Practice Patience

It would seem that the warm weather of summer is an inducement to slow down and live life at a more leisurely pace. Summer time and the livin’ is easy-and it’s a good thing because if things didn’t slow down for at least a few months out of the year, many of us would just fall over dead from the incessant demands of life in the 21st century.

While walking through O’Hare airport several weeks ago I looked around and saw that practically everyone was talking on a cell phone. I remembered some 10-12 years ago, all those people would have had to find a pay phone if they wanted to call someone, or wait until they got home-and that was okay then, but now expectations have changed.

It’s ironic. Faster and more efficient technological devices promise to save us time—but everyone I know feels like they have less time.

Did ancient people also feel that time was a thief? No doubt.

But this perception is undeniably compounded by an increasingly frantic pace of life in modern times. When I was a teenager my mother put up a refrigerator magnet that said, “the hurrieder I go, the behinder I get”. It seems that this modern age nudges us to hurry up. But as many of us experience, the more we hurry up, the less time we seem to have.

The less time we seem to have, the more impatient we become. When we are impatient, the world around us becomes a source of frustration. If we are feeling impatient, we are feeling self absorbed.

Last Labor Day weekend, I found myself in the airport in Atlanta. We had just celebrated my grandson Henry’s first birthday. The plane was supposed to leave at 4:00 pm. Thunderstorms put O’Hare on a ground stop. But by 6:00 pm the status had passed. A voice came over the speaker saying we would leave by 7:00, 3 hours late but we all knew it could be worse. We boarded the plane, taxied to the tarmac and sat there 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes. The man sitting next to me struck up a conversation saying he was worried that he wouldn’t get into Chicago until after midnight and he had to be on the job by 6:00 am. Finally, by 9:00 pm, (5 hours late) we took off. An hour into the flight the pilot announced there were more storms in Chicago and rather than burn fuel in a holding pattern we’d land in Indianapolis. There was no way we were going to get into Chicago until 2 or 3 in the morning. My seatmate exploded – he hit his seat and cursed.

Fidgeting impatiently, he broke into a sweat and loosened his tie. His mantra was-I can’t deal with this-I can’t deal with this…. He kept mumbling about how tired he was going to be. It was now midnight, and we were sitting in the Indianapolis airport awaiting permission to take off. Suddenly my seatmate burst out laughing. He said, “I might as well just accept it, I’m not going to get any sleep.” “I might as well accept it,” this became his new mantra. Earlier he had told me that he was staying in a Lakefront Hotel in the loop and he had a view of the lake, so I tried to cheer him up. I said, “It’ll be great. You are going to walk into your room and the sun will be coming up over Lake Michigan. It will be a beautiful sight.” By then he was laughing about how all of that angst was a waste of energy.

We have all been in situations when our expectations about what was supposed to happen didn’t pan out. We all know what it’s like to erupt in frustration when events turn against us. We all know what it’s like for our minds to scream at us that it shouldn’t be this way. When things go haywire or we are falling behind impatience invades the mind.

When my seatmate first realized how late we were going to be, his mind began to speed up with negative thoughts. He quickly thought of at least 10 horrible things that could happen.

In the book Take Your Time Ecknath Easwaran says that when our minds are in a hurry, our thoughts are usually negative. A mind in a hurry is not a healthy mind.

Many years ago I had a full blown manic episode. It landed me in the psychiatric intensive care unit. One thing about that experience I remember was how my mind speeded up. Fast thinking is characteristic of a manic episode.

I was thinking fast and thought I was so smart because of my fast thinking mind. But now I see that when my mind was thinking so fast I wasn’t being smart, or clever — my mind was in overdrive which meant that I was so taken with my thoughts that my speedy thoughts were all that mattered to me. To have a crazy mind like that is a weird sensation. The faster the mind the more you create your own version of reality.

But when the mind slows down, there is space and spaciousness—and space and spaciousness in us is what makes room for others and other thoughts. When the mind slows down we become patient—when the mind is quiet, panic dissolves. And when we are less in a panic, less in a hurry, we see that life is not all about me. Learning patience is the process of quieting the mind.

The Sufi mystic Meher Baba put it like this: “A mind that is fast is sick. A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine.”

Slow down the mind.

There are two ways to learn patience by slowing down the mind. The first is to become aware of what our minds are doing.

Whether driving a car, biking or walking, if we are running late, we probably started late. If there is not enough time in the day then we are probably trying to fit too much into the available time. If we are feeling irritated with our kids, frustrated with a partner or spouse or annoyed with a relative or aging parent what we need is patience. And the way to get patience is to slow down the mind. The first thing I do to practice patience is to have a little chat with my own mind. It helps me to remember that I have a mind but I am not the mind.

