Understand where Panic Attacks come from and learn tools to decrease them with insights from Dr. Peters’ book, “A Path Through the Jungle.” In this mini-series, we talk about how your brain changes that lead to Panic Attacks and how to heal it. We discuss the emotional chimp mind and the more rational “human mind.” Dr. Liz talks about actual steps you can take if a Panic Attack hits and how to help a friend or loved one through one.

“Helpful Autopilots” phrases are given throughout this episode.

“A Path through the Jungle” can be purchased on Amazon:  https://a.co/d/4hx7M7M

See more about Dr. Peters at https://chimpmanagement.com

About Dr. Liz

Winner of numerous awards including Top 100 Moms in Business, Dr. Liz provides psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, and hypnosis to people wanting a fast, easy way to transform all around the world. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology, is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) and has special certification in Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy. Specialty areas include Anxiety, Insomnia, and Deeper Emotional Healing.

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Do you have Chronic Insomnia? Find out more about Dr. Liz’s Better Sleep Program at https://bit.ly/sleepbetterfeelbetter

Search episodes at the Podcast Page http://bit.ly/HM-podcast

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A problem shared is a problem halved. In person and online hypnosis and CBT for healing and transformation. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.drlizhypnosis.com.

Listened to in over 140 countries, Hypnotize Me is the podcast about hypnosis, transformation, and healing. Certified hypnotherapist and Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Dr. Liz Bonet, discusses hypnosis and interviews professionals doing transformational work

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Transcript

Hi everyone, dr Liz here. This is the third episode on the book A Path Through the Jungle by Professor Steve Peters. Dr Steve Peters, so I’m doing a series on this book because I found it so life-changing. There’s two previous episodes when that just reviews the basics of the chimp versus the human. The chimp is that emotional part of our mind and the human is more of that logical part of our mind, or reasonable we’re going to call it, because it’s not just logic. It considers all kinds of factors when it’s operating, but it’s not based simply on emotion. The chimp makes decisions simply on emotion. The human part of us does not considers lots of factors. There’s an episode on the chimp versus the human, there’s one on anxiety and how to decrease anxiety, how to get it more under control, and this one is specifically about panic attacks.

Now I will say here that I am going to try to do my best. Okay, this is really hard information sometimes to explain in like a 30 minute podcast episode, but I’m going to try to do my best to condense it here to help some of you out there. Now, if you’re listening to this, either you want to learn about panic attacks, someone in your life has panic attacks or you’ve had a panic attack or multiple. Let’s say you have lots of panic attacks and you’re looking for information about them Kudos. When I work with panic attacks in my practice, we usually decrease them to less than once a week, sometimes less than once a month, within eight weeks or so With some of the information that I’m presenting here. But even before I had this format of information in this book, it was typically, I always say, like 8 to 12 sessions. Hardly ever does someone go past 12 sessions because their panic attacks are decreased or go away. Now, that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen again, but it goes from, let’s say, multiple times a week to less than once a month. Let’s say that’s our goal really.

I think I had my first panic attack in college, but it was just one and it was in reaction to what was really a relatively minor situation. It’s sort of laughable to me now, but I knew the feeling when people talked about a panic attack, of that full body rush of like the urgency behind it, feeling like I have to solve this now, like this is an emergency. Often people with panic attacks end up in the ER because they think they’re having heart attacks and when they get the cardiac workup and it comes back normal, usually someone tells them oh, you’re having panic attacks. These are not cardiac symptoms.

My ex-husband had multiple, multiple panic attacks and eventually a cardiologist said to him you have to tell yourself that this is not a heart attack. Those are his words. This is I don’t know how many years later 20, 30 years later, but I still remember it. You have to tell yourself that you’re not having a heart attack and talk yourself down. Now, what do we call that? We call that cognitive therapy. Okay, cognitive behavioral therapy is you let the panic attack pass, you do not go to the ER and you tell yourself I’m not having a heart attack, my heart is perfectly fine.

