Anxiety & Panic Attacks: Your Great Teachers

29 years ago, after my first emergency C-section, panic attacks started creeping in. But back then, I had no idea what they were. Anxiety? PTSD? Those words weren’t in my vocabulary. I was the strong one. The capable one. The one who handled things. Until suddenly, I wasn’t.

Fast forward nearly three decades— the endless searching for relief, and answers to my healing. I learned this...

Anxiety isn’t bad. It’s a messenger. A built-in alarm system trying to keep us safe. But the problem? Most of us don’t understand it. We resist it. Fear it. Label it as something to get rid of rather than something to learn from.

When anxiety hits, we have two choices: disconnection or connection. We can fight it, push it away, pretend it’s not happening—or we can meet ourselves where we are, with understanding rather than shame.

I’ve felt the shame. Like a giant spotlight was on me, exposing my struggle. And my body? It went straight into flight mode—racing heart, shallow breath, every cell screaming RUN! 

That’s not exactly helpful when you’re sitting in a restaurant. My nervous system lived on red alert, scanning for danger that wasn’t there.

I mean, what’s the real threat in a café? A terrible coffee? But my body wasn’t reacting to now—it was reacting to then. To all those tense dinners where I felt on edge, watching my kids being told off in a way that felt harsh, feeling unsure whether I should speak up or stay quiet. My nervous system learned that dinner tables were stressful places. And so, years later, it still sounded the alarm—wrong time, wrong place.

But here’s the shift: once I understood what was happening, I stopped fighting it. I started working with it. I stopped calling it my anxiety.

Not my panic attacks. Not my anxiety. Just… anxiety. A passing state. A moment in time.

Try this:

"I feel anxious, and that’s okay. How can I support myself right now?"

When we stop fearing anxiety and start listening to it with compassion, something incredible happens: it loses its grip. We stop seeing it as something to escape and start using it as a tool to understand ourselves better.

So if anxiety has a hold on you, take that as your sign. It’s time to lean in. To stop running. To listen. Because on the other side of that fear isn’t just relief—it’s freedom.

How do you navigate anxiety? Drop a comment—I’d love to hear your take.

Love & Stardust,

Caron xox

#anxiety #depressionhelp #healanxiety #lifecoachnelson #caronproctor