The second thing I do is practice patience every day. I know of no better way to practice patience every day then to practice meditation.

The purpose of meditation is to train the mind to be quiet. By the silent mental repetition of a mantra, the mind becomes absorbed in one thing rather than everything. As long as the fluttering mind is in motion, it is creating a commotion for us. As long as the fluttering mind is in motion it is pushing us to think thoughts, chatter internally, make judgments, keep things moving. Meditation teaches the mind to be patient. The more we are patient, the less we suffer.

Just think about times when you have felt impatient. Think about those times you have felt restless, irritated, anxious and intolerant. To be impatient is to suffer.

The purpose of spirituality is to give us tools that will reduce our suffering. A basic spiritual truth is that the more self absorbed I am, the more I will suffer, and the more I suffer, the more suffering I cause others.

His Holiness, the Dalai Lama once said, “The moment you think only of yourself, the focus of your whole reality narrows, and because of this narrow focus, uncomfortable things can appear huge and bring you fear and discomfort and a sense of feeling overwhelmed by misery. But the moment you think of others with a sense of caring, however, your view widens. Within that wider perspective, your own problems appear to be of little significance, and this makes a big difference.”

We practice patience because it not only reduces our suffering but it also reduces the suffering of those around us.

As I practice slowing down my mind, I learn to settle down, and when I learn to settle down I develop the capacity for compassion and love. Compassion and love are two sides of the same coin. Compassion is the wish for other beings to be free from suffering. Love wants other beings to have happiness.

Compassion and love grow naturally out of the mind that is spacious and slow. This is why practicing patience is the ground out of which compassion and love take root in our lives. And this is why lately, I’ve been repeating the mantra: practice patience – don’t hurry, be happy.

If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

Support groups

In my earlier rather depressing job description of parenthood I pointed out the lack of any form of trade union representation to argue for parental rights and needs. Of course, by its very nature, parents do their job out of love, and voluntarily sacrifice many material things to be able to care for their children. However, there is also little doubt that governments have frequently taken advantage of this absence of cohesion of parents as a group, in order to be able to dictate to them about the financial aspects of child-rearing. The health professional can begin to fight for parents and can offer a great deal of support as well as representing parental views. However, the emergence of self-help groups has to be one of the most encouraging and stimulating developments in recent years.

The majority of these groups are focused on some particular aspect of parenthood. This may be crying, hyper-activity, asthma, eczema, the disabled, and so on - but they are a very real and valuable step towards parents understanding their problems more, feeling less isolated and being much more involved with professional decisions that may affect their children.

As well as self-help groups there are many other groups and organisations that give parents a voice and can offer support, reassurance, help and guidance. It is no secret that one of the chief advantages of mother and toddler groups, and pre-school playgroups, is the support that these groups offer the parents - not just the children.

A fascinating piece of research done in the 1970s looked at some of the characteristics of American parents.1 These characteristics applied to almost every parent, irrespective of social class, ethnicity, education, or religion. Even though over 20 years have passed, the chances are that they apply to you as well. They certainly apply to me. These were a selection:

• We have no real idea as to what a 'good parent' is
• We get virtually no parenting training
• Our view of parenthood is somewhat romantic
• We expect to be able to solve problems that the professionals can't
• We have complete responsibility for our children, but only partial authority
• We expect extremely high standards of ourselves as parents
• We often have to work with incomplete or conflicting information when trying to resolve situations with our children
• The standards we set for our children are even higher than those we set ourselves. We want them to be happier, and more successful, than we ever were.

We certainly mean well. Nevertheless, we simply have to accept that many of these beliefs are incompatible. We are bound to get stressed. The function of this book is to look at some of the stresses that inevitably arise from parenthood,, to give practical guidance as to how you can lessen their impact, to show you who can help, and how you can help yourself. But -1 might as well admit it straight away - this book's title is more than a little optimistic. There is no way that parenting will ever be completely stress free. But I do believe that stresses really can be diminished to a remarkable extent, so that the pleasures of being a parent totally overwhelm them. And you will believe it too. Read on.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

The attitude of society

That isn't to say that society doesn't appreciate and understand the intense importance of parenthood. After all, how often have you heard the phrase 'Of course, I blame the parents' when some bad news story about a young person becomes public? During the trial of the British au pair, Louise Woodward, in Boston in 1997, countless articles in the nation's newspapers were devoted to analysis and criticism of the parents of the child that died. Their child had died, and they were criticised Everyone in their heart of hearts knows that the skills involved in being a parent are absolutely vital.

