar conditions "from nerves", but was probably embarrassed to say the key words "psychiatric emergency" or "panic attack". I left her office with the reassurance that my heart muscle was working fine, so I didn't rationally fear a seizure - I just shouldn't continue to "hunt" my health by working 14 hours a day, six days a week, and partying in gay bars the rest of the time.
As you can probably guess, I am not one of those "lucky" people who have anxiety attacks only a few times in my life - on the contrary, I have had several periods in my life when I had anxiety attacks several times a day. After a stressful day, I woke up with a painful heaviness in my chest that made me think "it" was coming - and indeed, about an hour later I was sitting collapsed next to the toilet bowl, gagging and crying. "Take some Neurol," my partner suggested over the messenger, while I sniffled into his T-shirt, which I like to sleep in, unable to stretch the few inches to get toilet paper and preserve some small vestige of a cultured existence.
Compared to a similar situation ten years ago, though, there was a major difference - and no, I don't mean the fact that I'm now happily engaged. This time, I knew that the hellish state that could completely overwhelm me mentally and physically was anxiety - and even in my worst moments of floor-level futility, I could realize that it was my brain's error response, not a real state of threat.
Are you threatened by an invisible tiger?
Klara Hanstein, a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who herself suffers from anxiety disorder and panic attacks, explains this mechanism perfectly. Her personal experience in coping with anxiety inspired her to write the book Dear Fear, Shut Up ( published by Knihy Kazda), in which she reminds us, among other things, that we need the body's panic reaction in general. The reason? If a tiger suddenly appeared in front of us, we must be able to react to such a threat by switching to standby mode. The problem, then, is not the reaction itself - that has an evolutionary basis - but the fact that our "alarm sirens" are going off at a time when our lives are not really at stake.
"Constantly remind yourself that a panic attack is just a mistake in the brain. A false alarm. Your fear centre has accidentally pressed the alert button and triggered an anxiety reaction," advises an expert on how to "reframe" anxiety in your mind. In my experience, even if you have years of experience with anxiety treatment, sometimes an anxiety attack catches you off guard with its intensity because it feels very real. It's as if the fear is telling you, " Yeah, I know you think it's just anxiety, but this time it's really about life, this is for real!"
"From a biological point of view, the problem can be logically explained. But you can't properly discern these physical processes. You judge them to be life-threatening or at least extremely unpleasant. The consequence of this misjudgment is that the nervous system releases even more energy, which causes even more confusion in the body and leads to an even greater onslaught of frightening thoughts, feelings of panic and fear of death. And so the cycle of fear spins ever faster," comments Klara Hanstein on the so-called "anxiety spiral" in which body, thoughts and feelings interact.
When you have your anxiety playlist...
In her book, Hanstein offers many specific techniques to help yourself during a panic attack - such as breathing, meditation, movement or, quite surprisingly, the suggestion to stop fighting anxiety and let it "pass through" you. I myself - before reading the manual - found myself sometimes playing emotionally distressing songs during panic states (Hi, Ren is such a tried and true song that I am "afraid" to listen to it under normal circumstances).
I don't know if such a playlist has a real effect on me, or if I'm just imagining it, but subjectively it seems to me that the panic is aired out faster and relief comes sooner. Unlike other advice that I can't yet put into practice during a seizure - dip my elbows in ice water, suck on a ginger candy, eat something spicy - a few clicks on Spotify usually do the trick.
Nothing lasts forever - not even a panic attack
Even if the experience of anxiety seems unbearable and endless at the time, part of what helps me cope with it is the certainty that the unpleasantness will pass. "A panic attack usually lasts 5-30 minutes. During this time, adrenaline is produced, which is then released again. However, our body cannot produce an endless amount of adrenaline, so we return to a resting mode after 30 minutes at the latest," the author describes in the book - and I can confirm her words. Now, as I write these lines, about three hours after the acute anxiety has subsided, I feel almost physically relieved. It is as if a heavy stone has been lifted from my heart.
I'm a little tired, but paradoxically in a better mental state than my partner - who is understandably burdened when he cannot relieve my panic attacks. I understand his suggestion that I take a pill to "calm down" - the helplessness is terrible - but I gratefully decline. As my psychiatrist stated, it takes looking for other solutions and working therapeutically with the anxiety - plus, I myself feel that if I were referred to an emergency pill to get rid of the anxiety, it would encourage me to think that I am utterly tiny and helpless against panic. But that's not true.
Whenever I muster the courage to mentally tell my anxiety to kindly shut up, its seeming invincibility is thereby eroded - and the confidence grows within me that I can weather it. Even though I tell myself with each panic attack that I never want to experience a similar state again because "this can't happen," I believe the day will come when I will be at peace with both the recurrences of anxiety and the worst fears that jump out at me during attacks. Maybe then these bogeymen will "shut up" on their own - the happy ending experiences of psychologist Hanstein, who managed to triumph over her anxieties, would suggest so - and maybe I'll find that if I dare to listen to their catastrophic scenarios, they won't frighten and paralyze me so much. To stop being afraid of fear and anxious about anxiety will obviously be half of the whole achievement.
