Panic Stricken

If you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in an uncontrollable state of panic, you can easily slip out of cognitive control. Anything could happen when you’re panic-stricken.

If you’ve been triggered and fallen into a state of panic, blood pressure rises, heartbeats drastically, you get shot up with heavy doses of adrenaline, you feel that your life is at stake and you lose your ability to reason effectively as you lose yourself to the overwhelming panic.

Anything you do or say in such a state, you should not be held liable for, but unfortunately, often you are. Losing yourself to panic can make you feel like your losing your mind, and it can look that way to others witnessing the event, the more expressive you are as a person. Your otherwise enviable enthusiasm and passion can make you appear to be a raving lunatic.

People who have fallen victim to the panic-stricken state may find themselves in hospitals, jails, mental wards, prisons, or graveyards. No need to worry about going crazy because you’re not. You just need to find ways to get a handle on your panic before you get there.

First, you need to know what the early warning signs are indicating you’ve been triggered and, on your way, to having a panic attack. It’s different for every person, but some common signs you’re panic-stricken could include racing or heavy heartbeat, perspiration, shortness of breath, trembling and/or shaking.

When you start to sense these signs you want to take steps to interrupt the pattern of panic before it escalates to the point of losing your ability to be mindful. As your panic increases, you could experience other symptoms including getting tingling sensations in your extremities, dizzy, nausea.

Un-interrupted, you could find yourself in a full-on panic episode, and who wouldn’t, if you had chest pain, felt like you were having a heart attack, and that you may very well die from the emergent sense of urgency. That’s when cognition shuts down, and you’ve lost yourself to panic.

Anything that happens after that will likely be a blur, or you may experience a black-out, unable to recall the events clearly, or at all, when panic-stricken.

Analyze your panic attacks and get to know which physiological indicators show up first when you are triggered and at risk of becoming panic-stricken. Instead of letting yourself be overwhelmed by the fear associated with the symptoms, find a way to calm down your nerves.

Take slow, deep breaths and find ways to relax in the moment, center yourself, close your eyes and focus on things you love, are hugely grateful for, make you feel loved, or connect to yourself on a soulular level. Surround yourself by a bubble filled with loving-kindness. Give yourself over to a high love state, instead of panic, and you’ve won this battle.

You can rest assured that panic is not eternal, as all forms of panic resolve themselves and subside unless you have been unfortunate to have lost your life in the midst of panic. You might feel as though you might die from panic, but the fact remains, if you are reading these words, you haven’t yet.

There is huge hope for you to change the way you experience panic if you have the wherewithal to do something different, the next time you feel yourself heading in that direction.

Help I Can’t Take One More

Aaahhh! I am so far over my head, “Help!” I don’t think I can take one more thing! Ever feel like you’ve had all you can stand? It’s as if the hits just keep coming, and you think about the saying that “God will not give you more than you can take,” and right about now, it feels like it’s a lie because you are well over your head.

You’re losing it. You feel like you have zero control of anything as your world crumbles all around you, and you ask yourself (or some deity), “What’s happening?”

Okay, you asked for it, so here it is:

This is all on you.

(Take a moment to express your disagreement with the idea that this might all be your fault, then come back and give me a chance to explain.)

Here’s the deal, when something happens that you don’t like, you have seventeen seconds to feel bad, after which if you don’t pull your head out, the eighteenth second begins to emit the frequency which matches the vibration of you are enveloped by. This energy (which is clearly negative) attracts like energy.

So, every second that follows while you are wallowing in the negative energy is calling more negative energy to you. More bad news is on the way; here it comes…

The only way to stop the spiraling whirlpool which is dragging you down and draining you of the possibility of having the best things in life is to stop the negative energy and start getting into a positive frequency. Even if it’s a low positive vibration it’s so much better than remaining in the negative, and it stops the attraction of more bad news.

You must get in touch with you, all the good things about you. You know you’re here for a reason and you were not called to be in this negative vibe. This is not your natural state. You are called to love yourself, embrace your power and continue to draw a line between what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad. You have the power to choose to feel good or to feel bad. When you are feeling good, you are in touch with the real you. You are attracting good things and not bad.

In this positive state of mind, you are thinking clearer, you are creative, resourceful, you are open to all good things as they unfold before you, you are able to find a sense of peace, and things are leaning toward increased clarity in your life.

You must cut out some positive space for you to separate yourself from the negative and immerse yourself in a positive vibration. Take a day off, disconnect from the madness, take a break. Take time to focus your attention on doing something, putting you in a place where you feel good; and the better you can get yourself to feel, the better.

