Have you ever had your hands shake? Like an uncontrollable tremor that you normally don’t have?
I have. It generally has indicated that I’ve had too much sugar before going for too long without food. It’s alarming, and I can’t help but think of it as the perfect analogy of the feeling of panic.
When we’re put into a situation where we have no understanding of what is going on we begin to panic. We lack any means of making sense of the situation in that moment. We have two paths we can try and calm down and create a connection or we can spiral out of control.
Spiraling out of control is terrifying and it doesn’t have to be about a scary or alarming situation. I sometimes get extremely excited about some of my favorite things. To the point where I feel I could easily hyperventilate.
This happens when I meet a long time goal or am really looking forward to something. My normally even-keel nature goes from zero to a hundred in a matter of seconds. This makes it a lot easier for me to start spiraling into whatever success I’ve just had.
Sounds like a good thing, right? No. It is not. I can get lost in it, and that means I won’t be progressing or even aware of what’s going on.
These two ways of spiraling can defeated by bring ourselves back into a state of understanding. Panic and excitement can cause us to lose connection to the information going on around us. Connecting to the information again can give us the context we need to pull ourselves out of the spiral and back into control.
Generally, once we recognize a familiar situation we can respond appropriately. Knowing what to do can weaken any feeling of panic we might have. The reason is panic mostly comes from the confusion about what to do. Whether the emotional strain of the situation or the lack of preparation disconnects us from understanding the situation we have to get back into control.
Panic stuns us in a way that puts us in an “active paralysis”. That sounds weird but as we panic we’re doing things, if we were completely stunned we would not be able to do anything.
If we couldn’t do anything that would be better than being panicked. When we panic we do almost everything we can to counter our efforts to succeed. It turns our world upside down until we’re in control again.
So if you’re panicked, try doing nothing until you get back into control. You don’t have to do “something” because that response generally leads to trouble rather than a solution.
Think about it.
Sincerely,
The Irreverent Gentleman
gentlemansuniversityofmanliness 