What Messages Are We Really Sending?

We learn to respond to life based on how our parents and care takers related to us as children.  When I was eight years old my father suffered a massive heart attack that disabled him completely.  He lost oxygen for 17 minutes on and off, and was pronounced dead but resuscitated back to life.  The amount of brain damage that he had from losing so much oxygen left him lying in a hospital bed for the rest of his life, unable to talk, walk or move.  The experience was devastating for my whole family.  My dad had a huge presence and always made me feel safe.  When this happened, it impacted me profoundly as a child.  I had always been a quiet kid, a little on the shy side.  My dad always brought me out, so when this happened, I went into a complete shut down emotionally.  I was only eight years old, it was very difficult to house the pain.

When my panic attacks started to show up after this happened, my family related to me in the best way they knew how.  I was comforted and loved, always, and even given psychological help, but the message underneath the message was that they were scared, too.  My whole life was based in fear, all of the guidance I was given, all my decisions that I made where coming from this way of being.  I didn't know anything different.  

It was my extreme discomfort with life that led me to question the nature of reality and go beyond the paradigm I was living in.  When I began working with my spiritual teacher back in 2001, I had many panic attacks in her company.  Her response in those moments were very different from anyone I had ever encountered at that time in my life. She never seemed alarmed by the fear.  She didn't pathologize what was happening for me or try to fix it. Her words were helpful when she told me that I was just waking up to the true nature of reality and this is what it felt like, but the deeper help was in her way of being.  

This sent an entirely different message and informed the deepest part of my being.  I began to trust in something far greater than my fear and a new perspective was revealed.  I could no longer believe in the panic in the same way.

I never went on any anxiety medication while this transformation was occurring.   I am not against it in any way, as I feel that it can be extremely helpful at certain times in people's life.  But for whatever reason, this was not the case for me.  And I feel that this was largely due to the way my teacher related to me during that time period.  A psychological approach alone will only reinforce and actually support the suffering.

This reminds me of an Albert Einstein quote: 

“You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” 

If we approach anxiety from the same paradigm, it only gets managed and suppressed for a while.  It never gets to be felt and seen for what it is.  Waves of energy just moving through space.  Fear is an incredible teacher and will guide you very directly to what is living and breathing you in every moment.  It only holds power over us when we don't understand it's offering.