Myth and Meaning - Dealing with Panic Attacks

Written by Tammie Byram Fowles, PhD, LISW-CP

REGINA REVISITS

"There is in us something wiser then our head." - Schopenhauer

Regina had been referred to me by a former client several years ago for assistance in dealing with panic attacks. Her attacks involved shortness of breath, heart palpitations, dizziness, hot flashes, and tremendous fear that she was going to die. Regina had been a victim of violence as a child, and her abuse as well as her symptoms were addressed in treatment. Our work together had been successful, and I had not seen nor heard from her for at least three years.

When Regina re-contacted me, she informed me that she was beginning to experience anxiety again. While she was able to control her symptoms from developing into a full-blown anxiety attack, she was concerned by the frequency of their reoccurrence.

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During our first visit, Regina informed me that she had recently married a wonderful man. They had moved into a spacious new home, and he had an adorable and loving eight- year-old son who visited every other weekend. As Regina continued to update me, it became apparent that her symptoms appeared most often on Friday nights just before her new stepson arrived and got worse as the weekend wore on. She explained that she enjoyed his visits very much and could not imagine why she was experiencing anxiety. She added that she loved her job and seldom dreaded returning on Monday mornings. Further discussion did not appear to render particularly helpful clues.

I decided to do some bodywork with Regina. I asked her to check in with her body and tell me what she was experiencing. With guidance, she was able to identify that her throat felt tight as well as her chest. I played soothing music, asked her to lie down, worked with her to progressively relax her muscles and then, with her permission, placed one hand gently over her chest and one on her throat. For several minutes I held my hands in place and instructed her to patiently wait for a message from her throat and chest. Tears eventually began sliding down her cheeks. She began to grimace and soon was sobbing. When she was able to speak, she informed me that she felt guilty. Her own son was now grown and off to college. She had given birth to him when she was just 16 and had struggled a great deal when he was growing up. She had never felt that she really bonded with him. Their relationship was polite but strained, and their contact was limited to brief telephone conversations and occasional visits. She had grown to love her stepson and felt guilty and sad that she was able to do with and for him what she had not been able to do for her own child. We explored the many complications in her life that she'd struggled with while her son was growing up, and acknowledged the tremendous ways in which she had grown over the years. I pointed out that while it was too late to enjoy her son's childhood, it was not too late to attempt to build a closer relationship with him, nor was it wrong to love and enjoy the new little boy in her life. In fact, I observed that in loving her stepson, she might learn how to express her love to her grown son more effectively. We then reviewed the skills she had learned during our previous work together, not only in symptom management, but also symptom prevention. She agreed to utilize these tools more often than she had during the past year. We scheduled our next appointment for one month later with the understanding that she could contact me for an earlier appointment if the need arose.

Regina informed me during our next visit that she had really thought about what I said and remembered a book that she had read to her stepson some time ago. The book was written to a son from a mother and contained the message that no matter how much he drove her crazy or how old he got, she would always love him. She went out and purchased a copy for her grown son and included a heartfelt letter of love and apology to him. Shortly after she mailed them, she received a phone call from her only biological child. The two had a long and loving talk, and he agreed to meet her halfway the following Saturday between the college and her new home in order to spend the day together. After their meeting, Regina felt that she and her son had made significant progress in healing old wounds, and she felt connected to him once again. She also no longer felt guilty about her relationship with her stepson. Regina hadn't experienced her old anxiety symptoms in three weeks, and felt confident that she could deal with them again if or when they recurred. We didn't reschedule, as Regina understood that I was available should she need me in the future. Approximately six months later, I received a note in the mail from her stating that she was doing well and had not been troubled by anxiety since before our last meeting.

For Regina, as with most of us, there was a lesson in her pain. By looking at her anxiety and listening to what it might have to share with her, she was able to recognize feelings she had long repressed regarding her relationship with her son. In acknowledging and accepting her feelings of guilt and regret, she was then able to work toward reconciliation.

"Any major change needs a breakdown." - James Hillman

While change can be a relatively logical, planned, and predictable process, it's all too often heralded by what sociologist Gordon Allport referred to as, "the power of the fait accompli." The power of the fait accompli asserts itself when an event occurs that is out of our control, such as a natural disaster, an illness, loss of a loved one, or loss of a job. Many of our own stories contain the angst of this phenomenon, and many of our stories also represent how pain can eventually lead to possibility. For instance, while reviewing the lives of devoted environmentalists, I noticed that agony often provided the impetus for action. Vice President Al Gore's intense search for "truth" and his deep devotion to environmental issues was deepened after witnessing his son get struck by a car. John Muir launched his career as a naturalist after recovering from an injury that left him temporally blinded and suicidal. Tom Hayden wrote, The Lost Gospel of the Earth as a result of the deep despair he felt on the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, as he acknowledged that the planet's condition was deteriorating more rapidly than the rate of progress environmentalist were making to protect it.