Dear joanna:

Don’t pressure yourself to meditate… don’t pressure yourself at all. Keep a daily routine, adjust it as you go along, do what works and not what doesn’t work. Be gentle with yourself- this is key. And patient with the process of managing and healing from anxiety.

Of course you “can’t think logically and calm down” when you experience panic. Fear in animals (and we are animals physiologically, anatomically) is about escaping from present and real danger immediately, without thinking about it, or in humans- before thinking about it. It is RUN-NOW!

Two nights ago or so you perceived your work situation as danger and your body responded with preparing to run. Problem in the condition of anxiety is that the perceived danger is often not real. It is not true that you “can’t leave” the job and that you are “in a trap”. There may be consequences to leaving, but you can leave. You will not be closed behind bars, physically unable to leave.

Talk to yourself, tell yourself these things, that you can leave, that you are not in a trap, insert those thoughts into your panic. I remember one evening when I panicked and was just about to lose hope (and take Klonipin after getting off it). As I panicked, feeling engulfed by it, taken by it, I remembered a therapist’s suggestion: go to a calm place in my brain and observe my panic from there. So I did just that. And the panic died down. I still experienced anxiety but not that intensity and I stayed off Klonipin ever since. That was three years ago.

Can you find that calm place, I wonder?

anita