Hello, hello, and welcome to the Feelings Pod with Sabrina Amina.
I am your host, and this is a podcast where I talk about feelings and offer a brief mindfulness
practice at the end of each episode.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for listening and tuning in.
Today's feeling, today's episode is on panic.
And generally the way that I feel called to talk about different emotions is through my
own exploration of them and developing really just cultivating curiosity around emotions
and in a moment in my life that feels particularly challenging, it's been helpful for me to examine
these difficult emotions and process them through speaking.
And it's my hope that in sharing this process with you, you can find something that you
need here or something that you resonate with, something that hopefully offers you a bit
of comfort.
And one of my favorite lessons from Kristin Neff's work on self-compassion is recognizing
that we're not alone in our human experiences.
Yeah, I think that's really beautiful and it's a practice that has really helped me
come home to myself.
So within the past few several weeks, I've noticed panic come up and I actually experienced
what I'm fairly certain was my first panic attack.
And I've been going through a lot of big changes in my life and for the most part I'm
very proud of how I've been able to carry myself through this moment of my life.
And for the sake of survival and just getting through it, I think often we have to shut
down some of what we're feeling just to kind of get through our day to day tasks.
I'm an educator, I certainly can't teach an entire day of classes while I'm sobbing
over my latest sorrow.
So I have to kind of compartmentalize and put things aside.
And I think when I'm out of my practice, when I'm out of my mindfulness practice, when
I'm not showing up daily to breathe and be with myself, when I'm not showing up to give
my human space, I think this is when we go off the rails.
And in the midst of getting through it and trying to push through and survive and do
the things I need to do to function every day and keep things going, my practices fell
off.
I wasn't journaling as regularly as I normally do.
I wasn't practicing my mindful movement.
I enjoy a yoga practice every day normally.
When I'm feeling centered and grounded, and the irony is I feel centered and grounded when
I'm in that practice.
And so when I'm not feeling centered and grounded, coming back to the practice can be more challenging,
but it's exactly the thing I need to help me come back to center.
So yeah, and I was also a bit inconsistent with my breathing and my mindfulness practice,
so things felt quite off-kilter.
And I had to visit from my mom and I find my interactions with her particularly challenging.
Of course, I love my mother, but those relationships can be complicated.
And for whatever reason, I don't want to get into the nitty gritty details, but that interaction
left me feeling very overwhelmed.
And it wasn't just my interaction with my mother.
I think that was kind of the tipping point for me.
I think after a sustained period of just dealing with stressful situations, after stressful
situations, like this interaction with my mom kind of was the straw that broke the camel's
back, so to speak.
And that evening, I just found myself kind of having heart palpitations.
I was feeling this fear that I couldn't calm myself down.
I was trying to tap into my breathing exercises and pretty much anything I was trying was
felt like it wasn't really helping.
And thankfully, I'm experiencing this for the first time during a time in my life where
I've accumulated an arsenal of self-care tools that I can lean on.
I can't imagine how scary it must be to go through a panic attack and just feel confused
and lost and not even know what to do.
I would probably say that I didn't even notice how anxious I was in my life until I was in
my late 20s.
So it's funny how sometimes there are medical instances where people end up in the hospital
and their body is giving them the signals of panic and stress, but yet the person doesn't
cognitively recognize that they're under stress.
And I say, well, I'm feeling fine because we're kind of in this practice of bypassing
our stress and sorrow and discomfort.
So thankfully, I had these tools to lean on, but nothing seemed to be working.
So I started calling my people, which is also a strategy of mine is to connect with people
who I consider co-regulators.
I called my therapist and I called...
Well, the most important thing was I called my therapist who was very helpful and kind
of...I was still kind of in a panic mode, but I just felt safer and I knew that I was going
to be okay.
And then this was probably, I guess, probably over a month ago.
And I've just been noticing like nothing as extreme as that, but definitely feeling like
that panicky, impending doom, heavy feeling.
And lately I've been doing a better job of turning towards it rather than trying to squash
it or escape it or run away from it.
And sure enough, that is the most helpful strategy for dealing with panic and fear.
And I just...I just...I want to be clear that I don't offer this as any kind of advice
or it's simply a reflection and a share of my experience and I imagine I'm not alone
in this experience and perhaps you hear or see or feel something familiar in hearing
this.
So I suppose the most important takeaway I've had is just getting really, really curious
about what the panic in my body is communicating to me.
And every time, I think it's a little different, but for the most part, it's my body asking
for rest and attention and care.
And again, I am not in a moment of panic at this particular moment.
I'm feeling quite settled and grounded, which is why I feel I can talk a little bit more
about my experience with panic because I tend to feel tremendous amount of shame and hide
in moments of difficulty.
And I...because the last several weeks have been so challenging for me, I, you know, haven't
been sharing as much because it feels like I'm not able to when I'm so removed from my
center, from my practices, because when we're in a state of fear or a state of panic, we
kind of...it's sometimes hard to remember all the things that we know that help us.
We're just kind of out of touch with those things, it seems, or at least I sometimes
feel out of touch, or like, I'll get into moments where I feel even more ashamed because
cognitively, like in my brain, like I know so many things about how to take care of myself.
And in those moments, it almost feels like my knowledge is useless because it hasn't
been turned into wisdom.
So what is wisdom really is our ability to take knowledge and put it into practice and
integrate it into our daily lives, actually live into the things that we know.
So something I will certainly admit that has been helpful for me is I think in another
episode I talked a little bit about my experience with medications and depression.
I had several years ago, just before COVID hit, I had a challenging experience with kind
of a psychiatrist and feeling a little bit like a guinea pig with trying all sorts of
medications.
And I was like, after four months of being on, like, I think four or five different kinds
of pharmaceuticals, I was feeling worse than ever and decided, well, this is not for me,
this is not helpful.
But now I think about four years later, I've come back to that consideration and I had
a different conversation with a different healthcare provider.
I told them about my previous experiences and I'm really happy that I was able to find
a medication that has really been helpful for me over the past couple of days.
I tend to feel kind of resistance to taking medications, but in this particular moment
of my life and experiencing like a panic attack and just kind of feeling so far from my center,
I felt like I needed some kind of a buoy, if you will, a life raft to kind of help carry
me through this moment.
And I'm so grateful that I've revisited that because in this moment, it feels like I've
found something that has been really helpful and supportive for me and it was really kind
of an easy process, so drastically different than what I went through about four years
ago.
So let's just get into our practice today.
I think I'm feeling complete with what I wish to share about panic.
So if you are able to find a comfortable seat or lie down, if you're not able to practice
at the moment, you can certainly pause this episode and come back to it when you're ready.
And then just start tuning into the breath, start noticing it without changing it.
There's just an awareness of something, sometimes simply turning your attention to something
causes slight changes, but know that you don't have to force anything at the moment.
Just follow the inhale and the exhale.
Notice what it feels like as your body breathes in air.
Notice what parts of your body feel, the sensation of air leaving the body, of the breath leaving
the body.
And from here you can start to deepen the breath and extend your inhale for a count
and exhale for five, one, two, three, four, five and pause.
And inhale this time at your own pace, find a count that feels comfortable for you.
Inhale, pause at the top and exhale, pausing at the bottom of the breath.
Now be silent as you take three more breaths, full deep breaths, counting your inhale, pausing
at the top and counting your exhale, extending it a bit longer than your inhale and pausing
at the bottom of the breath.
Bothowej demonstrates.
And when you're ready, come back to the ground.
Come back to the room.
Notice the colors around you.
Let your eyes settle on something in your surroundings.
That gives you a sense of ease.
Thank you so much for practicing with me today.
I hope you have a wonderful day.