Is your ‘panic’ healthy or unhealthy?

Did you know, this week June 18th was International Panic Day?  Yes, it’s one of those many ‘made up’ days (!), but it is also a useful moment to consider how stressed you might be feeling.

This year more than ever, we’ve had to confront ‘panic’ in a way we’ve never had to previously. The panic of being isolated, possibly losing our job, our income, our business, being parted from loved ones, becoming ill, losing someone dear. So many  things can induce panic even in “normal” times, and then we have to endure a National Pandemic, which then might be enough to topple us over the edge and turn our ever increasing stress levels to explode into a panic attack.

Or on the other hand, you may have found this a time to remove ‘panic’ from your lives a little, strip things back to basics, enjoy being less ‘busy’, embrace nature, nurture your home, hug your loved ones (from the same household of course!) a little bit tighter?

Or maybe it’s both…. like me…I went into a tail spin for the first 3 weeks, panicking about money like most other people, but have since adjusted and am actually enjoying the slower pace, and am finding new ways to make ends meet!

What is panic?

Fear and anxiety are part of our defence system, and until recently believed to be controlled by the oldest part of our brain, the Amygdala. More recent research suggests that many different areas of the brain work together to provide our experience of fear.

When we lived in caves and were surrounded by many predators, if we were faced with danger, we had to quickly decide whether to freeze or run; what we refer to as ‘fight or flight’ response. A certain amount of anxiety is a natural response, and a good thing. It can remove us from danger.

However, some people are able to rationalise their anxiety whereas others find it overwhelming, and then are unable to live without it interfering with their daily life. Their ‘fight flight’ response is in overload and tiny things can set off a level of anxiety over something which others may find ‘trivial’.

The most severe feeling of anxiety is panic.

How do we cope when we get stressed?

Many of us say we don’t get stressed, when in fact all we are doing is sweeping our true feelings under the carpet. Often, our way of coping, is to work more and busy ourselves to forget whatever the problem is.

In my 20s I spent so much of my emotional energy building my businesses as a distraction from facing up to some of the traumatic things that had happened to me in the past.

I was working faster and faster, taking on more and more, all in an attempt to not stand still and look at myself. I focused on growing the business, launching new projects, and fixing other people. Everything I did was a new commitment, and I was laying it on thick and fast until I broke myself.

At that point, I realised I was in a prison in my own making, and I felt trapped; panic stricken, and backed into a corner.

I had become addicted to walking the tightrope of stress, stretch and success, but I had overdone it, and I tipped over into panic, and it broke me.

Aged 31, I had a full-blown medical breakdown.

What did I learn?

The lessons I learnt as a result of my recovery and redesigning my life, fundamentally changed how I saw the world.

I recognised that:

• We are usually our own worst enemies in the way we hold ourselves back. We look at other people and see ourselves through a lens of lack – we see what we are not / what we can’t do / what we don’t have etc. Our “comparison-itus” causes us emotional stress and pain with no logic or solution.
• We are often scared of showing our full selves to the world for fear of judgment and rejection, and that requires emotional energy we can’t always afford to waste.
• We accept some things in life because we think they are too big / too established / too hard to do anything about, such as careers or bosses that reduce us to tears, or relationships that may have evolved away from making us happy. I felt trapped until I realised it was a prison of my own making, which is when I gave myself permission to start tearing down some walls. Because they were MY walls to tear down.
• We all feel we are alone in our apprehensions, insecurities and inhibitions, and that lonely thought often drives us to feel like we have to “put on a front” to present only a carefully managed part of ourselves to the world. But what we don’t always see is that we are not the only ones wearing masks. When we take off our masks, other people often feel like they have permission to take theirs off, with a huge sigh of relief, because masks are heavy when you carry them for so long.

In hindsight, I can see that my breakdown was actually the best thing to happen to me. My panic was the painful wakeup call I needed to make the difficult changes in my life that were critical for me to really be me. Me with no mask that is, because I was no longer trying to contain, minimise, and dodge the things that started as small stressors, but worked themselves into great big whopping panic inducing stressors.

We need to talk about stuff…

I went through this painful journey for myself a few years ago as part of my recovery from my breakdown and my consequential “redesign my life” mission, which included pouring the ups and downs of my journey, warts and all, into my memoirs style book.

But until relatively recently, it never occurred to me that there was actually a silver bullet solution to my earlier struggles that I had COMPLETELY missed. One thing that could have changed my panic-stricken self-destruct journey. And like many of life’s’ lessons, this one was learnt in a bar!

Just before we went into lockdown, I was out with friends and their friends for drinks. These new people seemed lovely, and we had lots of typical bar room conversations.

Safe, surface-based conversations, all slightly too polite to be 100% real.

Then one of my friends mentioned that I had recently written a book about the ups and downs of my life journey and what I learnt from those experiences.

In that instant, the tone of the conversation changed. People began sharing honest experiences; opening up about things that made them feel vulnerable, and discussing how some of their situations were so far from okay they didn’t know where to start to make any changes.

It was as though a space had opened up that gave people permission to be their true, full selves.

That’s when I realised that I needed to find a way to get over my own inhibitions in order to create a space to help other people overcome theirs.

What I did next...

That conversation in the pub gave me the jolt I needed to launch the “Sharp Shares” vlog, to provide a space to talk about ALL of the things that make us human; work, life, education, charity… the whole shebang! We are all complex human beings with so many different influences and challenges in our lives, so I wanted to make sure that nothing is off the table.

The only prerequisite is that the discussions are real.  FULLY real, and strikingly honest, warts and all; just like life!

I want the vlog to act as a lighthouse, leading people to understand they are not alone in their experiences, and that there is a space for the full truth, even if it is slightly uncomfortable!

I want to show other people that, like me, they too can leverage their pain, passion and priorities to go on to lead bigger, better and bolder lives.

To see the vlog (or even offer yourself as a guest) visit bit.ly/sharpsharesfacebook and if you’d like to see my book, it’s available on Amazon: bit.ly/BreakthroughPaperback