If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you know how intense it is.

Your ribcage is suddenly two sizes too small for your lungs. You can’t take a full breath.

Your heart is threatening to leap out of your mouth or tear through your chest. You can feel your pulse where you didn’t even know you had blood vessels.

It’s like you’re looking through unfocused binoculars. Everything around you is a moving blur.

You’re instantly drenched with sweat. The air is sweltering and giving you chills all at the same time.

Your mind is racing. What’s happening to me? I just need fresh air. I need to get out of here. Something is going terribly wrong.

You might even worry that you’re having a heart attack or dying.

Panic attacks are brutal!

I’ve heard a panic attack described as “all the feels.” And that makes sense, right? It’s a dumpster fire of sensations—physical and emotional—all at once and seemingly out of nowhere.

Paradoxically, in therapy I think of panic attacks as not enough feels, or more accurately, not being aware of enough of your feelings.

Panic attacks pop up when our inner conflicts lurk outside of our awareness and we’re not tuned in to the anxiety that’s stirring up. All of this can only bubble under the surface for so long before it finds a way to burst through—in the form of a panic attack (or other physical issues, but more about that in a future blog entry).

Think of a whistling tea kettle. As the heat inside increases, the water creeps from still, to a simmer, to a boil. The pressure builds until it can’t stay contained. It escapes screaming through the spout. It doesn’t get your attention until it reaches a fever pitch.

Emotions are like this too when they’re kept tightly under wraps. Taking the lid off relieves the pressure and lets us see what needs attention inside.

The more tuned in you are to yourself, the less your emotions need to scream in order for you to hear them.

If you’d like help taking the lid off, drop me a line.

Take care,

Imagine one day you walk into your bathroom to discover that it’s flooded and part of your ceiling is now hanging out on your floor. You call the super who comes over quickly and patches it up. You’re relieved! That was an easy fix! Everything looks good as new.

Until…your upstairs neighbor has the audacity to take another shower. Suddenly you have another unwanted water feature in your bathroom. You can call the super to patch up the plaster again, or you can ask for a plumber this time to figure out why the pipes have turned into a sprinkler.

Sometimes plaster cracks over time for no reason. It just gets old and it needs to be redone. Other times there’s a problem underneath it that needs to be looked at. If the issue keeps coming back, you still have to mop up, but you also need to look behind the surface to figure out why it keeps raining inside. (I’ve reached the limit of my knowledge about plaster.)

When life becomes a soggy mess, of course your first thought isn’t to wade knee deep into it, plop down in the middle of it, and contemplate what’s causing it. You want to dry it up quickly! There’s just one problem. Mopping the bottom of a waterfall doesn’t work so well.

You need immediate help, but don’t stop with a quick fix.

Any skilled, emotionally attuned therapist will help you get relief from the pressing issue that brought you to therapy in the first place. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need. But if you find yourself getting stuck in the same upsetting loop over and over again, it may be time to take a closer look.

I often see proactive, ambitious clients who’ve done good work in past short term solution-focused therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). They’ve learned all the skills and they know how to practice them, but pesky problems keep finding new ways to crop up in their life, often in frustratingly familiar patterns. Life is out-skilling them and as hard as they’re trying, they can’t think their way out of it.

In-depth, longer term therapy, like psychodynamic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy, looks behind the surface to help you unravel the tangled up roots that are causing you pain so that you get deeper, long-lasting relief.

If this feels like the right time for you to look deeper, I invite you to contact me.

Take care,

Imagine you have a huge pile of mess in your room.

It’s been in a jumbled heap for so long that you don’t even know what’s in it. Judging by the outer layer, you’re sure it’s all just useless junk that doesn’t belong there.

You’ve casually mentioned this problem to a couple friends. But you left out the part about how your chest tightens up when you turn the knob to your room at the end of the day. You didn’t tell them that your eyes seem to have a watering problem. You didn’t say that sometimes you wake up in a cold panic and have to catch your breath. Because none of that random stuff has anything to do with the mess, right?

This mess is sneaky. You shoved it down the garbage chute but somehow it crept back into your room. It’s even started hitching a ride with you on the subway, at work, on dates. You’ve tried so hard but you can’t get rid of it. You figure if you have to lug it around, you might as well make it easier for other people (and yourself) to look at. So you stuff it in a box and seal it up.

This works okay for a while. Then…you notice you’re moving more slowly. Everything takes more effort. You’re exhausted. The boxed up mess has gotten heavier.

Think of your anxiety, your depression, your fear that you’re one slip away from shattering into pieces. You’re working hard to manage all of this on your own, but you feel like a hopeless mess.

Life is messy. Sometimes messes are too heavy to carry by yourself. Some thoughts and feelings are too scary to think and feel alone.

Therapy is a safe place to start unpacking this. You set the pace. You decide when you’re ready to pull the tape off. You choose when to pull something out. Each time you do, we’ll take a closer look. We’ll get curious. We’ll wonder together how each piece got here, who put it there, what allowed it to grow, and what kept it hidden. We’ll learn that all of these parts were necessary at one time, that they affect you even when you can’t see them, and that some of them are still useful today.

The more you understand the story of who you are and how you came to be, the lighter your load will feel, and the more flexibility you’ll have in your life going forward.

If any of this sounds familiar, I invite you to reach out.

Take care,