The subject for today is: Anxiety attacks
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.
Sometimes
fearful thoughts can be like weeds which grow around poisonous mushroom
the poisonous mushroom, of course, representing things which are not good
for you to do, and be, and have and all of that
in this lifetime
But the fearful thoughts which are the weeds have to be cleared away first, for you to decide
whether that thing which the fearful thoughts are obscuring
is right for you
or is wrong for you
you never want to take action until you take the step
to clear those weeds, clear the fearful thoughts off of whatever subject
you have been thinking about
You always know what's right or wrong for you
You always hold the power to focus positively
or focus on something which causes you to feel negative emotion
I promise you, as debilitating as panic attacks are
it is totally within your power to be able to stop them when they occur
and they can bring very valuable insight into your life
and get you in touch with what is really right for you
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