Our Inner Compass is often...Discomfort

Finding Meaning in Panic, Anxiety, & Stress

It is so normal to feel out of control in the midst of panic or defeated when admitting to chronic anxiety, and stress. We believe that something needs to be done to fix the problem. We need to stop what's happening...or ignore it. The need to control, to get over, to stop the sensations and feelings is our default way of being in situations that we feel are impossible to avoid. 

The hidden messages behind panic, anxiety, and stress often go unheard in our push to stop what is happening. We want to fix or bandaid, not get curious and spiral into the feeling. We want to avoid, not learn. Rarely do these sensations create a desire to feel more and reflect. Rarely are panic, anxiety, and stress given space to exist. Without introspection, all we are doing is ignoring a lesson coming from within the body.

Photo Series credited to dr.joseph.rothstein

How to think about all this in a nutshell: 

PANIC is a signal that there is something off with our EMOTIONS. 

ANXIETY is a signal that there is something off related to our THOUGHTS. 

STRESS is a signal that there is something off in our ACTIONS.

Some of us have lived our entire lives without alignment. We live with a low level anxiety, a continuous threat of panic attack, or a constant low level stress that is just “part of who we are.”

What if you could challenge this belief right now and allow these sensations to lead you into the life you are searching for?

When we utilize our bodies as lightning rods for sensation and learning instead of suppression and ignoring, negative feelings help us move towards a happy life.

Within the embodiment of panic, anxiety, and stress there is a correlation that can be used to understand the nature of their hidden messages. Panic is an emotional response to something that needs to be released from our cellular structure. Anxiety is a response to thoughts that are not serving your true self. Stress is related to our actions or something we are doing in our lives that does not resonate with our being. Discerning between these three sensations and their own innate differences in sensation and experience is necessary to allow ourselves to discover the hidden message and make changes in our lives in reponse to what we have found.

Disclaimer: Please remember that the art of any change is found in learning how to embrace discomfort. Panic, anxiety, or stress that feels different and goes away once you've gone into the discomfort are showing you that you are making a choice into change. As with all uncomfortable emotions, we have to befriend them, learn how to listen to them, and act on their behalf. Discomfort and the sensations of panic, anxiety, and stress when we are changing patterns is a sign that we are actually moving towards ourself instead of away. Habitual comfort with uncomfortable feelings or avoidance of uncomfortable emotions is not embracing discomfort.

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Panic 

Panic is related to emotion. Panic is telling us that we need to explore ourselves more and find a way to release stagnant emotion and/or cellular stress. Panic is most evidently resonating fear but, since we can be afraid of another emotion in our body such as grief or anger or even joy, the root cause of panic is not necessarily the emotional of fear. 

Panic is our body's way of telling us that it can no longer store emotion. Panic is telling us our body requies an emotional release. A panic attack is directly related to the body being full of either all emotions or one emotion that is not being addressed. Something around how we feel emotion in life is off the rails to the point where the emotional body is communicating that it is done. The body needs a change.

We can think of this as cellular or somatic as well. Panic attacks are trying to wake us up to our own suppression or repression of emotions. We may habitually repress emotion so reflexively that we do not even know emotion is present. This may be all emotion or one emotion. We may have suppressed an experience in the past that is now ready for us to heal. Either way, we have internalized the experience into a somatic expression of suffering, pain, or disease. If we ignore panic attacks or try to stop them without learning more about our emotional expression, we will create more somatic pain and suffering. 

Sometimes panic attacks happen in the moment, right before a situation that is causing us to suppress emotion. Other times they happen in the middle of the night as a sort of reminder that we need to express ourselves more or differently. It is important to pay attention to what creates the panic because without that we will not know what emotion is causing a panic attack.

Not so easy to understand are recurring panic attacks or panic attacks that escalate into very real physical symptoms. We may not understand what is triggering the panic. We may not want to admit to ourselves what the root cause is. We may want to avoid, take pharmaceutical remedies, or ignore the panic in a direct attempt to give our own egoic and willful, “NO” right back at the panic attack.  Do any of these work?  They might repress but they don’t actually help us find ourselves. The panic may hear the avoidance message and go away, but the sense of something missing or not being in alignment stays. The panic will return if it is not addressed, sometimes in another form.

Panic is not gentle. It is not saying to us that we have time to decide. Panic is telling us change is amongst us and needs to happen ASAP. Something is wrong. Figure it out. Feeling panic suddenly on a trail in the wilderness will create a turning back, a deeper assessment, a looking around and protecting the self. Feeling panic in life requires this same sort of attention. The message of panic says, “Continue on the path you are on, and you are at risk.” Panic should not be ignored.

A question to ask yourself in the midst of anything related to panic is, "Is anything happening that is causing me panic right now?"