Take a walk in nature, or watch a comedy film or a tear-jerker but find a way to release some pent-up emotion and embrace the cleanse. Count your blessings; get out a piece of paper and a writing instrument and start jotting all the things you can be grateful for in your life (even when things are at their worst, there are some good things that can be found, even if the process feel daunting at the outset). Write down the good things in life you can look back on.

I love you

Everything will be okay

If you’re like me, all you want to hear and feel is, “I love you,” and, “Everything will be okay.”

It’s up to you to put yourself in the state where you feel loved and assured that everything will be okay by no one or no other thing than you, yourself. This is your responsibility, as counter-intuitive that it might sound or feel at first, this is up to you and you alone. You need to accept this responsibility and start loving yourself, truly loving, appreciating, encouraging and empowering yourself.

Sure, someone else can help to make you feel these things, but this energy which comes from outside yourself fades, and when it fades, it requires finding another source outside of yourself to re-energize yourself.

Your source of energy from within is limitless and divine. It doesn’t depend on anyone or anything else. As long as there is life within you, that limitless source of energy resides within the recess of your heart, just waiting for you to call upon it.

When you are feeling better, reminded of those things for which you can feel grateful, loving and supporting yourself, you are at a much better place to look again at the challenges that you face.

From this perspective, you are able to see answers and have access to skills and tools which weren’t within reach when you were drowning in despair.

Congratulations.

You got this.

Big Boys Don’t Cry But They Should

Young boys are programmed not to show emotion as they are growing up, and this programming has been so effective that by the time they are adults, they have become rather emotionally numb and passé about things that might cause them to experience negative emotions, primarily sadness, as it signifies a lack of strength or weakness. To shed a tear is to expose your vulnerabilities, which is undignified, so we train our young men by instilling the mantra, “Big boys don’t cry.” And, for the most part, they comply.

The men in our world, at least 80 percent of them, don’t cry. They bottle up their sadness and lock it away inside to exude more strength, which is a virtue sought after by the opposing sex. This primal instinct makes men more appealing to women, who instinctively are attracted to signs of strength in a potential mate. This instinct hearkens back to a time in the early dawn of man and persisted until about a hundred years ago.

What happens when men withhold tears for years and possibly for a lifetime?

It’s no surprise that men who hide their emotions and pack them down into deep recesses of their mind are potentially walking powder kegs, that could explode at any moment, and many of them do. The explosive nature may express itself in extraordinary fits of rage, which can fuel a soldier to commit honorable acts of violence or create a domestic violence offender. To mitigate the growing pressure, these men may seek refuge in alcoholism or drug abuse to stave off pent up emotional outbursts.

Not crying comes at a great emotional cost and generally results in a shorter lifespan. Human beings who cry occasionally, live longer than their dry-eyed contemporaries.

In contrast to men, women cry more often and live longer than their male counterparts, but if they cry too much, they may find themselves at risk of being diagnosed with any of many neuroses, while women who do not cry might be considered as suffering from alexithymia.

Holding back one’s tears can be likened to willfully and slowly ingesting poison which will result in death, though abstaining from crying can be advantageous, especially in times of crisis. In emergent situations putting off the onset of tears can be hugely beneficial in crisis management and in such professions as military service and law enforcement. In these cases, an emotional release should be encouraged following the sounding of “all clear” or cessation of the crisis.

Refusing to cry and continuing to bottle up your emotions causes stress on the entire biological system and leads to a greater risk of heart disease and premature deterioration of brain function and health. Not crying will also make you more irritable and vulnerable to headaches, high blood pressure, and depression.

Crying is a good thing

The shedding of tears is an essential part of dealing with the wide variety of emotions that we all are blessed with. The ability to cry due to emotional triggers is what separates us from the other lifeforms on this planet, it is an exclusive human gift to be revered. Tears can be an important tool in processing excessive emotions and are likely to appear (if you allow them to be released) in both times of extreme emotional pain or happiness. The enormous outpouring of emotions such as love, compassion, reverent appreciation, or loss can also trigger a tearful emotional release promoting better mental and physical health and well-being.

Even though societal constraints or upbringing may make a tearful expression seem uncomfortable or awkward, nothing could be better for you psychologically and physiologically. Crying is an effective transitional response between emotional overwhelm and a sense of calm, or peace, following a good cry.

Crying allows the release of pent up emotional storages, which are harmful to us as tears release toxins in the body, leading to better health and longevity.

Maybe it’s time you let a tear or two fall, or enjoy a thorough release and let all those emotions careen down your face. It’s okay.

Big Boys Should Cry

and you are blessed if you can.