Face fears or lock them in a box and bury them? Timing is everything.

[Ankhsious]

My panic attacks first began several years ago when I was in a job where there was a lot of turmoil and turnover going on. I felt like I was ill-equipped to make the right decisions, speak to the right people, to try to influence what was a free-for-all type of re-org. So I froze and I paniced, and I judged myself very harshly (A student syndrome).

I DID heal from those panic attacks and returned to work 3 months later to full responsibility with a lot of CBT and medication. But at that point I was sort of 'beyond caring' about outcome, 80% in a good way, 20% in a medically induced indifference sort of way.

About a year after that I was in a much better job and supportive environment and didn't look back.

Well recently, I was let go from this better job and now that I am looking to re-enter the work force, I am getting recurring panic attacks about my experience in the first job. I'm wondering if your first panic attack can manifest as a sort of PTSD.

So should I try to lock those fears back in a box and bury them again or do I have to face them?

Bah!

[Im-Suffering]

My panic attacks first began several years ago when I was in a job where there was a lot of turmoil and turnover going on. I felt like I was ill-equipped to make the right decisions, speak to the right people, to try to influence what was a free-for-all type of re-org. So I froze and I paniced, and I judged myself very harshly (A student syndrome).

I DID heal from those panic attacks and returned to work 3 months later to full responsibility with a lot of CBT and medication. But at that point I was sort of 'beyond caring' about outcome, 80% in a good way, 20% in a medically induced indifference sort of way.

About a year after that I was in a much better job and supportive environment and didn't look back.

Well recently, I was let go from this better job and now that I am looking to re-enter the work force, I am getting recurring panic attacks about my experience in the first job. I'm wondering if your first panic attack can manifest as a sort of PTSD.

So should I try to lock those fears back in a box and bury them again or do I have to face them?

Bah!

In a very real sense you are facing them, by the experience of having them. So the question becomes, not do I have to face them, but since I am already faced with them, let me go deeper. Fears have depth. And because of that, you only ever touched upon the surface. They therefor reoccur, and based upon future triggers, it will seem your life is plagued by them, periods of rest followed by periods of anxiousness. You must get at the core.

To a degree, you have always been anxious, mentally, whereas the stress trigger brought on the physical manifestation of what was already there.

CBT, meditation, or a rain dance, they are meant to stimulate the recollection of trauma, not to cover it up which is thought to be the purpose. For example meditation was not meant as a blanket, but as a way to open the spiritual centers, the imagination, to find your way around the maze of beliefs to the emotional core.

Use this time to find out who you are, by allowing the fear to bring you back to who you were, and the experiences you had. The emotions you felt that day at work were attached to a previous experience, and a belief from the self suggestions during that experience, or perhaps prolonged experiences - most often occuring during childhood.

In those terms the PTSD incipient event was long ago. Use the current fears to unearth the core beliefs, as you dig through them asking questions deeper and deeper you go until you strike a nerve, meeting yourself perhaps for the first time at the very end of the cave.

The stress from the job was a physical expression of the inner turmoil en mass co-created by the individuals involved. I am saying the event was psychic first, if you didn't hold certain beliefs you wouldn't have been part of the experience.

And those are the beliefs you must find to heal your soul. Your soul is not intellectual, it is feeling. Thus the CBT while teaching you to correct yourself will not touch your feeling centers, the emotions you used to cry yourself to sleep, or the anger you felt when you shut down. CBT is temporal, where healing your feelings is permanent. Then you will never find yourself trapped in uncomfortable, undesirable events.

When you find the core belief, you must not leave it. You must listen to the story it tells, and most likely from a mature perspective you will see it as false. "It was not my fault", "I am lovable", "I did nothing wrong" and so forth, by this conscious understanding you can replace the belief, removing its emotional offshoots, which included the panic that day at work, you see.

With a different belief, even among the turmoil that day, you would have felt good, and that's the difference a belief could make. Bad feelings are an opportunity then, to discover why, period.

This is as complete as I will go today, I hope it clicks.