Panic Attacks Support Group
A panic attack is a period of intense fear or discomfort, typically with an abrupt onset and usually lasting no more than thirty minutes. Symptoms include trembling, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sweating, nausea, dizziness, hyperventilation, and sensations of choking or smothering. Panic attacks can be very sudden, appear to be unprovoked, and are often...
Thoughts on Claire Weekes
FACE
ACCEPT
FLOAT
LET TIME PASS
You are a warrior in training, but not in a war, life has given you a card to play, the card of panic disorder, panic disorder is the ultimate fear, having a panic attack is the ultimate fear, you have all the sensations of fear and absolutely EVERYTHING it can throw at you, but there is no focus for your fear, it seems hidden, it wants to compel you to keep searching for what you fear. But there is NO THING causing it, no thing behind it, no thing hidden, there is no thing at all nothing, it is just fear. This is an amazing opportunity, to face visceral fear itself and SEE FOR YOURSELF that it is a bluff, a con, a deception, an illusion. It is not attacking you, it's just visceral (meaning: relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect), in other words, the panic attack has no intelligence, it has no will, no malice, no agenda, no story, it is keeping you safe under YOUR OWN INSTRUCTION, you keep asking it to protect you, because you keep getting scared. So STOP BEING SCARED. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SCARED OF? IT CANT DO ANYTHING TO YOU. So let it happen COMPLETELY, let it happen UTTERLY, and then you start to see the truth, sometimes all at once, sometimes in small stages. Why let it happen this way without conditions? How else are you supposed to find out that its a dud without seeing it through to the end and beyond.
When Dr Claire Weekes says you must face, accept, float, and let time pass, to me she means this:
FACE: In your own time Face what you are afraid of, whatever it is, go there, do it, let it happen to you. Let the fear IN, let the thoughts happen, accept not the thoughts themselves (eg Im going to go mad .. ie, dont accept that you are going mad), but accept that you have these thoughts, if you didnt have the physical symptoms of discomfort, you could have this thought and not even be concerned by it, the physical symptoms are just a fertile soil for the thoughts to attach themselves to us. If you really didnt fear all the sensations then no thought would ever bother you. Its not the thought, or the place, or the person, or the day or the night or the summer or the winter that you fear, you just fear the discomfort. Without the fear of the discomfort the discomfort just becomes a mechanism, a curiosity, not an obsession. Once you understand that your only resistance is to the limited physical sensations, and once you realise that this is the bodys only way of producing fear then you realise that you can with practice decouple any thought or scenario from fear. In other words, fear is only a collection of symptoms, panic at its core is nothing but a fear of symptoms, once you no longer fear these symptoms, you no longer fear the physical sensations of fear itself, and therefore you no longer fear fear itself. So ANYTHING you can possibly think of which previously made you scared, cannot make you scared ever again, because all that will happen is your body will do some adrenaline stuff, which you will be ok with, that you will not be bothered by, that you will not be impressed by. Your body can shake, spin-out, sweat, pump, vibrate all it likes and you will just think, hey ho, so what, Ive beaten you by letting you do whatever you wanted to me, and nothing ever ever happened
ACCEPT: Want your fear, invite your fear, sit with your fear, let your fear be there, let it flow through you, in you, over you under you, let it brush against your skin, let it, flow through your blood, let it tighten your mind, let it shake you, bend you, let it hurt you, batter you, break you, let it grow, give it 100% permission, want more of it, because the bigger it gets, the bigger you get, let it grow to whatever size it likes, because it can't actually do anything to you, when you emerge, you will have grown. The space of acceptance is when you outgrow your fear, fear can only grow to a certain height, at that point it has to retreat, it always has done, it always will do, it's just the way the body works, with NO exceptions, when you have grown bigger with your fears there will come a point where you realise that you have grown bigger that the absolute height of your fear. So when fear strikes from habit, let it strike, and watch yourself grow with it further with it, beyond it and above it. You can rise above your fears and once you are above them, just float.
FLOAT: Look down on your fears from a new height of confidence, let the bodily changes happen, watch them with interest or dismiss them with confidence, because with acceptance comes the freedom to look at fear or dismiss fear with equal confidence.
You are now training your fear, training yourself, you are the lion tamer, and you are the one in complete control, what is utter control but the ability and skill to address the scenario with experience and confidence. The fire fighter in control is the one who calmly directs and addresses the fire with experience and tactical awareness, he is not the one who stands there hoping the fire never started in the first place, or the one who doesnt turn up for work in case there is a fire.
