Recovering From Panic – Fear Highways and New Pathways

 Picture your anxiety… it’s like water – drip, drip, dripping – etching pathways into your brain. With every drop, the pathways carve deeper and become more fixed. 

And when the floodwaters of panic come, the paths are cut quickly, deeply, and violently. 

As with water, when the panic comes each subsequent time, it follows the easiest route, the paths it has already carved. 

Your brain can become a map of fear highways.   

Your brain is a creature of habit. 

When your brain knows anxiety and panic, every time it encounters panic, it takes the same route, responds the same way. “Oh, I know that feeling – turn left here…”

Escaping this pattern means carving new pathways, giving the panic a new direction to flow. It means training your brain to respond in a new way. And, due to a very cool thing called neuroplasticity, your brain has the ability to reshape itself. 

Changing the Messages You Tell Yourself

In order to change your response to panic, you need to take a look at the messages your tell yourself – consciously or unconsciously – when panic hits. 

Maybe you think you don’t really have any messages – you are just scared shitless when panic hits. 

Often times, we don’t recognize that we have “messages,” because they haven’t really been articulated. They’ve never been put into words, so they are… muddy, vague. 

Here’s an example of some of the messages I used to tell myself during panic:

Physical Symptom: 
Heart beats really fast and hard

My Interpretation: 
I’m having a heart attack and my heart is probably going to explode any second now.

Physical Symptom: 
Things don’t seem real

My interpretation: 
I am descending into madness and I will end up in an institution for the insane, beating my head against stark white walls.

Physical Symptom: 
I can’t breath

My Interpretation: 
I’m going to faint, or die, or both probably. 

Physical Symptom: 
Feeling of impending doom

My Interpretation: 
I’m going to get sucked into the heart of darkness, which seems worse than death, actually, and I won’t be able to find my way back out. 

I wasn’t really aware that these messages existed. They were just embedded in how I responded whenever panic struck. 

Over time, I developed new messages: 

Physical Symptom:  
Heart beats really fast and hard 

My Interpretation:  
Because there is adrenaline flowing through my system. This is a natural process designed to keep me safe in an emergency, it is not dangerous and my heart can take it. 

Physical Symptom:  
Things don’t seem real 

My Interpretation:  
Because there is less oxygen getting to my brain. It is temporary and it is not dangerous. 

Physical Symptom: 
I can’t breath

My Interpretation:  
Because adrenaline has caused the muscles in my chest to constrict, making it harder to take a full breath. This will fade as the adrenaline leaves my system and is not dangerous. 

Physical Symptom:  
Feeling of impending doom

My Interpretation:  
Because adrenaline triggers a powerful fear response that is designed to pull my attention away from whatever I am doing (even if it is riveting) and scan my environment for danger. This feeling is scary, but it cannot hurt me. It will fade when the adrenaline leaves my system.

These new messages were my foundation for managing the physical sensations of panic. For more information on stopping a panic attack, read my article, Yes, You Can Stop a Panic Attack.