Tag: anxiety

Thoughts on Panic Attacks, Burnout & Being Death Defying Amongst Wellness Providers

Let’s be brutally honest here. Wellness providers at large? Yoga instructors and the like? I’m going to say something scandalous. Here it is: these people, they are human. They are not death defying. They get burnout. They have panic attacks. They won’t always practice what they preach.

At this point, I have followed Yoga with Adriene for a really long time. Not since the very beginning, but pretty darn close to it. I’ve welcomed Adriene and her specific brand of at-home yoga with open arms, finally curating something that felt like a very-real yoga practice due to the videos she offers on YouTube. Over time, Adriene has become fairly famous, having carved out a niche in the wellness industry.

In the recent edition of Women’s Health magazine, Adriene spoke about her experience with burnout, a largely taboo topic for those in this industry. Whether only put on by others, or by ourselves, the stigma of burnout or, for even a short period of time, not applying what we preach, is very real. We are supposed to be mentally strong, these generally guiding beacons of health as we help steer others into who they were meant to be.

I’m not going to call it an illusion, but if a spade’s a spade…

I remember a woman who was vegan, fit, healthy as can be, got sick from cancer and died from it. I also remember a nasty comment from another woman who was almost downright smug about this woman’s death. She had poo-pooed her attempts at arresting death by living well. She was basically saying, “See? You’re no better than the rest of us. You still died.”

But I don’t believe that people who try to live well do it because they want to cheat death. I think, and maybe those in this industry more so than some others, we recognize that death is a very active part of life, for better or worse. Death cannot be cheated, but improved living can be acquired… with forgiveness, kindness, and perseverance. The right kind of perserveance, that is, that doesn’t lead to burnout.

There will be the charlatans who act elevated above all others with their knowingness. But most of the people in the wellness industry, in the care provider realm, most that I have met are humble and acutely aware of their faults and flaws.

As those in the limelight become more vocal to the masses about their own struggles, then maybe a more generalized forgiveness for being human can become normalized, and accepted. Wellness industry leaders will tell you they’ve had plenty of failures, that they too have lapses in their own ability to walk the walk.

This is the thing, see, and I’m repeating myself to make a point. They’re human. This is how humans are. We struggle, and especially if we have the right support system, we will try to do better. If we fail, we will get up and try again. We will have moments of not walking the walk, not talking the talk. It’s normal. It’s human.

In the Women’s Health article, Adriene is very personal about what led her to have panic attacks. She notes that when she had her first one, she had gone to a hospital because she wasn’t sure what was happening. This happened to Adriene, the Queen of Calm. Since the terms burnout, panic attacks and anxiety aren’t supposed to apply to people like her, she didn’t even recognize that that’s what it was.

I too can personally attest to this as well, having a similar bout of panic attacks in my own past. If we don’t get better at recognizing the need to support our nervous systems, more and more Adrienes will continue to fall off of these pedestals, of, frankly, non-reality.

We all need to recognize when we aren’t taking enough care of ourselves. This means daily check-ins, permission to fail, permission to spend a day in bed, permission to vacation as Adriene says in the article. Did I mention permission to FAIL?

EVEN the caregivers. EVEN the yogis. EVEN the bodyworkers, the meditators. Not just even–especially so.

Adriene’s bravery sharing her story is a great step for all of us. Nobody is above failure, burning out, or having panic attacks, even the so-called-super-healthy who look like they have their sh*t together. Nobody is above death. But we all have the right to live life without the stigma of it being a big deal when we, too, fail. When we too, fall. When we, too, have panic attacks. Just like the Queen of Calm.

Continuing Ed Topics: Pain

This post wraps up the current series of continuing education, although I’m sure the next time I need to renew my license, I’ll have another series of the same.

Today’s topic is a great one, from a human perspective, from a bodywork perspective—pain! 

Pain is such a complicated and fascinating facet of existence. The word ‘pain’ is derived from Greek and means punishment or penalty. The continuing ed class I took was slightly dated–from 2013 I believe–so it goes without saying that the statistics from the class have since been updated. Yet, I assure you, the sentiment is going to be the same.