LET TIME PASS: The fire will extinguish by itself, but the fire fighter will help it by drowning the flames, the anxiety fire fighter doesnt use water, he uses understanding and confidence.
Letting time pass is two-fold, firstly, you let the time pass when riding the waves of the physical sensations, until the sensations subside and the mind clears for each individual peak in sensations, secondly the time is passed, over the following few weeks as the body and mind, face every surfacing fear and face them with acceptance and kindness (this is desensitisation).
The time of desensitisation, is like being the fire fighter as you go around your daily life, you see fires everywhere, in your body and in the places you visit, but you let all them burn, because if you let them burn, you let them burn out, but you now understand the anxiety fire, it cannot ever destroy you.
If there is a "secret" to anxiety recovery, it's this, don't fear fear. It's only a collection of limited bodily symptoms, the symptoms of pointless anticipation, the symptoms of no illness.
I reckon that the reason acceptance is so hard is that with enough effort of anything we are designed to operate as reward creatures, we do something incredibly difficult, and we become enthused to continue on that path by our brains giving us a dopamine kick (a feel-good reward chemical), its the same as the addiction loop. But with acceptance, the reward does not come straight away because the feel-good is inhibited due to us still being afraid, feeling good when you are afraid is not a good for the survival game, you are more likely to become some big animals dinner if you and happy and serene when under attack (which is how you perceive anxiety), but there is no attack, there is only your resistance to some pointless sensations. Your anxiety strategy should be one of patience and trust, accept that in this state latent and dormant fears bubble to the surface in the form of thoughts. If you observe them without judgement you will know that every fear unearthed and un-resisted is another fear processed and conquered, you may have thousands per hour, you may have one, it doesnt matter, because when you enter the state of acceptance (acceptance in the knowledge that none of anxiety actually matters), this knowledge gives you the confidence to let it all flow, and if you get a thousand fears in an hour, un-resisted, thats a thousand fears conquered. They mean nothing, because all they can do to you is give you symptoms which you no longer fear, which you are no longer impressed by. You see the end of the anxiety road, the end is a new you, without fear, at peace and happy, this is your default state and the start of a new road, without the fears you have inadvertently picked up during your life, an enlightened you, not some blissed out transcendental quasi-religious state, but a happy, confident and useful you, a you free from fear.
A nice reward, the reward to trump all rewards, this new longer path is now in sympathy with the way your body and mind works. Effort reward, effort reward. Thats just the way I see it.
FACE
ACCEPT
FLOAT
LET TIME PASS
You are a warrior in training, but not in a war, life has given you a card to play, the card of panic disorder, panic disorder is the ultimate fear, having a panic attack is the ultimate fear, you have all the sensations of fear and absolutely EVERYTHING it can throw at you, but there is no focus for your fear, it seems hidden, it wants to compel you to keep searching for what you fear. But there is NO THING causing it, no thing behind it, no thing hidden, there is no thing at all nothing, it is just fear. This is an amazing opportunity, to face visceral fear itself and SEE FOR YOURSELF that it is a bluff, a con, a deception, an illusion. It is not attacking you, it's just visceral (meaning: relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect), in other words, the panic attack has no intelligence, it has no will, no malice, no agenda, no story, it is keeping you safe under YOUR OWN INSTRUCTION, you keep asking it to protect you, because you keep getting scared. So STOP BEING SCARED. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SCARED OF? IT CANT DO ANYTHING TO YOU. So let it happen COMPLETELY, let it happen UTTERLY, and then you start to see the truth, sometimes all at once, sometimes in small stages. Why let it happen this way without conditions? How else are you supposed to find out that its a dud without seeing it through to the end and beyond.
