Panic is like a guard or gatekeeper, lighthouse, virus scanner on your computer keeping an eye out for trouble. Why do we believe it's the guard we need to get rid of?
Panic Response is Your Relational "Tell"
How do you respond to your panic or panic attacks? Do you "what if" yourself? Do you avoid? Do you hide out? These are your relational responses or imprints to emotional stimulation. Responses to life are our "tells". Should we get rid of the information? Get rid of the messenger? When your oil light or check engine light comes on do you put oil in? Or do you put something over the light to ignore it. Maybe it's the bulb...
When your oil light comes on does your car need oil, or does it have an oil disorder?
Relational Attacks Pt 1
What if we relabeled panic attacks and called them relational attacks. What solutions would we seek for relief? Would we search for relational answers? Would this change anything? everything? or nothing?
Unifying Thread
What allows panic to be our friend and makes panic useful is relationship. Relationship--we cannot learn, change, or comfort without it. We cannot receive and integrate without relationship. Yet we know very little about it. Even though we practice it every minute of every day. How can this be?
Panic Out Of Nowhere?
One of the most challenging parts of the panic attack experience is that it seems to come out of nowhere. Does it? Of course not. Two questions: Where does panic come from? and Why now? Change everything.
Does Panic Matter?
Scott Peck in his book, The Road Less Traveled (1) says that "life is difficult". He wasn't kidding. For those of us with panic attacks, that may be the understatement of the year. The question is, is life worth it. Most things worth doing are difficult. Love, work, family, friends, faith, and school are difficult. And they are meaningful. Many things that are difficult, when we're done with them we feel great.
How does this relate to panic? Panic suffering is particularly painful because it seems like meaningless suffering and can make life feel like it's not worth it.
Life is sometimes difficult, yet panic can be our friend and help us make our life meaningful and our life worth living.
(1) Quote from: The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, MD, A Touchstone Book, 1978
Relationship Matters?
Give me a minute of your time. Change your life. What’s your definition of relationship? Before you go any further, write it down. What’s your definition of your relationship to panic? Are these two questions related?
How do you treat yourself?
How do you treat others?
How do you allow others to treat you?
These are relational questions. They matter.
What If Pt 2
Are you sure you want to stop panic?
So when you drive along, and a dangerous life threatening event happens, you want to not have the benefits of intense concentration, better vision, rapid heartbeat, slowed digestion, to help with solving the threat?
Or when you get on that roller coaster and your heart pounds and you perspire and you feel dizzy. So you want to stop all that?
Well what do you want to stop?
Symptoms without meaning
Now I’ve really opened a can of worms
Something Missing
What do you think about when you panic? What do you do when you panic? What do you feel when you panic? We're used to answering these questions with solutions. The answer to these questions tells me a lot about the me that panics and why. Until we see the meaning of panic we don't see the gift it can be. I'm suggesting that we look at the answers to these questions in a more revealing way. What's missing in our typical answers?
One thing is always missing when we panic: comfort
What If
I was reading this morning that panic people sometimes don't keep at or practice the tools they need to stop panic attacks. What if the benefits that come with a different relationship to panic are larger than stopping panic symptoms? What if changing our relationship to panic changes our relationships to our friends and family? And what if changing our relationship to panic brings us to greater happiness? And what if changing our relationship to panic brings us greater health. And what if relating to panic is a natural human every day experience that needs no special tools? Relate to panic in a different way, what do you think?
Opportunity Knocking
Every time we get anxious, or get symptoms, or get panicked there is an opportunity to open up and experience our panic in a new way. We begin to attach relational meaning to our experience.
Good For All
We're so used to thinking about panic as "our problem" that we don't realize, it's not. "What? Did he just say what I think he said? " If you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about. But if not, here's a brief rundown. Panic is a relational opportunity. An opportunity for all of our friends and families to heal right along with us.
Family
I think about my family every day. The strengths they have are remarkable. Yet my family was hampered and weighed down with significant relational challenges. My question is does relating and its patterns of consequence and causality matter?
How?
Beginnings
Panic does not begin when or where we think it does
