The insatiable ferocity of anxiety in a panic attack

There are realities in life, that no matter how much we never quite contemplated that we would experience them, there comes a time that we do, and those experiences absolutely overwhelm our sensitivities.  They floor us.

It’s like we go from 0 to 100 in two seconds, when we always expected that we would be able to control the pace of the ride.  Panic attacks are just like that.  You’re overwhelmed even as the seconds pass like calamitous super-slow-motion minutes, and where others might say, “Just control what you’re thinking or feeling — it can’t be that bad or hard!”, it’s not until you’re in the midst of one yourself that you actually realise how little control anyone has.  The first panic attack completely reshapes your ideas of agency and self-control.  The first experience tips you into a place where all presumption of safety falls away to nothing.  It is frightening.

One of the great benefits having experienced panic attacks, afterwards, is the compassion of empathy that comes from knowing there’s certain uncontrollable events that do overtake the human experience.  Suddenly we’re not so brash in our thinking to think that as human beings we can control everything, for we can’t, and this is probably the best handbrake God can give us, in having experienced something that overwhelms our ability to control life.

Yes, this is a benefit, even if it costs us all our self-confidence, for we must now construct a confidence in God.  From trusting our own pathetic resources, having come to a place where they failed, we begin to trust the eternal resources of God’s faithfulness.  And it was the calamity of the insatiable ferocity of anxiety in a panic attack that took us to the precipice of this spiritual insight.  But, of course, this is a process, and it takes some time to master, to let go and let God.

What this does is makes the sheer dread worthwhile as far as a future hope is concerned.  But in the meantime, it’s sheer hell.  It does not matter whether you have faith in God or not.  Let me say that again.  It does not matter whether you have faith in God or not.  Indeed, when God shows us the presence of fear for loss or lack of control, suddenly the Lord has piqued our attention — it isn’t always about the attack of the enemy.  Sometimes it’s simply about the invitation to know ourselves more.

Panic attacks are not so much to be mastered as they are to be instructive, in and of themselves, for how to manage them.  We endure them, and the truth is we do.  We can learn about what triggered them, as we investigate the causes after they’ve subsided, and we’ve recovered.  We can also allow ourselves the freedom of a refuge of safety when we’re caught in the rip of one.  Just get to safety, I say.  Don’t be tipped over the edge into freefall.  Get away from the social setting or the pressure that sets it off and don’t be pressured otherwise.  Take whatever little control you have.

Photo by Zoe Deal on Unsplash