When Dr Claire Weekes says you must face, accept, float, and let time pass, to me she means this:
FACE: In your own time Face what you are afraid of, whatever it is, go there, do it, let it happen to you. Let the fear IN, let the thoughts happen, accept not the thoughts themselves (eg Im going to go mad .. ie, dont accept that you are going mad), but accept that you have these thoughts, if you didnt have the physical symptoms of discomfort, you could have this thought and not even be concerned by it, the physical symptoms are just a fertile soil for the thoughts to attach themselves to us. If you really didnt fear all the sensations then no thought would ever bother you. Its not the thought, or the place, or the person, or the day or the night or the summer or the winter that you fear, you just fear the discomfort. Without the fear of the discomfort the discomfort just becomes a mechanism, a curiosity, not an obsession. Once you understand that your only resistance is to the limited physical sensations, and once you realise that this is the bodys only way of producing fear then you realise that you can with practice decouple any thought or scenario from fear. In other words, fear is only a collection of symptoms, panic at its core is nothing but a fear of symptoms, once you no longer fear these symptoms, you no longer fear the physical sensations of fear itself, and therefore you no longer fear fear itself. So ANYTHING you can possibly think of which previously made you scared, cannot make you scared ever again, because all that will happen is your body will do some adrenaline stuff, which you will be ok with, that you will not be bothered by, that you will not be impressed by. Your body can shake, spin-out, sweat, pump, vibrate all it likes and you will just think, hey ho, so what, Ive beaten you by letting you do whatever you wanted to me, and nothing ever ever happened
ACCEPT: Want your fear, invite your fear, sit with your fear, let your fear be there, let it flow through you, in you, over you under you, let it brush against your skin, let it, flow through your blood, let it tighten your mind, let it shake you, bend you, let it hurt you, batter you, break you, let it grow, give it 100% permission, want more of it, because the bigger it gets, the bigger you get, let it grow to whatever size it likes, because it can't actually do anything to you, when you emerge, you will have grown. The space of acceptance is when you outgrow your fear, fear can only grow to a certain height, at that point it has to retreat, it always has done, it always will do, it's just the way the body works, with NO exceptions, when you have grown bigger with your fears there will come a point where you realise that you have grown bigger that the absolute height of your fear. So when fear strikes from habit, let it strike, and watch yourself grow with it further with it, beyond it and above it. You can rise above your fears and once you are above them, just float.
FLOAT: Look down on your fears from a new height of confidence, let the bodily changes happen, watch them with interest or dismiss them with confidence, because with acceptance comes the freedom to look at fear or dismiss fear with equal confidence.
You are now training your fear, training yourself, you are the lion tamer, and you are the one in complete control, what is utter control but the ability and skill to address the scenario with experience and confidence. The fire fighter in control is the one who calmly directs and addresses the fire with experience and tactical awareness, he is not the one who stands there hoping the fire never started in the first place, or the one who doesnt turn up for work in case there is a fire.
LET TIME PASS: The fire will extinguish by itself, but the fire fighter will help it by drowning the flames, the anxiety fire fighter doesnt use water, he uses understanding and confidence.
Letting time pass is two-fold, firstly, you let the time pass when riding the waves of the physical sensations, until the sensations subside and the mind clears for each individual peak in sensations, secondly the time is passed, over the following few weeks as the body and mind, face every surfacing fear and face them with acceptance and kindness (this is desensitisation).
The time of desensitisation, is like being the fire fighter as you go around your daily life, you see fires everywhere, in your body and in the places you visit, but you let all them burn, because if you let them burn, you let them burn out, but you now understand the anxiety fire, it cannot ever destroy you.
If there is a "secret" to anxiety recovery, it's this, don't fear fear. It's only a collection of limited bodily symptoms, the symptoms of pointless anticipation, the symptoms of no illness.
I reckon that the reason acceptance is so hard is that with enough effort of anything we are designed to operate as reward creatures, we do something incredibly difficult, and we become enthused to continue on that path by our brains giving us a dopamine kick (a feel-good reward chemical), its the same as the addiction loop. But with acceptance, the reward does not come straight away because the feel-good is inhibited due to us still being afraid, feeling good when you are afraid is not a good for the survival game, you are more likely to become some big animals dinner if you and happy and serene when under attack (which is how you perceive anxiety), but there is no attack, there is only your resistance to some pointless sensations. Your anxiety strategy should be one of patience and trust, accept that in this state latent and dormant fears bubble to the surface in the form of thoughts. If you observe them without judgement you will know that every fear unearthed and un-resisted is another fear processed and conquered, you may have thousands per hour, you may have one, it doesnt matter, because when you enter the state of acceptance (acceptance in the knowledge that none of anxiety actually matters), this knowledge gives you the confidence to let it all flow, and if you get a thousand fears in an hour, un-resisted, thats a thousand fears conquered. They mean nothing, because all they can do to you is give you symptoms which you no longer fear, which you are no longer impressed by. You see the end of the anxiety road, the end is a new you, without fear, at peace and happy, this is your default state and the start of a new road, without the fears you have inadvertently picked up during your life, an enlightened you, not some blissed out transcendental quasi-religious state, but a happy, confident and useful you, a you free from fear.
A nice reward, the reward to trump all rewards, this new longer path is now in sympathy with the way your body and mind works. Effort reward, effort reward. Thats just the way I see it.
she is dead now but her books are still good
Today I have to go grocery shopping and I find myself zoning out, just wanting to go back to bed, not to face it.
Lessons I learned from her books apply to me again today.