After the cardiologist did that, his panic attacks decreased and eventually he hardly ever had them, like I don’t know. I think there were years without him having one. So it was just this key piece of information that he needed, and he was married to a psychologist at the time. But, believe me, nothing I said would make a difference. Okay, I recognized it pretty clearly as panic attack from the beginning, but his dad had died of a heart attack in his 50s. His dad had had five heart attacks. Now this is a Cuban man, where he was a drinker and a smoker and he loved to have parties. He’s apparently very social, very opposite of my husband. He was more of an introvert and really didn’t drink that much, never smoked, partly because of his dad’s history. But this was in his mind my dad died of a heart attack. My dad had five heart attacks, so when this happens I must be having a heart attack Until finally he ended up at the cardiologist and the cardiologist said you’re perfectly healthy, your heart is perfectly healthy. You are having panic attacks. But the important piece of this information and why I’m telling you, is because he had a belief underneath. He had a thought underneath that this has to be a heart attack, because my dad had heart attacks. It was a family history belief and most of us have these. We have some kind of belief I talk about it in the previous episode this belief that I was going to die in my 50s because my dad and his grandfather died in their early 50s.

That’s a family belief that’s passed down. They come in all kinds of different forms. Some family beliefs are positive, like I remember I was sitting in one of my friend’s houses. He’s like a friend, of a friend really, and he had three little kids and one of them had lied about something I don’t know. He finds out and she comes over and he says to her do we lie in this family? And she shakes her little head no, he’s like, okay, what do we do? We tell the truth. She says, okay, so are you going to tell the truth now? And she shakes her head yes, now. I don’t know how many more times he has to have this conversation, but he didn’t put it in like you should tell the truth because it’s a good thing to do. He put it as in this is our family value. So we all tell the truth in this family. We do not lie in this family. I thought it was a genius way to put it actually in terms of parenting at the time Like this is a family value. That’s an example of a positive belief that’s getting passed down. That is good, to be honest. So there can be positive beliefs that get passed down. There can be negative beliefs that get passed down. Now let’s get to the point here.

Panic attacks are often coming from a belief underneath that’s formed during a traumatic time. So something traumatic happens, the belief gets formed and then the panic attack keeps happening. Or a panic attack will get triggered with a certain action, meaning like PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. A panic attack is a classic symptom of it when something triggers the belief of it. When something triggers the belief. When you’re talking about veterans who’ve been in war, and they often talk about fireworks sounding like a gunshot, or maybe they hear an actual gunshot we heard gunshots all the time in South Florida. Even though we were in a relatively safe neighborhood, we’d still hear them in the distance. Someone hears a gunshot. The belief is I’m under attack. That’s the body’s belief, and then it triggers a panic attack. Now this happens all in an instant. It is underneath, going on, it’s subconscious, it’s not a conscious. No one ever consciously has a panic attack. Okay, that’s not how it works. It is unconscious. It’s boom in a snap and the body goes off.

Repeated panic attacks are activating that chimp part of us, the unconscious part of us, the emotional part of us. They’re an emotional experience, part of us. They’re an emotional experience. They’re a very physical experience, but they’re not an emotional message. So when we’re talking about anxiety, like the previous episode, anxiety is often the chimp trying to send you a message like something needs to be done here. Something needs to be done here until the human figures it out and makes a plan to do something about it. But with panic attacks, what Dr Peters calls them is ghost ghost messages, because they have to do witha habit that stems from the past. It’s something that triggers the body in the past that’s now triggering it in the present. So that’s why we call it a ghost. It’s still the human part of us that has to manage the experience and the symptoms. It’s the human part that the cardiologist was talking to with my ex-husband. Your human part has to come up and say I’m not having a heart attack, I am perfectly healthy. That’s the human part. The panic attack is stemming from a memory of the past or belief of the past.

Let me talk a little bit about trauma here. After a trauma, your brain shifts, so the volume and size of different areas changes. The hippocampus anterior cingulate both decrease in size. The amygdala increases, making it difficult to distinguish between the past and the present. So this is an actual brain experience that’s going on. No one is to blame here. You’re not flawed, irresponsible, crazy or damaged, but you are more emotional due to the weakened emotional regulation center of the brain. So it’s your physiology, not your character, that’s dictating these unexpected responses. Believe me, there’s thousands of soldiers who will tell you it’s not their character. They have incredibly good character and it’s not that that’s dictating these unexpected responses. It’s their physiology. It’s being in a trauma state that then shifts those brain areas.