Here are the stats compiled for that 2013 class:

  • Pain is the number one reason why people go see doctors, and also the most common reason for seeking out alternative and complementary treatments.
  • In 2011, the Institute of Medicine reported that 100 million Americans reported chronic pain and that the price tag associated with said pain, annually, was $635,000,000. You know that price has just gone up.
  • 100 billion aspirin tablets are used annually in the world.
  • The shape and color of pain tablets significantly change the effectiveness of the drug.
  • Here’s a fun one to ponder: people over 60 tend to have less pain than those under 60.
  • Talk therapy and back therapy both help with back pain…statistically about the same.
  • Pain was considered a spiritual punishment prior to the 1600s. Only then did Rene Descartes attribute pain to tissue damage.

This model of tissue damage being the only source of pain creates a wall when chronic pain is compared to acute pain. With acute pain, you can usually point fingers to the source of the issue. When you remove the issue, pain theoretically goes away. 

Chronic pain usually doesn’t have a straight line connecting multiple dots. It typically has many lines creating a crazy pattern, thus making this type of pain unpredictable. Even if you remove all that seems to be causing the pain, the pain may not resolve. (This also makes me think of how you can cure something but not heal it, and vice versa.)

These facts lead to a rather large and looming factor about pain: Pain is an illusion. (But so is reality, right???)

I’m not sure about you, but this one sits sort of -eh- with me. But… as stated in the course packet for the class I took, “Tissue damage is not necessary or sufficient for pain.” 

From a personal bodywork perspective, I cannot tell you how many times–almost on a weekly basis–people will present with the same feel of the tissue. It could be a tightness, a knot, a collection of aggravated muscles–but one client will be miserable and the other one will tell me s/he feels great.

You know how much I love the brain. A client and I were just talking about the pain impulse coming only from the brain and not from the tissue or affected area at all. What then? (Ok, we know this can’t be the only way, just like the other way isn’t conclusive, either.)

There’s a study from 2004 (Derbyshire) that states “Brainwave patterns in people who think they are receiving painful stimulus but aren’t are almost identical to brainwaves of people actually receiving painful stimulus”.

The plot thickens…

We’ve all heard about phantom limb pain… again… our friend, the brain.

Under this umbrella, it kind of does look like the brain is causing the pains and not the other way around! It’s receiving the sensory input from the affected area, but depending on context, the person receiving it, memory, cellular memory… only then does the brain decide whether or not the sensory input painful.

Here’s the thing. And I’m not going to go into the particular population that likes pain–that’s another topic–but for the most part, we don’t like pain. We stray away from it. We do things to keep ourselves from being in pain.

Pain often alerts us when something is WRONG and needs attention. It keeps us from making more damage by asking us to change our behavior (like touching something hot). It can activate healing by encouraging us to get care (massages, chiropractic, etc). 

But. Pain can stop being of use when it’s no longer necessary for those responses.

According to this class, it’s believed that that brain processes pain like an emotion. Whether or not something reads as good or bad is an emotional assessment. Apparently brain studies have suggested that the midbrain is affected when something is painful, much like an emotion affects the midbrain. Pain can also be activated by the upper brain–for instance, if anxiety is an issue, pain can be perceived as worse.

The point of the class, I think, is that by observation or learning about pain, pain can be changed. There are studies suggesting that those who are invested in studying pain have less of it. If you can understand where it is coming from, it can lose its hold on you (whether or not you still feel it).

Of course, there’s the issue of chronic pain leading to brain conditions like depression, hypochondria, aforementioned anxiety, lack of sleep, cognitive impairment among others… which of course… can make pain worse.

It’s a slippery slope. I think the best way to deal with pain from a bodyworker’s perspective is honestly just to be attentive to the needs of the client. Offer validation by listening to the client and then palpating the affected area. Hopefully the combination of hearing the client as well as actively working the tissue is enough to offer even a tiny part of relief as part of a whole care regimen.

Thoughts about your own pain?

In Closing

Interestingly enough, when I typed in pain to find an image suitable for this post, the first images were all of emotional pain! And because of this emotional pain, these people were tightened into balls…which restricts movement..which can cause physical pain!

I’ve also purchased additional textbooks on the matter, so don’t be surprised if I talk about this fascinating topic again.

