I walked into a waiting room full of people, holding Noah’s hand. “Ok, buddy, we’re going to be waiting a while, would you like to watch videos?” (This is a no-judgement zone, we’re all just doing the best we can here.)
One by one people are being called back and I’m watching the clock. It’s Noah’s first day back to Mother’s Day Out (aka “school”) and he’s going to be late. He’s content, but I feel like my skin is crawling.
“Mommy, I’m ready to go to school now.” He’s squirmy. I’m squirmy. I’m fighting back tears as he’s starting to get whiny. I have no control over the situation and have no idea how much longer it will take.
Do you feel that? That tightness in your chest? Your stomach tightened up, didn’t it? Maybe your shoulders tensed up? If you’re reading this and putting yourself in my shoes, just that act alone is probably bringing up some anxiety for you.
We all get anxious sometimes. Anxiety is not pathological, it’s a gift. It’s a survival instinct. It’s hard-wired into us. If we never got anxious, why would we study for tests? Anxiety motivates us. If we never got anxious, we’d struggle to spring into action in any scenario. Anxiety is what prompts us to run when we’re being chased by a bear.
But sometimes it gets out of its appropriate context. Maybe it’s how we’re wired, or maybe something happens, something extreme and suddenly the world doesn’t feel safe anymore. It feels like everything makes us anxious. And then we have a panic attack. And that feels terrible because we feel like we’ve lost control. And we don’t want that to happen again. So we start getting anxious that we might get anxious again and that makes us anxious. You see how that can quickly get out of hand.
Anxiety never comes out of nowhere. Or always comes from somewhere, to be grammatically correct. No matter how much it may feel that it comes out of nowhere, that’s just not the case. Anxiety is triggered by something and it is a build that happens over time. Sometimes the build happens very quickly. But it is still a build. Let me lay it out on a 1-10 scale for you.
Anxiety at a one or two feels a little like nerves or apprehension. You might feel a wee bit fidgety. You might feel a slight compulsion toward something to address the anxiety (ie study for the test, clean the mess, etc.).
At a three or four, you might notice tension or tightness in your body. You might find that your brain gets stuck on something or it won’t seem to stick on anything for long. Your thoughts may ping around like a pinball. You get more fidgety and it gets harder to sit still. You feel an urge to fix, to clean, to do something.
Often, we don’t even notice anxiety until it gets to a five or six. It feels like our skin is crawling and we struggle to sit still. Our heart rate is increased and often our breathing changes. We may even be holding our breath a little bit and not realize it. Either the pinball machine is pinging faster or we are ruminating (turning the same thought over and over in our head.)
Once anxiety has built to this point, things tend to speed up. Many people would say that they don’t have a description for seven to eight because they blow by it. Unless you do something significant to interrupt the build, you’re moving quickly toward a panic attack.
A nine or 10 is panic attack territory. This is a very physical experience. Often people get flushed, start sweating or have chills. Sometimes people get numb or get dizzy. Breath gets fast and shallow. Sometimes people start to cry and feel like they can’t stop, or they rage and scream. Sometimes people have to use the bathroom or throw up.
If you think about the anxiety build as pressure building up, a panic attack is the release valve. It’s scary when it happens; some people even end up in the hospital thinking they’re having a heart attack. But we tend to feel relief when it’s over. It’s a reset button. While it doesn’t typically take us back to one because it’s so scary, it does get us back down to the 3-6 range.
The reason all of this is important to understand is this: the earlier you can catch anxiety and work to interrupt the build, the more manageable it is. When anxiety is in it’s early stages, some deep breathing, mindfulness, grounding work can be a good way to bring it back down (more on all of these in a future post). The more it builds, the more physical you need to be in order to give yourself a release to keep your body from finding it’s own release (ie panic attack). As anxiety builds up to a five or six, moving your body is key. Go for a walk or a run, punch some pillows, angry dance, scream at the top of your lungs in your car. Find some way to get out some of that anxious energy. It can help your body settle back down again and keep from continuing the build toward a panic attack.
The important thing to understand about a panic attack is that, while they feel very scary because you feel out of control, no one dies from a panic attack. You might feel that you are going to die, but that is the anxiety talking. The more you try to fight it off, the worst it will be for you. You want to work on trying to ride the wave. Remember playing in the ocean? If you try to stand agains the wave, it takes you out. If you pick up your feet and go with it, it carries you along to a landing spot. So does a panic attack. It can be helpful to leave the room if that’s an option. Or to lie down on the floor. Ride it out and be kind to yourself in it. Your body is trying to tell you it’s feeling overwhelmed and needs a minute.
My hope in sharing this is that maybe next time you can catch anxiety a little earlier, give your body what it needs to calm back down. And if you don’t, if you miss those early signs, you can ride the wave to firm ground again. You’ll understand what’s happening in your body. The scariest part of an anxiety attack is feeling out of control. Even just understanding can help restore more of a sense of control and agency over your body.