If you do not have an answer, then you can calm yourself down through thoughts about the present moment. You can remind yourself that you are safe, you have enough food, you have a place to sleep. However, if you come up with a clear answer to that question, identify how you feel about the answer. What is the emotion that is trying to surface? Try letting yourself feel the emotion. If you can't do it alone, get support.

Feeling what is going on and acknowledging the emotion is the first step towards raising your own awareness about the panic. After that you will need to learn how to let it flow out of you for emotional release. For cellular healing to occur, you will then have to consciously replace the panic with calm.  This is essential to actually change the pattern underlying the panic.

Anxiety

Anxiety is related to thoughts. It points to a way that we think that is separate from who we are or thougths that keep us away from being our self. Anxiety is showing us that there is something about our life that needs more of our self or that we need to think differently about our self.

Anxiety is showing us that we are not in touch with our intuition.

Anxiety is asking us to think different, hide less, live more openly, share thoughts with others, and accept ourselves to the core of our being. Anxiety points to a need to not be a victim to our own thoughts, but to get out of our head and into our lives. Anxiety around a job may tell us we need to think different about our role or it may be telling us that we need to consider a change in career. Anxiety in friendship may be telling us we are not expressing needs or boundaries, or it may be pointing us towards a toxic pattern that we can change if we just address it. Anxiety is pushing us towards waking up and following through with our more unfamiliar thoughts to create change.  

Sometimes the easiest way to track anxiety is when it goes away. We need to learn to listen to the thought we had immediately before the release. This is often a thought that is more intuitive or perhaps even has a bit of a feeling of fantasy to it. A thought that releases anxiety is showing us the way out of our own anxious trap. 

Be aware that this does not mean that we might not feel scary emotions in relation to the thought that releases anxiety. The unfamiliar, more intuitive thought may be telling us to let a relationship go, change a job, or be more vocal and stand up for our needs. The thought of doing something new may cause initial anxiety but it has a different feel to it than habitual anxiety. When we act on a new thought in a non habitual way, the anxiety melts or changes in a way that tells us we are listening and responding instead of ignoring or habituating.

Anxiety that gets louder is showing us something is more urgent. We can live a life full of low level anxiety that may affect our overall health and happiness but not ever get to a place where we will listen to it and change something about ourself. However, if it is rising it means we are somehow moving toward something that is worse for us, not better. It may be calling us out on our own toxic thought patterns. It may be pointing us towards someone overtaking our thoughts and needing to find our own inner authority. There are a myriad of ways that we uniquely think out of alignment with our truest self. You need to find your own way into positive thought alignment through curiosity and experimentation.

Anxiety is asking for alignment. It is asking for change but giving us the time to assess and consider what exactly needs changing. We may need to look at thoughts that cause anxiety or situations in our life that cause us to have anxious thoughts.  We need to learn how to create new thoughts that align with our truth and flow with us instead of against us.

Stress

Stress is related to your actions and habitual way of acting in the world. The message behind stress points to how our actions and will is not in alignment with the self. Something we are doing is creating a stress on our lives. Something we feel we have to do is creating stress in our lives. Stress, similar to anxiety, causes an underlying tension in the body. The tension of stress, however, unlike anxiety, can be easier to shake off and move away from through engaging in activities that are stress reducing. Relationships, people, situations, jobs, expectations, illness, and for some even reality itself can all cause stress. 

Stress for some is a part of a greater picture where there is lack of choice or a sense of being trapped or cornered. Often stress is found in situations in which a personal voice is not possible or there is a sense of the inevitable in our need to act. Job stress or family stress are examples where we need to just deal with the stress, find things to do to ease the stress, or engage in activities to stop the stress. It can be harder to admit that the stress itself is a sign that we don’t want to be working or would rather disengage from a family entanglement. 

Many of us feel like stress is required to be alive in the “real” world. It’s a natural evil of needing to make money, have children, be a partner to someone, and give up a more natural state of communal living. Perhaps we need to look at how we may need to actively create the reality in our lives that we imagine to be less stressful. We may need to look at the ways we feel inevitably alone and find a class or community that nourishes our way of being to feel less alone. Perhaps we need more support and have to create a network of people supporting each other. The sense that stress is part of the “real” world may be a sign that you need to change your culture and environment into a sustainable and supporting space to survive and thrive.

Stress can be a great place to explore your limiting beliefs and how you act in response to them. You may want to challenge yourself and actually do about being different than what you consider normal and find your unique self. Those of us who have jobs that nourish us and come from our soul do not feel stress at work. Those of us who consciously create community and now how to be present in conflict do not always feel like being around people is stressful. Those of us who have a deep ground in activites that nourish us and that we love are less stressed. Stress is a choice, not a reality. Perhaps it is time to explore why stress may not feel that way to you.