Thanks for reading!

Anecdotes & Book Thoughts, Part I: Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. (TAKE TWO!)

|Please note, this was originally posted on September 4, 2022, but got deleted. Here it is again, in its entirety. Thank you for your patience.|

***Part II will happen after I finish reading the book!***

I couldn’t tell you how I initially found out about Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight. What I do remember, though, is that when I read it, I had this bubble expand around me that I was able to infiltrate with mySelf, resounding in an audible ahhhhhh. 

That’s the colorful way to say I was hooked on all things brain.

In short, Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist, had a stroke and was able to experience it from a trained doctor’s perspective. The part of her brain that had the stroke was on the left side, and she had to fight to stay connected to her persona, her “me”, her division from the rest of the world surrounding her. Due to this experience of losing the divisive side of her brain and completely connecting to the one-ness of everything, she felt compelled to share her thoughts back in 2008. And now, she has a new book called Whole Brain Living: The Anatomy of Choice and the Four Characters That Drive Our Life. (Well, from 2021 that is.)

Now let’s talk about me. Moving to 2018, the year I almost didn’t die. It’s a long story, one that still has holes as far as I’m concerned, but very near the time (the summer before) my son was about to start preschool, I almost fainted. For no reason.

However, during the experience, I thought I was dying. A part of my head was black, even though I could see with my eyes. I felt weird — not dizzy. It was as if my blood had reversed course, as a cat having its hair stroked opposite its natural growth. My blood almost felt cooling, or at least the opposite of what it normally feels. Once I calmed down, I could sense surges of energy dissipating as whatever was happening was also ending.

I thought I had had a stroke.

In my late 30s at the time, and generally healthy-ish, there was really no reason for me to be having a stroke. I did take a joy-ride on an ambulance after “The Event” as I call it, and an EKG was done on me. This found a heart issue I didn’t know I had, or rather, I knew I had, but hadn’t named. Blood tests revealed no stroke (but we all know there’s really more than one way to tell if you’ve had a stroke), and at any rate, I was told to drink water and follow-up with my doctor.

An EMS guy told me it sounded like a panic attack. I was confused, because I thought it was purely physical-medical, and the EMS guy was telling me it was psychological. I later developed awful anxiety, and DID have panic attacks after The Event. However, they were very different than what happened to me that night I almost didn’t die. 

(Side notes: I’m not going to delve into this topic here, but I’m assuming being a young-ish female came into play with that assessment from the medic, even as he, himself, had had panic attacks in his life. And of course, I understand that psychological is also brain-science, but again — not going to delve into that topic here.)

So back to The Event. I remember a blackness, but not with my eyes.. it’s the only way to describe it. I felt disconnected from everything. All of my training in yoga, meditation, reiki, etc. seemed useless, because here I was, dying, and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop myself from disconnecting. I don’t remember what I told my poor, young, impressionable son, but to say it didn’t affect him would be naive. 

It was the upper right side of my head that was black.

So, it is with GREAT interest that I found out Bolte Taylor had written a new book, dividing the brain into four characters. Needless to say, I did a lot of googling about brains and strokes and fainting and all of that after The Event. But reading about these four different characters is so telling, I think, because the part of my head that was black is what Bolte Taylor calls Character 4.

The upper echelon of my right head (brain) had been dark. According to the author, this right upper echelon is connected to the flow. Assuming my other characters were still “online”, the ME in me, it makes sense that I felt so severely disconnected and thought I was dying. There was a definite disruption to the flow, to the sense of awe and connectedness. I was left alone with ME. 

My “vision” came back as I sat against my stove while sitting on the floor. I was fully immersed back into my reality, and this is when I felt the final energy surges. I was afraid it was going to happen again, and this is when I had my now-husband call 911. 

I fainted once in high school. I stood up too quickly, and woke up on the floor. I’ve had a heart condition since I was born (nothing to worry about, unless something else happens) but the other diagnosis in 2018 was new. 

Bolte Taylor refers to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell in her text. In a way, everyone is saying the same thing, and it makes sense that a neuroscientist would liken these human experiences to the brain.

