Panic

True panic is the extreme version of fear. Fear is a feeling that arises when your personality perceives a situation and interprets it as threatening. You may read more about this feeling in the separate column. Panic is more intense, it seems that it can arise without you being able to control it, and it also seems there is no solution for it. It is all very dark, scary, unpleasant, uncontrollable and fearful. An extreme reaction to something that your personality has labeled extremely threatening. While you want to escape from this experience, at the same time this seems impossible, or you do not know how. It seems to be a feeling which seems to completely overwhelm you once you should surrender to it. This is a very unpleasant outlook, for which you are looking for an immediate solution that at the same time you cannot find, neither within yourself nor through others or medication.

Panic will pass by. At some moment in time, quiet will dawn upon your mind again. Often enough because 'it has lasted 'as long as it had to', you fell asleep and the thoughts that caused the panic have disappeared, you have run away from the situation, other circumstances have helped you to feel more safe, you have numbed the intensity of the experience through alcohol or medication, or you have simply put things back into perspective again.

Once you have lived through a panic attack, it is very likely that you dislike this feeling so much that you will do anything to avoid having to live through one once again. And yet, since panic seems so unpredictable, you are likely to experience a constant feeling of threat, and it is likely that you will now avoid any situation which might lead to you having to experience this panic again.

Still, panic is a choice of your personality, and it serves the purpose of hiding something else. Something of which he had to admit that he cannot control it as much as he thinks he should, or cannot make pleasant enough, or cannot avoid unpleasant experiences for you in other ways, does not want to face or accept, does not want to let go, experiences powerlessness, etc. The panic usurps such a huge part of your awareness that you are prepared to feel relieved when you live through it, without having to dig for how this all started anyway. On top of that, your personality lets you to believe that once you would become aware of the cause of the panic, you would only experience more of it, thus making this action very unappealing to you beforehand.

So panic is an extreme expression of a personality who cannot make a situation work well for you. This choice is bound to bring you some advantages, besides the ones as described above. In principle, there will be attention and understanding from other people, everyday issues that seemed important disappear to the background in favour of bringing peace and quiet to your mind again, expectations disappear or are adjusted, people tend to be considerate and accept that you cannot be expected to control it. This often encourages your personality to uphold his original interpretations, he does not need to change anything, everyone's attention is focused on the intensity of his reaction and he even is praised for making you live through it. So when you want to become more aware of the mechanism behind your personality choice for panic as a solution, do not forget to think about these issues. Remember that the choice for panic may be pleasant to your personality because he now needs not change his original interpretation - which means he remains 'right' about it - it also guarantees many and often long-lasting periods of panic attacks because you uphold their basis.

Many people have experienced panic attacks ánd survived them. This knowledge should be comforting to you, because it demonstrates that it is only temporary and you can survive it, be it a very unpleasant experience. Do not make it into something special, it is simply one of the reaction mechanisms of your personality. Become aware of these mechanisms, and that they are a choice for a certain reaction, this is more important to understand than digging into the past to find out which specific variation causes this for you. This choice for reaction is not wrong, it is what personalities do, this is only a bit of an extreme variation. Whenever you find yourself heading towards panic, stay in the moment as much as possible and choose to consciously use it for increasing awareness. Especially what seem to be the untouchable and unknown elements seem to increase the fear of the moment, and once you get to know the process, this automatically decreases in intensity. Find out what works well for you in order to live through a panic attack. Inviting your inner Self into the moment is of course on of the serious options here, as well as realizing that you are not your personality, so you are not this reaction. This will also help you to be able to see what is happening, rather than identifying with it.

Do not attempt to avoid a feeling of panic at al cost, take responsibility for the reaction mechanism yourself and accept that for now this seems to be what your personality needs to be able to deal with a specific situation. Meanwhile do work on increasing your understanding of its cause, this will really help you forward, since when a situation is no longer experienced as threatening, you no longer need a defence mechanism. Ask other people around you to react as normal to you as possible, even when panic seems to overwhelm you, in a way that will help you to break this vicious circle, rather than reinforcing it.