Hi Heidi,

I’m so glad that I could make you feel a little supported, for me one of the worst aspects of panic is that it can make you feel so alone and isolated, it is only when I began to tell people what was going on for me that I realized how common it is!

Cranio Sacral therapy was new to me also, but even though I live in a small town in Ireland there was a practiconer nearby, so I’m sure they must be widespread. The process allows the therapist to sense any areas of tension, tightness, blocked energy or held trauma in the body, it seems like the spinal fluid and bones of the cerebrospinal system (skull, vertebrae, etc) can hold almost a memory of physical traumas which can lead to pain and tightness in those regions but also have a knock-on effect on other parts of the body. For me my first panic attack was after a particularly vigourous wisdom teeth removal which I think may have been the last straw in a stressful year! Its a fascinating therapy, do take a look online if you like but I would equally recommend reflexology or therapeutic massage at this stage in your recovery, I think these therapies that involve mindful physical touch by an experienced practitioner can help to ground you and discharge some of that nervous energy from your system.

For me the nausea became less of a trigger over the space of a month or so and I definitely eat normally now. I still have panic and anxiety but the nausea that was once the bane of my life and triggered so much panic has largely dissapeared. I began to see that even if I threw up that I wasn’t going to die as a result, I sat through a lot of periods of feeling sick and thinking ‘this is completely overwhelming me’ but yet I had to remind myself that I was still there and that the feeling inevitably subsides as the body does not want to feel discomfort and will relieve it in its own time. I began to jot down little notes each time I ‘survived’ an overwhelming episode of nausea/panic so that I could look back next time and remind myself that I did indeed come through it!

I am still relatively new to this whole panic attack thing myself, only having had my first one last year, it has hit me hard and made life very challenging. But I am trying my best to learn about it both in a physiological sense as well as trying to work out what this suffering is trying to tell me.

I truly hope you feel better soon, it is such an awful distressing experience but I promise it will pass!
🙂
Eva