And just how does society show its appreciation of all this vital work on behalf of the next generation? You've guessed. When social scientists in the United Kingdom are grading various professionals because they need to collect statistics on patterns of disease, or educational or social needs, the job of 'housewife/mother' is placed in the same category as 'unskilled'.

There is much more to this than pure symbolism. It genuinely does reveal society's true attitude. When women are asked 'do you work?', how many reply 'no, I am just a mother1? Even today, many professionals such as doctors, and other interviewers often say such things as 'do you have a job, or are you a housewife?' Maybe no insult is intended, but the inevitable implication from such thoughtless remarks comes shining through. Society's prejudice is all too obvious.

Parents, and mothers in particular, are frequently made to feel inferior - an attitude exemplified by the development of the 'super wife and woman' ideal, whereby a really successful woman is expected not only to have a demanding job and be a perfect mother, but also to look glamorous and have all manner of fulfilling hobbies - possibly writing the odd book or two about them in her spare time. Is it any wonder that other women can feel distinctly inadequate?

There is no doubt that the sociological changes in the past two or three generations have given most women an entirely new set of options for their lives. Whereas in the past it was expected that every woman would simply settle for life as a mother and supporter of her husband, society has changed its view of a woman's potential place in the world and this means that the opportunities are very much broader. It is wonderful that the entrants to many professions are now at the very least as likely to be women as men. It is entirely healthy for society that cabinet ministers, doctors, engineers, secretaries, and chief constables should be appointed purely on the basis of merit and ability, rather than on which set of chromosomes they have. However, it is extremely unhealthy when society expects women in these jobs to do them in addition to being parents. The job description of parenthood is quite simply big enough, and it is entirely unreasonable simply to add this to someone's paid employment. There is a limit to what any one person should be expected to do.

I have little doubt that attitudes are changing but we are still an enormously long way from a genuine equality of opportunity. In my experience, when children wake at night it is still far more likely that the mother will get up than that the father will. Over and over again I have heard mothers say things like 'of course I always get up to the baby at night. It isn't fair on my husband to expect him to do it. He's got a job to go to/ If both a father and mother go out to work, it is still unusual for it to be the father who stays off work when the child is ill. There is far more Up service paid to equality than any genuine change of attitudes.

One of the most potent causes of stress in any of us is the failure of reality to live up to one's expectations. There can be no doubt at all that almost all parents have entirely unrealistic expectations of what parenthood is actually like. Even those who manage to achieve all the activities of a 'superwoman' often put themselves under intolerable stresses.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

My Panic Attack (4)

But there was one problem I felt unable to face. I had happily sailed through my music exams and the day came when I was told that I had to play the piano at assembly. To play in front of the whole school, knowing that many girls would be only too eager to criticise my performance, was unbearable.

Again the nights of frantic anticipation. I could imagine all the things that could go wrong. I could see all the gleeful faces as the whole school enjoyed hearing me make a fool of myself.

Why did I not just refuse to play? I could not bring myself to do it. I couldn't run away this time, so I cracked my thumb joint with a hammer. A difficult 'accident' to explain at the hospital, but I ended up with my arm in a sling and an overwhelming feeling of relief at the honourable way of escaping from my ordeal. I now suffer from chronic arthritis in my hand as a reminder.

II scrambled through my exams. There were too many gaps in my education for me to do really well, but at last I reached my final day at school... and I didn't want to leave.

Even travelling was no longer a bugbear. I attended a secretarial college, travelling into the centre of London every day. The fears were all behind me and I could look ahead to a future as a normal person. A relative in the Foreign Office got me a job in MI6. Sounds exciting, but it was basically just another secretarial post where I was very happy and made many good friends.

I was engaged to be married, although we had a five-year wait ahead of us as Michael had to get his law degree and qualify as a solicitor.

One winter's day I was just recovering from a bout of flu and waiting at a bus stop on my way to work. Disaster. Back swept the terrifying feelings that I thought had gone for good. I didn't know how to handle them and staggered into a shop, where I asked for a glass of water and telephoned for a cab to take me the ten miles home from the centre of London. Of course, as soon as I arrived home I felt perfectly all right apart from being a bit shaky. After-effects of the flu, I decided, and opted to take another week's sick leave to make sure I had completely recovered. I never dreamed that the old demon had raised its ugly head again.

