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Living With Recurring Panic Attacks Can Feel Exhausting and Frightening. How Therapy Can Help.
Living with recurring panic attacks can feel exhausting, frightening, and deeply disruptive. A panic attack can seem to come out of nowhere, leaving you wondering when the next one will happen. You may begin avoiding certain places, situations, or activities because you are afraid of experiencing another attack. Even when you are not actively having a panic attack, the fear of having one can become a constant source of anxiety.
Panic attacks can be especially distressing because the physical sensations can feel so intense. A racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, trembling, chest tightness, sweating, nausea, or a feeling of losing control can make it seem as though something is seriously wrong. Although panic attacks themselves are not typically dangerous, the experience can feel overwhelming and very real.
What Is Social Anxiety and How Can Therapy Help?
Social anxiety can make everyday interactions feel much more difficult than they appear from the outside. A conversation with a coworker, meeting new people, speaking in a group, attending a social event, or even making a phone call can bring up intense worry about being judged, rejected, embarrassed, or misunderstood. For someone experiencing social anxiety, these situations may require an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy.
Are Your Beliefs Helping You or Holding You Back?
Have you ever had a thought about yourself that feels so deeply true that you rarely stop to question it? Maybe you believe you're not good enough, that you have to be perfect to be valued, that you can't trust people, or that your needs don't matter. You may not remember when you started believing these things. They may simply feel like facts about who you are. These deeply held ideas are called core beliefs. Core beliefs are beliefs we develop about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. They can influence our relationships, choices, emotional reactions, and the way we respond to challenges.
You Are Not Your Thoughts: An Introduction to Cognitive Defusion
What If You Don't Have to Believe Every Thought Your Mind Produces? Have you ever felt completely stuck in your own head? Maybe you keep replaying the same conversation, worrying about what might happen, criticizing yourself for something you did years ago, or trying to figure out the “right” decision. You may know that thinking about something over and over is not helping, but somehow your mind keeps returning to the same place.
When we are feeling stuck, it can seem as though the problem is that we simply have not thought about something enough. So, we analyze more. We replay conversations. We predict what might happen. We question ourselves. We search for certainty. We try to solve our thoughts with even more thoughts.
When “I’ll Deal With It Later” Becomes Avoidance
Have you ever had something difficult happen and thought, “I don't have time to deal with this right now”? Maybe you put your feelings aside so you can get through your workday, take care of your children, attend an important meeting, or simply make it through a stressful situation. Sometimes, the ability to temporarily set emotions aside can be helpful. It allows us to focus on what needs our attention in the present moment without becoming completely overwhelmed.
But there is an important difference between intentionally putting something aside and avoiding something altogether. While healthy compartmentalizing can help us function during difficult moments, avoidance can sometimes keep uncomfortable emotions, thoughts, memories, or situations feeling even more threatening over time.
Learning to Sit With Your Feelings: An Introduction to the RAIN Practice
Have you ever had an emotion come up that you immediately wanted to push away? Maybe anxiety, anger, sadness, shame, or fear suddenly takes over, and your first instinct is to distract yourself, fix the situation, or tell yourself that you shouldn't be feeling this way. We often spend a lot of energy trying not to feel uncomfortable emotions. While avoiding difficult feelings can provide temporary relief, it doesn't always help us understand what we're experiencing or respond in the way we want to.
Mindfulness offers another approach. Instead of immediately trying to change or get rid of an emotion, we can learn to notice it with curiosity and compassion. One practice that can help is called RAIN.
Why Insight Alone Doesn't Create Change
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
— Carl Jung
Carl Jung's words remind us of something deeply important: before we can change a pattern, we first have to become aware of it. We can't heal what we can't see. Insight is one of the greatest gifts therapy offers. It helps us understand where our patterns came from, why we react the way we do, and how our past continues to shape our present. But for many people, awareness brings with it an unexpected frustration. One of the most common things people say in therapy is: "I know exactly why I do it... I just can't seem to stop."
The Mind-Body Connection: Why Your Emotions Live in Your Body Too
We’ve all felt it: the tight chest before a big presentation, the stomach that drops after bad news, or the headache that shows up during a stressful week and disappears once things settle down. These aren’t coincidences, and they aren’t “just stress” in a dismissive sense. They’re signs of something researchers have been studying for decades: the mind and body aren’t separate systems that occasionally affect each other. They’re deeply connected and constantly communicating.
Rest to Restore: The Connection Between Sleep and Emotional Well-Being
Have you ever noticed that everything feels harder after a poor night's sleep? You may find yourself feeling more irritable, overwhelmed, anxious, or emotional than usual. Small frustrations seem much bigger, your patience feels thinner, and it becomes more difficult to cope with everyday stress. While it's easy to dismiss poor sleep as "just being tired," sleep plays a far more important role than simply helping us feel rested. It is one of the most powerful contributors to our emotional well being, influencing how we think, feel, and respond to life's challenges. If you've been struggling with anxiety, low mood, stress, or feeling emotionally exhausted, improving your sleep may be one of the most meaningful places to begin.
Why You Can't Think Your Way Out of Overthinking
Most people assume that if they keep thinking about a problem long enough, they'll eventually arrive at the answer. It feels responsible. It feels productive. Sometimes it even feels necessary.
But there is an important difference between thinking and ruminating. One moves us forward. The other keeps us stuck.