Panic Attack (Part 2) — Spotify from the CEC Library

Panic and its manifestations: tachycardia, sweating, tachypnea (very rapid breathing), piloerection, pain, contractures, tremors, chills, and numbness. What is panic? It is an episode of anxiety unrelated to a specific situation. There does not need to be anything at that moment causing the panic. It is unpredictable. You are on the subway and feel panic; you are at home and feel panic. Panic is the sum of all your fears that arise suddenly, as do obsessive thoughts. It is something that you cannot control.

A panic attack normally does not last more than one hour; it may last longer, but in most cases it lasts 15 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, and almost never reaches one hour. A person experiencing this crisis cannot handle the situation: the person becomes confused and loses control of the ego. The person is in a condition in which things seem very strange, everything is very threatening, and they cannot move or find a direction. The person does not always have the strength to express the fear, for example by speaking or asking for help. Sometimes the person is not even able to do that and becomes paralyzed.

Panic is a very serious matter. Panic and depression are phenomena that are increasingly present today. There is a primary factor causing panic to appear more frequently, perhaps much more frequently than before. Our lives are very hectic and outside a normal pattern of psychic speed. Our inner speed has had to accelerate greatly so that we can manage everything around us.

If you want to verify this, consider the following: in everything we do, there is no time to spare; we are always short of time. Here in São Paulo, we removed all billboards and most posters. Imagine walking through a place and objectively observing these posters and all the colorful things on the street, the signs and everything else, while an immense number of cars and people circulate; the unconscious also registers what we do not see. Thus, there is an overcrowding of information that, at some point, causes the machine to shut down; there is no way to avoid it.

This does not even include the situations of genuine stress in relationships with people, in relationships that are dysfunctional even though we want to say they are functional. The wife and husband argue; one speaks louder than the other, they insult each other, and they cannot have a calm life of warmth and affection. But this is not normal just because everyone argues. No, it is not normal for everyone to argue; we should not argue with anyone. We have to live in peace and use an appropriate tone of voice.

If you are aggressive, you can begin to reevaluate this type of behavior because it is dysfunctional. Certainly, if a person displays aggression, depending on its degree, the person already has a pathology sustaining that attitude. If the person is passive, very calm, and does not react to life's situations, the person probably also has emotional contents that generate this behavior, and the problem intensifies in a relationship with another person.

All these things have created a very large dimension. There is the fear that people live with and the things we watch on the news, which are horrifying. What should occur is the human being improving, creating an increasingly affectionate condition of understanding others and sharing in a healthy way, but that does not happen. What we see are people always exercising power, exercising force, and forgetting that, in my view, throughout our several reincarnations we will make some changes in position. At one moment you are the coach; at another, the player. Therefore, it is good to remember that our learning will happen, and it happens in this life.

A person can never be very happy when hiding behind the lies they preach. All of this results in an emotional lump, a charge that will manifest at some point. It may then become, for example, panic disorder. These are hundreds of fears that you file away in the unconscious or keep in your heart, such as hurts, resentments, and related feelings. A time comes when this must emerge, and in this release your tachycardia, cold sweat, pain, contractures, everything you can imagine, and the shutdown of the entire psychic apparatus appear at a time when this should not happen.

This may happen when you are in traffic, on the subway, or on a street at night; suddenly, you stop and can no longer determine where you are. It is a serious situation. Everything we create, including our pathologies, can be changed and healed. A twenty-year-old man could not remain in a place with more than three people; he panicked, trembled, said that he began experiencing an internal vibration and went completely blank, and then the episode ended.

He sought a psychic, and the psychic told him, "Look, your problem is that, in another life, you were in a war. That is why you cannot be near people now." I have practiced spirituality since age seven, am a researcher, and have undertaken lucid astral projections since then, with daily notes about the work I do, the spiritual assistance, and all the research I conduct involving auras and chakras. Nevertheless, regardless of how much I know and see, I believe that the first step when someone seeks me with a problem is to seek a physician, a psychoanalyst, a psychologist, or a psychiatrist.

That is the path. First, we should examine people's physical and emotional conditions. Then, if that resource fails, we seek spirituality. Why? Because the path to resolving spirituality often passes through the physical world. When, for example, you go to a psychologist or psychoanalyst and tell them about your life, you begin discharging countless stored emotions, energies, and feelings that you could not tell anyone about and that hurt, destroy, and corrode you internally. When you find someone who listens, understands what you are saying, and shares with you, things begin to change.

Imagine that one day you are extremely nervous; then, suddenly, you tell yourself all about your nervousness. You become calm. It is important that, before seeking any spiritual resource, we pay attention to matters in the physical world. Seek a physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, or psychologist—that is, someone in healthcare who can help. Otherwise, you will follow the wrong path, seek spiritual help, and may make everything worse. I see that we should follow a logical path. Seeking someone in the spiritual field may cause confusion and does not resolve the problem because, when the person goes to the psychologist, they may say, "No, but my psychic said I am full of spirits and that I was in such-and-such a place." In this way, everything becomes mixed together.

The psychologist has the task of reorganizing this; the psychologist will listen to you, understand your emotional context, and is prepared to do so. A person who listens to other people every day while running a practice acquires greater knowledge than any university can offer. If you graduate without practicing, you have achieved nothing; when you practice, you solidify, consolidate, and significantly expand your learning. In psychoanalysis and psychology, it is essential for those who perform clinical listening to have this experience because it makes it possible to understand, for example, that a particular situation is a genuine panic attack.

This young man has probably not resolved his problem yet. I received another email with the following account: "I have always had difficulty speaking in public and, when I sought therapy, I discovered that it was panic. The worst part is that a person can spend much of their life in this suffering if they do not seek help." Last year, this person had to present a project at the company where they work. When it was time to speak, they froze, blushed, became confused, and no words came out. They felt tingling in the body. A colleague noticed and tried to help, saying that the person was a little nervous. The colleague handled the situation, and the person left the room but later could not return. What you are reporting is a moment of panic. That is why you need to seek help and undergo therapy.