I put the episode out of my mind and happily travelled back to London the following week. Back at the same bus stop, and my knees started to wobble and my breathing speeded up. It was all coming back. Luckily a bus came along and, jumping on to it, I broke the sequence of panic.
I couldn't believe I was back to square one, but I became increasingly worried abut my journey to work and organised my day around a variety of coping strategies. There was no way I could avoid the bus journey to the centre of hondon and, desperate for human contact, I would talk to anyone else standing at the bus stop. I always carried a newspaper to look at while I waited, and when the panicky feelings started to build up I would dart into the nearest telephone box. (How I would have welcomed a mobile phone.) I would telephone my mother, the only person who knew about my struggle. Having once suffered from agoraphobia in her youth she would talk me through the feelings and encourage me to keep going.

Every day was a continual fight against rising panic and feelings of unreality. Every morning I felt sick with appre¬hension but I was determined to hide my distress. I could not bear anyone to know about it and dreaded making a fool of myself in front of other people; I was determined not to draw attention to myself though I may have looked somewhat twitchy and uncomfortable to anyone who studied me care-fiilly as I stood at the bus stop. I carried a card on which I had written my name, address, date and destination.

When the real world started to slide and my memory played tricks I would read this over and over again to reassure myself that I really existed.

I would deliberately arrive at my office half an hour before anyone else so that I had time to have a cup of tea, sit down and recover my equilibrium. I loved my job and dreaded the fact that I might have to give it up, despite the misery of getting to the office each day. Sometimes when I felt really bad I would think of looking for work nearer home, but I knew instinctively that once I gave in the phobia would follow me; then I would give up the local job and retreat into my home. I had to conquer the problem before it conquered me.

I was not tackling the phobia correctly, any expert would tell you today. Face the panic, experience it and go through it, they would say - but I was trying to avoid it at all costs. Every time I experienced a severe panic attack I would become more sensitized and likely to have another one. Avoiding the panics enabled me to operate on an even level and live a normal life, but I am sure I would probably have overcome it more quickly had I known the modern way of going about it.

I combed libraries and bookshops looking for information about agoraphobia (panic disorder wasn't known to the lay person in those days). There was very little written for the sufferer, and what I could find frightened me even more.

I consulted a psychiatrist (I picked his name out of a newspaper, hoping to find an expert in his field). 'You are probably quite a nice young woman/ he told me. 'But you are obsessed with your symptoms which are caused by an anxiety state, and you will just have to learn to overcome them.' I had hoped some sort of treatment might be available but was warned off by the great man, who felt that as I did not appear to have any underlying problems and was managing to cope, any treatment might result in aggravating the condition rather than curing it. This was in 1953.

No treatment, just keep going! At least I had acquired one comforting piece of information: agoraphobia would not kill me and it would not ruin my life unless I let it.

Recovery would take me five years. It was very gradual but I tried to adopt an optimistic approach to life. Every day I would find something to enjoy. It may have been a compli¬ment - oh how vain I was! — it may just have been enjoying the music of the buskers on the way to work; I have always responded to any kind of music. One spring, Piccadilly Circus was filled with multi-coloured bubbles inviting the public to the Ideal Home Exhibition.

I talked to people - anyone who looked as though they might be responsive - so I was never alone. These tactics would do nothing for my panic attacks but they made me feel more cheerful. I learned to smile at everyone and was gratified to find that about 80 per cent of the public would smile back. Life was definitely looking up.

II still had trouble travelling around London. My office had moved to the bottom of Whitehall and I had to cross Parlia¬ment Square every morning. Sometimes I couldn't do it and would have to take a taxi, making some feeble excuse such as that I was late for an important meeting.

It was at this time that my future in-laws invited me to join them and Michael on a summer holiday to Wales. I gritted my teeth on the long journey but would not have dreamed of admitting that I felt nervous. My father-in-law to be had been my family doctor all my life — but I never consulted him about my agoraphobia!

I felt relaxed and at ease with my second family, but then Michael announced that he and I were going to walk up Snowdon. Remember I couldn't walk across Parliament Square without feeling ill. I was really stuck. No way was I going to let on that I couldn't face that mountain.
It could have been worse. I kept my head down all the way as I found the open sky too vast and overpowering. I had blisters on my feet and took off my shoes as I felt happier concentrating on my sore feet than on any panicky feelings.