Tracking the Cause & Making Use of The Compass

With any panic, anxiety, or stress, the cause needs to be discovered.

We are not being told EVERYTHING is out of alignment. We are being told SOMETHING is off kilter.

It's up to us to figure out what is going on. No one can tell us. We have to be open to discovering our own inner compass.

I am a big proponent of play. In a world where we as adults tend to take ourselves too seriously, the importance of play when we consider something to be really critical is at its highest. We need to experiment, let go, let in. This can’t happen if we are trying to fix or control.

Tracking the cause of panic, anxiety, or stress can actually be played with instead of fixed. Curiosity, interaction, intuition, and not being perfect are all integral in the ability to play. The same is true when exploring the causes of panic, anxiety, or stress. Play is more likely to get us to feel good and understand what is happening than getting lost in trying to intellectualize what is happening. 

Start with thoughts and notice what thoughts you have make it so you stop breathing. This is a good sign that these thoughts are not in alignment with your true self. Try the same with emotions. Tap into each emotion and notice which one makes your breath become erratic or anxious. Bring an action into your day and notice when your breath gets shallow. This points to a stressful action. Stopping breath or making it shallow is the sign that comes to us in panic, anxiety, or stress. 

Ironically often the most effective way to challenge panic, anxiety, or stress is to delve into something that is absolutely uncomfortable. Why? Because we need to discover the self and true self discovery is going into what we avoid or fight about ourself. 

We need to remember that fear needs breath to move. When having any sort of panic, anxiety, or stress, we need to learn how to breathe more deeply and feel more of our bodies. This is literally the opposite of the body’s impulse in these situations. We need to override the hormonal feedback loop into a new way of acting and embodying. We need to learn to ride the waves of our own interior panic, anxiety and stress to cultivate a relationship to something different, something new, something undiscovered. We need to patiently create new neural pathways through habituated ways of being that do NOT cause us panic, anxiety, or stress. Then we have room to grow without needing to consistently default into negative states of being. We can create a subtle inner compass to point us towards who we are instead.

There is totally a difference between low level anxiety, consistent stress, and full blown panic attacks. A surge of full blown panic attacks is your life saying, “NO” as loud as it possibly can and often is a call for support outside the self. A low level hum of anxiety or stress, while feeling more constitutional, points to an internal assimilation of a sense of self that has not ever known how to allow itself alignment. While the panic attack demands an instant change, low level anxiety or stress can be quietly endured and ignored, as situations require. 

Neither the loudness of a panic attack or the low level tension in anxiety and stress need to be a part of anyone’s reality…if you pay attention and listen. Instead they can be instantaneous signals of a true inner compass. We can notice that when we put an emotion away instead of expressing it, a panic surges. We can allow anxiety to be related to toxic thoughts that do not serve anyone. We can observe stress and take different action steps. All of these messages can become friends, teachers, and opportunities for change.

Panic, anxiety, and stress are asking us to embrace the unknown self. They are not messages that are meant to hurt us. They are messages sent to awaken us into something new. They exist to let us know that we need to expect more from life, not less. Next time you feel panic, anxiety, or stress, try to feel yourself more, deepen you breath, and move into the feeling.

The answer you get in questioning what the panic, anxiety, or stress wants is most likely going to be as uncomfortable as the panic attack or feeling of anxiety or recurrent stress itself. Acknowledging the need to change is not going to do anything here. We have to actually try something new on, play with change, take ourselves a little less seriously, and move into something new. Panic and anxiety are asking us to accept a piece of ourself we have rejected. These feelings can become signals that we need to find out more about a new friend in our life - the inner compass of our own being.  

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Ten Tips and Practices to Decrease Stress, Anxiety, and Panic.

Seriously I could write 10 pages of suggestions here. You can find another 10,000 suggestions online. The point is to do what works for you. The following are my tried and true favorites not only for myself but also what has worked with my clients over the years. You can choose to try the suggestion that feels familiar and comfortable...or you could try the one that you want to avoid or run away from. The choice is yours to make!

1. My default is always going to revert to listening to body scans to improve a mindful awareness of sensation and also to support not popping into explaining what is happening but rather be curious about the feeling. I suggest putting one on before bed and just falling asleep to it. Here is my favorite body scan…

2. Set an alarm on your phone for every half hour. Yes. Every half hour. When it goes off, take three deep breaths through your nose.

   See if you can make the inhale as long as possible.

   Then hold your breath until you need to exhale.

   Then exhale as slow as you can.

   Then hold your breath until you need to inhale.

   Do this for at least 7 days in a row to make conscious deep breathing part of your reflexive lifestyle.