She calls humans “feeling creatures who think rather than thinking creatures who feel”. She claims that the brain cells in our Character 4s are a “neuroanatomical junction between experiential physical life” and Character 3s “boundless consciousness of the universe”. Our 4s are where our spiritual beings — our souls, I suppose — create this physical experience.

It really makes sense then, how disconnected I felt from “the feeling of the cosmos, the sensation of an all-pervading experience of deep inner peace and love” because my Character 4 went offline for some reason. My now-husband and I joke about how dark my “death” had been, but that’s because I wasn’t dying at all. 

So whether or not I shut down my own brain, or I did have a mini-stroke, doesn’t really matter so much to the experience itself. For these philosophical purposes, it doesn’t change the fact that what Bolte Taylor describes as Character 4 is what in my horrifying experience was missing.

She claims that Character 1 and 2 are responsible for creating the separateness of ourselves from everything that exists. These left brain parts are unaware of the electromagnetic fields around and within us because it is their job to keep us separate. Considering we live in a left-dominated sphere of existence, it only makes sense that anything right-brain is considered woo-woo.

For those who want to make “woo-woo” topics pseudo-science (meaning completely fake, invalid and not real), this Ph.D., this brain doctor, is quick to say she doesn’t understand that mindset, as science is literally the tool used to understand the things we do not know. The scientific method, however, is linear, and unfortunately, it would be naive to think that all things in existence can be measured that way.

She claims that joy is the main experience of Character 3, and that it helps dissolve fear that exists in the left brain. She claims the left brain is the “master of practice”, and right brain “makes the magic”.

This seems like a good stopping point in my word vomit on the topic. Her book is broken into sections, and we are almost at the end of Part II where she discusses how to use the acronym BRAIN to get all characters online at one time to make informed decisions in your life.

Such a unique way to conquer how we create the worlds we live in!

Color Therapy 101: Yellow

Imagine: this person is staring at you as you sit in a chair. You’re trying to remain neutral – after all, you asked for this – but you start to feel a little on edge and completely uncomfortable — you’ve given in to the feelings of discomfort. The person assessing your aura tells you how she is done looking at you, because all of a sudden you turned YELLOW.

According to David Hamilton in his new book, Why Woo-Woo Works, people who say they see auras have often said that the color is associated with how the subject feels at the time of assessment. (An aside: I’ve only just started to peruse his book, but he’s got real-science, real-studies behind all things ‘woo-woo’ and I recommend the book if your brain is hardwired the way mine is.)

So let’s think of things that we already know about the color yellow. When you refer to someone as being a yellow belly, you’re calling them a coward. This is the exact inverse of, say, ‘follow the yellow brick road’, which of course, the yellow bricks lead to Dorothy’s way out of Oz. She’s following her own power to find the way home.

So the standard goes, yellow is the color of the solar plexus chakra, which is the chakra that is associated with self-power.

During the yoga training I took, I taught a portion on color and light therapy to my fellow yogis. I asked them what their favorite colors were, and which ones they didn’t like (if any). The sunniest, brightest, most joyful of my classmates loved the color yellow. So it’s power, and joy.

If your solar plexus chakra is out of balance by being under-stimulated, surround yourself with pretty yellow flowers, or crystals like citrine. Infuse your water with the sun and lemon juice. (You could even go as far as using citrine essence — maybe we’ll do a little crystal essence experiment here in the near future. A quick google search is telling me that you can purchase already made essences, rather than make your own! There are many different sites hawking products like this one. Who knew?!)

Yellow light therapy that already exists, like with some other colors, is LED light therapy for facials. Various colors do different things — according to this site that offers the LED facials, yellow will remove inflammation. If you live in Illinois and have tried the service, let us know!

According to this site, yellow sunglasses will help alleviate anxiety. It makes sense, right; yellow being the color of the sun, of joy. This site lists a bunch of various colored glasses — even some for kids.

And oh, how much fun was it to discover that Hauswitch was offering color-specific items at their store. I wasn’t able to visit it last year when I was in Salem, but I would love to go inside the store itself one day. If you order these yellow pillows to bring some joy or manifestation into your room, please post pictures to share!

So are you a yellow person? Why, or why not?

