As you know I am reading Mind Over Medicine.
Read part one of this story in my post Happiness is the Key to Getting Well.
In this post I discuss the biology of panic attacks.
Lissa Rankin's research reveals more than just the fight or flight response happening in our bodies. She reveals the why and then the how to make it stop by training ourselves to be happy and like biofeedback therapy, to think differently so the attacks don't even come or come less.
The feelings that overwhelm us are real. They are not imagined or always triggered by an event. Some are and more work will be needed to help those subside. However, we are going to focus on the panic attack itself and then the why and then the how to receive deliverance.
What happens during a panic/anxiety attack is physiological and is explained by science as happening in true time. The body is affected and it is causing damage to our organs and our health.
Yes it somes from the mind but more specifically from the brain and is caused by chemical reacting when they shouldn't but they are really reacting. The brain is sending out hormones and other chemicals in the body reeking havoc on a relatively healthy person.
Our immune system automatically sends out little soldiers to fight any foreign body or disease that enters our bodies. It recognizes any thing that isn't supposed to be there as an intruder and attacks and ultimately heals us.
Our body is hardwired to heal itself. But it needs the time to do that and it needs for the body to be relaxed to ensure the ultimate healing. That is why when the body is greatly damaged in a car accident or any other kind of terrible accident we are laid up in the hospital and made to stay still. Doctors know the body heals itself after they put the bones back together or sew up the cut. It is the body that works to put us back together again. The doctors just gave it the chance to do that.
Emotionally the doctors can't just sew us up or cut the thing out that is causing our attacks. But some doctors are understanding there are things that they can say and do that can set us up so that our body can heal itself. We especially need to heal the damage that months or years of panic and anxiety have wrought on our physical body. Our bones, our organs, our brain, our heart, our lungs.
If our body is in a state of fight or flight for too long the body can't keep up with it's normal healing process and we see more problems with sickness and disease. We are known for being in the doctors office more with sinus infections, sore backs and muscles, osteoporosis, aches and pains that come out of nowhere. Our immune systems are compromised and we must face that and do what we must to boost it. You can look at it one way. Doing this, what it takes to make us happy, will be time consuming and take focus...the things that usually work to distract us from our own heads and thoughts.
Most of us have seen this before or heard it mentioned by people with anxiety. But to give it some medical credence Lissa writes that a "Harvard professor Dr Walter Cannon states that the body is equipped with what Cannon named the stress response, also known as the fight or flight response, a survival mechanism that gets flipped on when your brain perceives a threat. When this hormonal cascade is triggered by a thought or emotion in the mind, such as fear, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis activates, thereby stimulating the sympathetic nervous system to race into overdrive, pumpingup the body's cortisol and adrenaline levels. Over time, filling the body with these stress hormones can manifest as physical symptoms, predisposing the body to disease over time."*
The good news is, ""just as the stress response exists as a survival mechanism designed to help us stay alive in emergency situations, the body also has a counterbalancing relaxation response. When the relaxation response is elicited, stress hormones drop, health inducing relaxation hormones that counter the stress hormones are released, the parasympathetic nervous system takes over, and the body returns to homeostastis. Only in this rested, relaxed state can the body repair itself.*
This is partially why health professionals tell us to breathe deeply do meditation, do something that makes us happy. It is to get our bodies back to relaxed state so it can stop the hormones from raging and causing destruction. For some of us there have been lengths of time when our body did not get a rest from attack for too long. We are exhausted and finally succumb to rest because our bodies get so worn out from fighting and tensing. But then it just happens over and over.
We become depressed and a viscous cycle takes over our lives.
We are in perpetual stress mode have small quantities of relaxation. This is so bad for us. Getting older has revealed this to me. I have more sickness when I've never been sick. I am always fighting some kind of infection or body ache or pain. I knew this was not normal just yet so I continued searching and now I know why I am sick more often and finally what I can do about it.
Lissa goes on to tell us how to help ourselves to become happier more relaxed people thus enabling our bodies to heal. As we do this so our bodies can heal we find we are having less and less anxiety and panic, simply as a byproduct of focusing on changing our outlook on life, making changes in our lives that will make us happier. It is not enough to do yoga or exercise, or eat right, or sustain from unhealthy habits. We have to dig deep to find out what is not right in our lives. Are we in a job we hate, a relationship that is toxic to us, a situation where someone is belittling us, not supporting us. Are we just going through the motions of surviving knowing we are unhappy, unloved. Or are we angry, holding onto grudges and unforgiveness. We all have heard some of this as well. But we have to take a step of faith and make that change and more often than not we find we are feeling better and with time we stop having attacks.
I moved to Colorado and was in a terribly abusive relationship but not working, being a stay at home mom, doing what I liked most, taking care of kids, helping someone who really needed to be protected. I didn't have to worry about who was paying the bills. I was strong enough to manage the abusive man (verbally) but the fear of not knowing where my next paycheck was coming from was not there anymore.
My panic went away for a year and a half. I was shocked but understood. But then my marriage got to a point where I had to leave, move back to my home, find work, start over, the kids were grown and on their own, I didn't feel a purpose, I wasn't being creative, I was in a job I didn't like but needed. My panic reared its ugly head and came full force as never before. It was horrifying to me that it came back. We all feel we have no choice but we do and we have to figure out how to make it and be happy.
This is the work I was talking about. This is not going to be easy. It's a change and change scares us. But it is necessary if we want to be free. Join me on this journey. The first step is figuring out what change we have to make to begin to find happiness. The second part is implementing it. I'll let you know what I did and how I did it. I want to have you hear a success story.
But in the meantime you can read Lissa's book and see some of those success stories to encourage you to believe, have faith and know there is hope!
See you soon.
Anice
*Direct quotes from Mind Over Medicine by Lissa Rankinn
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