What The Panic Cycle Taught Me About My Anxiety

04:58

04:58

What The Panic Cycle Taught Me About My Anxiety

by Hannah Westphal

Rated

4.8

Type

talks

Activity

Meditation

Suitable for

Everyone

Plays

183

In this little talk, I want to share with you how understanding the panic cycle transformed my experience with panic attacks, anxiety, and emetophobia. Whether you're in the middle of fear or feel stuck in patterns of avoidance, this is a real, raw, empowering, and science-based perspective on what’s happening in your body — knowing your body and why it does certain things is crucial to stop panic attacks and fear from rising. If you’ve ever felt trapped by fear or anxiety, this is for you. You’re not broken — your body is trying to protect you.

Anxiety Panic Attacks Emetophobia Nervous System Body Awareness Fear Management Self Knowledge Panic Cycle Education Nervous System Understanding Body Signal Identification Hyper Awareness Management Panic Attack Prevention Internal Trigger Recognition Histamine Impact

Meet your Teacher

Hannah Westphal

Koblenz, Deutschland

Meet your Teacher

Hannah Westphal

Koblenz, Deutschland

Transcript

Learning about the panic cycle literally changed everything for me when I was struggling a lot with emetophobia. Understanding how something as small as a slightly faster heart rate when I walked up the stairs or a warm flash could trick my brain into thinking something's really really wrong here and how that then could snowball into a full-blown panic attack. It often very often did but understanding how the whole cycle worked of panic attacks gave me back a sense of choice and of being able to do something about it and I was able to do something about it and eventually were able to to influence my panic attacks and now I'm able to, When I notice that my body is in high awareness and high alert, To calm it down and don't let the panic attack happen. For many years my emetophobia had me on a constant alert and I'm sure if you've been struggling with the same thing you know what I'm talking about and every little sensation in my stomach or a tight chest even feeling full or feeling too empty when I haven't eaten anything, Dizziness and all of these things they just felt like the beginning of something really really terrible. I would instantly scan my body and I would be looking for signs that my worst fear would be coming true or that I would lose control over the situation and it's that hyper-awareness that would send me actually even deeper into the panic because I'm just constantly focused on every little sign of my body and it was just a loop you know it was sensation, Fear, More sensation because of hyper-awareness and then more fear but I got the chance to study the nervous system and I actually understood how panic is a loop that feeds on itself and there's not this one trigger that starts to the loop but at any point any point of the loop can be the trigger that starts the loop. So let's say you have a weird feeling in your stomach and you notice oh something is a little bit off and your heart rate will go up, Adrenaline will flash through your body and your body goes into survivor mode and it will then cause again a heightened sensation in your stomach because that was the original thing that you thought about that started the whole process. However once you've gone through that cycle of panic over and over and over again your body and your brain connects any of those steps in that cycle to potential panic. So it could be that you exercise and then your heart rate goes up and your body thinks oh I know this this is panic it's connected to all of the other steps and it goes into that step and you actually have no idea why you just had a panic attack or why you feel close to anxiety or a panic attack because maybe there was not a trigger for you present but for your body there was an internal trigger that started the whole loop. So understanding that for me was a massive game-changer because I was able to identify in what situations is it normal to maybe have a feeling of dizziness or feeling a hot or feeling your stomach or feeling your heart rate rise. Sometimes even little things like drinking or eating foods that are high in histamine for example that can just increase a little bit the heart rate which then in turn can cause anxiety. So just really identifying those parts of the body where the body was doing what it was doing helped me so much and since then I'm able to interrupt the cycle and I'm able to see the signals and I'm noticing that my body is just doing what my body is doing it's trying to protect me. Now I know your body might be different and you might need other techniques but the main key is what I want to focus on is that also your body is trying to protect you.