PANIC SPASMS

As already mentioned, fear can produce a state of constant tension, or it can take the form of intense recurring spasms of panic that start in our ‘middle’, just below the breastbone, and seem to spread, like a white-hot flame, all over the body, passing through the chest, up the spine, into the face, down the arms and even down into the groins to the tips of the toes.

If you suffer from these spasms you will probably find that whereas you had some control over them at the beginning of your breakdown, you now seem to have lost control and live in constant dread of them. Your nervous system has become so sensitized to them that it discharges them instantly and swiftly at the slightest provocation. In this sensitized state you remain tense with an apprehension which helps only to increase the frequency and intensity of the spasms. Can you see the vicious circle in which you have placed yourself?

The treatment already offered to cure the symptoms of sustained fear will also cure these spasms of acute fear. You face, analyse and try to understand them, learning how to live with them temporarily, letting time pass to bring recovery.

In the past, as soon as you have felt a wave of panic approaching, you have either tried to control it and stop it coming or have shrunk from it and tried to forget it as quickly as possible. In this way you have lived in constant dread, preparing a battleground for each approaching spasm. Now, just as you examined and described your churning stomach and sweating hands, on the next occasion when you panic I want you to examine this feeling without shrinking from it, describing it to yourself as it sweeps through you.

You will find that fear strikes hardest when it first strikes, and that if you relax and stand your ground and see it through, it quietens and disappears. When you have learnt the trick of relaxing and seeing the wave of fear through to its finish without adding further panic and tension to fear or without trying to arrest it by controlling it, you will begin to lose your fear of fear. You will probably be surprised to realize that a hot feeling in your stomach, a burning feeling up your spine, pins and needles in your hands and a throbbing feeling in your temples could have held such terror for you. You have been terrified of no more than a physical feeling. By analysing fear in this way and seeing it as physical feeling that conforms to a set pattern and disappears with acceptance and relaxation, YOU UNMASK FEAR AND WITH IT YOUR OWN BREAKDOWN, AND YOU FIND THAT ONLY A BOGEY REMAINS.

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