Panic! at the Grocery Store, at Work, During Sleep… & Ways to Help

Once upon a time, I was a more-or-less “normal” person. I worried too much at times about certain things, I would over-think certain things, but there was nothing clinical about the condition.

Then the world broke, and I almost didn’t die. Follow that link, and you can see the experience that led me to anxiety, and panic attacks on the regular. The event itself from that night didn’t cause the panic attacks, I don’t think — not dealing with it properly because I was too busy, did.

And the anxiety got horrible, and panic attacks happened at the grocery store, at work, while driving through tunnels. I was terrified of almost-not dying and only began to trust that I would be okay as time went on. I realized that I had had panic attacks in the past — usually stemming from my fear of dying from one of my food allergies (or really, just having the sensation from food allergies), but also Freddy Krueger (oh, yes, I went there).

But as I was now deep into my fears about dying and feeling weird, the observer part of me began to trace the brain connection made during a panic attack. As I began to heal, I could still see the brain connection, but it’s like you had to get past a firewall to get there, and as I had done things to relieve my stress and anxiety in general in my life, the panic attacks were that much harder to access.

I went to talk therapy which didn’t remove the fear, but reconnected me to meditation; cognitive-behavioral therapy, which really focuses recognizing the things you can control; the five-senses theorem, which states that by engaging in your senses, you’re brought to the present moment and therefore stop the looping of your mind; and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR), which helps reprogram your brain and emotions by reliving your crappy moments in a safe place.

I would looooove to learn EMDR, but right now it’s not available for therapists like me. It reminds me of tapping, in a way, only by way of your eyes instead of the physical and energetic parts of your body.

Here’s a list of things you can try to keep yourself out of the loop of anxiety, or stop panic attacks when one is trying to happen. At least, these are the things I did and do.

In the moment of the connection of a panic attack being made…

🔅List – in my mind, I would list herbs, starting with the letter ‘A’. This helped because I’m familiar enough with herbs to know many off-hand, but I also had to work a little harder with some letters. You could list games, names of people you know, anything.

🔅Name – look at all the things you can touch, especially if you’re in a room somewhere, and start to name and describe them to yourself. Cabinet – white; floor – wooden; banana – speckled yellow.

🔅Touch — FEEL what lies against your skin, FEEL, what is underneath your fingertips. Name what you feel. Describe what you feel.

🔅Listen – hear a sound, and name what it is. This, however, would backfire sometimes, as the sound I heard was my HEART. And then I’d freak out more!

🔅Don’t fight it. Observe it. Which leads me to the time that I didn’t fight my panic attack. I was at work, and while I recognized what was happening, I was very close to telling my client I needed to step outside for a moment to catch my breath. Instead of fighting it, I let it happen, and looked at it in wonder — (listen and feel) the faster and louder heartbeat, (feel and see) the slight shaking of my hands, (listen and feel) my labored breathing… and then it went away. I felt like an Olympic Champion afterwords.

🔅Listen to calming music… like Abbey Road.

🔅Move! – once during a forming panic attack at a doctor’s office, I found myself doing yoga asanas, really aligning into the poses. Moving and breathing helped relax me. I have wiggled my toes or tapped on body parts to bring myself into the moment and out of my mind. Use Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) if you know it.

A nasty habit I formed over the past year is pinching myself (feel). I will wake up in a state of panic during the first 45 minutes of sleep and am worried I’m dead, worried I forgot to take some medicine to keep me alive, worried I’m about to be trapped in mind…all fun things.

The pinching turned to BITING, unfortunately, so now I’ll wear socks on my hands if I’m going to have a night like that. For awhile I was afraid of sleeping because of it — but I got over that! I’ve accepted it, figured out how to move on with it. I do not fight it. I have a catch phrase to repeat to myself upon waking, when I know it’s going to happen (like a color, or something silly), or have the gloves on.

Outside of a panic attack (AKA – remember to TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF!):

🔅meditation

🔅yoga

🔅EMDR (with a therapist)

🔅CBT (with a therapist)

🔅hiking, walking, running, dancing — movement, preferably outside!

If you have anxiety and/or panic attacks, feel free to add your own suggestions!