Anxiety and Panic
You Were Certain It Was Your Heart
It’s over now, and you’re sitting somewhere quiet going back through it.
An hour ago you were sure something in your body was failing.
Now you’ve been handed the word anxiety and told that’s all it was.
The terror was real, though, and it made a far better case for itself than that word does.
You Were Told You’re Fine and You Still Don’t Believe It
I sat with a lot of people in the hours after somebody had told them their heart was fine.
That was the job at WakeMed hospital, ten years of initial psychiatric evaluations in the emergency room.
They came in by ambulance certain they were dying, and by the time I got to them the tests were back and the news was good.
Most were still shaking anyway, because hearing you’re fine does not undo what your body just put you through.
Get It on Paper Before Your Memory Tidies It Up
An episode is fast and violent, and it leaves almost nothing behind that holds still.
By the time you’re describing it to me, a week has gone by and your memory has smoothed the worst of it into a few reasonable words.
So put it down close to the event: the thought that arrived, the hour, where you were, what had just happened around you.
Do that a few times and the pattern shows up on paper, in your own words, before either of us has to go guessing at it.
We’ll Work Out What You Want Back
The list of things you’ve quietly dropped since the first episode keeps getting longer, and you never sat down and decided on a single one of them.
So I’ll ask you straight what you want back off that list, and what you think is standing in the way.
Then we spend the time on your reasons for wanting it rather than mine, because yours are the ones you’ll still believe on a bad day.
You’ll Recognize the Next One While It’s Happening
Panic doesn’t wait for your permission, and another one will probably show up.
What changes is the hour afterward.
You’ll know what it was while you’re still sitting there, because you’ll have pages in your own handwriting that say so.
It’ll still get your attention without getting the last word.
Bring Me the One That Scared You Worst
Pick the episode you’d least like to describe out loud.
That’s the one I want to hear about first, start to finish, and then I’ll tell you plainly what I make of it and where I’d start.
The consultation is free, it runs twenty minutes, and it works from anywhere in Tennessee or North Carolina.
Don’t Be Jason
Jason looked at the offer once and decided it wasn’t worth finding out.
A complimentary consultation is where the two of us work out whether I’m the one who can help you.