I have photographs to prove we reached the summit, but I couldn't wait to get to the bottom again, pleased to find I felt a sense of achievement. Two weeks later I was back in a taxi circling Parliament Square to get to my office in Whitehall.
Gradually it all faded. I hardly realised how much I was progressing until it became obvious that my nerves were no longer dominating my life. It takes some time to appreciate that one is really free. The biggest bonus was discovering that all the other anxieties disappeared, and instead of being a permanently anxious person with many devastating fears I discovered that I had become less fearful than most of the people I knew, that having trained myself not to worry, I didn't worry. It is possible to change one's life around.

I have described how my life changed when I had overcome my fears, but my crowning success was my wedding day. Four hundred guests in a London church in the middle of Piccadilly - one of my 'panic spots' some years earlier. The service was long and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment without even a frisson of fear. My self-confidence was so high I felt like floating off the ground. I will never forget that day.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

My Panic Attack III

It took a term for the novelty to wear off. The feelings of anxiety which had been pushed below the surface began to trouble me once more and I felt increasingly trapped. Sleeping in a dormitory with rigid rules about not talking after lights out and no reading in bed left me with too much time alone with my thoughts and my out-of-control imagina¬tion. Mealtimes meant more rules and there were no accept¬able excuses to leave the table. Eating became a problem with so many people watching and noticing my jittery behaviour.

At first I was able to cope with services in the school chapel (two each day and three on Sundays) but, inevitably, as the panicky feelings began to recur I found it more and more difficult to sit still until the end of a service.

Lessons were becoming an ordeal too. I would watch the clock: twenty minutes until the bell goes ... ten minutes ... five minutes. Little wonder that I started to slip behind with my school work again when sitting through a forty-minute lesson was purgatory. The feeling of being trapped built up even when I was sitting near a door. There was, of course, no chance of asking to be excused; you might get away with it on one occasion if you could plead an emergency - but not a second time.

i The last straw came when I was told that I had to propose a vote of thanks to a visiting lecturer. It meant standing up in front of the whole school to speak and I knew I couldn't do it. For days - and worse, for nights — beforehand, I lived with this terror, visualising how I was going to make a fool of myself, forgetting what I had to say, breaking down in front of the whole school. My imagination was as usual running out of control and I knew I would not be able to walk on to the stage, smile sweetly and say my piece.

On the day itself I was sick several times and the terror built up and up. There was no way I could tell anyone that I couldn't go through with it, and as the time approached I felt even worse. I ran away from school.

I went back, of course, and I won't go into details of my punishment and disgrace. This was fifty years ago, and no one then would have considered that I might actually have needed help for a psychological problem.

I asked my parents to take me away and let me return to the local high school. Panic attacks and daily assembly would be preferable to a twenty-four-hour school environment. I said I was unhappy at boarding school and told some lurid stories about life in that eminently respectable establishment. Being unhappy was reason enough where my sensible parents were concerned, but I was grilled by the headmistress, house mistress and other members of the staff who insisted on being told why I wanted to leave their precious school.
Was I leaving because I was unpopular? I was indignant about that as I had many friends. Anything wrong at home? Death in the family? Bankruptcy? Divorce? I looked at them blankly and then explained that I was suffering from delayed shellshock after my - mostly imaginary - experiences during the Blitz. Did they believe me? I never found out.

It was such a relief to make yet another fresh start that I felt practically normal again. It didn't last, of course, but as the old feelings crept back, the time had come to do something about the problem. Hauled up before the head, I found out that at the age of sixteen I could at last explain why I was invariably late for school.

At last the adults were sympathetic. During assembly I was allowed to slip into one of the side rooms if I felt unwell. Better still, I was not forced to attend assembly at all but could wait in die classroom until the other girls returned. My form teacher let me sit near the door and I had permission to slip outside the class for a few moments if the tension became unbearable. Would you believe it, as soon as I ceased to feel under pressure I found many of the hitherto impossible situations I had avoided before became tolerable; now I could talk about the things that bothered me and tackle problems such as standing on my head in PE or hanging upside down on the wall bars in the gym, both of which activities invariably made me feel sick and dizzy.

I would take a packed lunch instead of eating with the crowd; but that didn't last long, as I found I was missing out on most of the news and gossip, so I was soon back lunching with my friends. The best thing was that nobody thought there was anything peculiar about me.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

My Panic Attack II

War was looming and we moved to the country. Sometimes at school I would experience fluttery feelings of anxiety, but being fairly stoical I put up with them. After all, my mother had assured me that they couldn't hurt me.
Unfortunately my all too vivid imagination was getting out of control, and as more and more phobias became part of my life I would go out of my way to avoid anything that might upset me. Apart from medical and dental phobias I had a horror of skeletons, people with any deformity, being blind¬folded, hanging upside down (how I hated PE lessons), tunnels, travelling any distance, sleeping away from home, nose-bleeds, abstract thoughts, infinity, cemeteries, clouds, darkness, silence, thunderstorms - and tidal waves! I knew I would never see a tidal wave but the thought was disturbing.

The list was almost endless. There seemed to be so many upsetting things to cope with that I was only really happy in the fantasy world into which I slipped at every available opportunity.

\ School was becoming a problem. Morning assembly became an ordeal which had to be faced every day, but the dread of it was with me every waking moment. Most nights were disturbed by troubled dreams, and at breakfast I would feel sick and tearful, filled with worry about the coming day. The journey to school involved a long walk, a bus ride and another walk. This itself was becoming more and more difficult as panic was always just below the surface, waiting to strike if I allowed myself to stop and think. I became addicted to daydreaming to get away from the situation, pretending to be another more glamorous person triumphing over difficult and heroic situations. In my fantasy world, I was in control.

When filing into the school hall for assembly, my first thought was always what the hymn was for that day and how many verses it ran to. Up to three was bearable but any more and the panic would well up, making me feel sick, dizzy and unsteady. My great dread was that I might faint, though I never did. As things got worse I frequently had to slip out of the hall with the excuse that I felt unwell. There was no point in trying to explain further, I'd tried that and nobody understood.

Then sitting through lessons became difficult, and I was trying to avoid assembly by arriving late to school almost every day. The atmosphere that I had once enjoyed was becoming unbearable: too many people, too much noise — my mind felt overloaded and I could not concentrate on my lessons. I withdrew from my friends, who found me odd'. I still managed to hang on, though too many days off meant my school work was affected.

Strangely enough, the adults around me never suggested I saw a doctor. In those days one was just considered to be a 'difficult* adolescent. In any case, the suggestion of a consultation with a doctor would have filled me with horror. I had to cover up my real problem.

Boarding school, my parents decided, and I went along with this idea. A new start, a different atmosphere. I had read so many books about girls' boarding schools and I knew it was all going to be jolly good fun ... new friends, midnight feasts and lots of practical jokes. Above all there would be no travelling to and from school. The daily journey to my present school was becoming a nightmare in itself. Being privately coached soon helped me to regain my educational level and my confidence was returning when I passed the entrance exam to the new school.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!

My Panic Attack

Panic attacks and agoraphobia were part of my life from childhood until my mid-twenties. My mother was agora­phobic and at one time was housebound for two years. I didn't even notice this, mainly because my brother and I, and later our sister, were brought up by a nanny. We had a very happy childhood and a good social life, but I was a nervous child with an over-active imagination. I was happiest when retreating into a fantasy world and weaving stories to entertain my siblings and my friends.

One day I was enjoying my weekly ballet lesson. My mother sat with her friends and smiled encouragingly every time I caught her eye. As the winter afternoon was bleak and dark, someone switched on the lights, and suddenly from being a carefree child I became a nervous wreck for no apparent reason. The noise of the music was overwhelming, the lights were too bright and everything around me seemed unreal. I ran to my mother for reassurance, and after I had calmed down we went home and the family doctor was summoned. It was decided that I was suffering from a reaction to a tonsil operation I had had a few weeks earlier.

These days, I suppose this would have been diagnosed as a panic attack caused by post-traumatic stress, and certainly the experience had been particularly stressful. In the 1930s there was no such thing as a pre-operative sedative; I was wheeled straight into the operating theatre and, amid the frightening sight of surgical instruments and gowned adults, was held down while the rubber mask was placed over my face. I fought against the horrible smell of the gas, screaming with fright as the anaesthetic took effect. I can still remember vividly the sensation of falling and the blackness overcoming me while disembodied voices alternately soothed and scolded me.

Two weeks in hospital did not unduly disturb me and I didn't appear to have any after-effects. In fact, I soon forgot the ordeal and didn't worry abut it until the panic attack when I was dancing.

I never did go back to ballet lessons. I had a few mild panic attacks and felt generally jumpy but my mother reassured me and said the nerves were just something one had to put up with.

Some time later I had to visit the dentist. This was a regular occurrence and did not bother me until I saw the family doctor in the surgery and knew what that meant.. . gas. I fled from the surgery, out of the front door and along the road, pursued by several adults.



If You Want Immediate Anxiety Relief, Check Out Our New Natural Technique To Stop Panic Attacks and General Anxiety Fast!