So when you’re in that, so when you’re in that, someone else telling you to calm down, be reasonable, toughen up, that’s typically useless. Now someone can be there with you through the panic attack, but you have to figure out what’s most helpful for that person to do. If you’re the one having the panic attack, if you’re the helper, you have to ask what do you want me to do, and then do that, okay. So sometimes we ask what do you want me to do, and then we don’t do it. Our own physiology takes over, our own, let’s say, instinct to help takes over. So we have to remember in those moments all right, they just want me to be here and hug them right. Really, really tight.

The newest season, season 48 of Survivor. There is an autistic young woman on there and she makes an alliance slash friendship. For those of you who don’t watch Survivor, it’s called alliances on Survivor, she makes an alliance with a dad who looks like he’s probably in his forties, let’s say maybe early forts, I’m not quite sure how old he is Joe. She makes an alliance with Joe, who’s a dad, and tells him this is what helps me when I get unregulated that’s what she calls it, and in the case of autism, sometimes it is actual panic attacks, sometimes it is an unregulated feeling. They have a very difficult time calming down out of that feeling and sometimes they need the very firm stimulation. But she tells him I need my hand squeezed and a very tight kind of bear hug. And this is a bigger man than her. He could have been the same size person, honestly, but it works to her favor that he’s much bigger than her, honestly, but it works to her favor that he’s much bigger than her. So they’re in this competition. They almost lose, they don’t lose and she gets dysregulated. If you want to watch Survivor 48, season 48, this is a great example of this and you can see that she’s dysregulated Even though they won. She’s struggling to calm herself down. And so finally Joe, who’s on a different team in that particular competition, gets the okay to go over and help her and he squeezes her hands really tight, like she asked him to do. He gives her a big bear hug, like she asked him him to do. He does not say anything to her, he does not say calm down. He does nothing like that. He does what she asked him to do when she was not dysregulated. This is a very touching moment in survivor. It actually made me cry. It made Jeff cry, the host, and he said he’s never even cried on Survivor before and it was very touching.

Part of what I think helped Joe do what he needed to do is because he is a fire chief or fire captain. I know there’s different levels there, but he’s not just a fireman. He’s progressed. He is let’s call him a fire captain and forgive me if that’s wrong. So he deals with extreme situations all the time, supervising people in extreme situations all the time. He is the one that has to stay calm in that situation. That’s what the firemen do, firewomen. They come in and they stay calm. They’re the humans, they’re not the chimps. The chimps are trying to get the F out of the house because it’s burning down or the chimp is having a problem and the fire people show up. This is in the US and you know, do EMT services whatever they need to do. They assess the situation, but they are the calm ones. So in this moment he was the calm one helping her and he could help her because he’s the calm one.

Someone’s not calm, they’re not gonna be able to help. Sometimes you learn this in early motherhood. If the baby starts crying and crying and crying and you get worked up, you’re never gonna get the baby calm. You just gotta calm yourself down first, then you can calm the baby. It’s very difficult. Sometimes you learn different strategies to help yourself calm down. I was in a car accident in college I think that was my very first one that I was ever in and I realized I get super calm in emergencies. I’m not the person freaking out, I am the one who’s super calm and logical at the moment and I thought, oh, this is going to help me in my career because I was already on the path to being a psychologist. It’s like, oh yeah, if I have a natural ability to stay calm in an emergency, this can only help me, because I’m trying to help people who are not so calm. They’re coming in because they’re not calm. Something’s going on, they need help. So if you want to see what a dysregulation slash panic attack looks like. That’s a good one. Survivor 48.

Another one is Alone. This one season of Alone I watched where the guy used to be in the Australian military, because Alone and they’re in Tasmania, so it may be billed as Alone Australia. They’re actually in Tasmania and he has a panic attack on camera because he got I think he got triggered by a helicopter flying overhead. If I remember correctly, he got triggered by something. He goes through it and then he works through it. He tells the camera what’s happening and so often it’s a very internal experience. The person can sometimes look frozen versus dysregulated, crying that type of thing, but internally they are freaking out. Okay. So all of that to say to tell you to calm down or be reasonable or tough enough is useless. The brain has taken over.

There’s also a risk that you dissociate yourself from your body. That’s a coping strategy. It’s a great coping strategy sometimes and other times it doesn’t benefit you so much. If this becomes your identity and you dissociate even from those closest to you, there’s a real risk of depression, suicide, what feels like unmanageable levels of anxiety. So it is important that we learn strategies to get the panic attacks under control to decrease them. That’s what we mean by under control. We want to decrease them so that they hardly ever happen. So what do we do? There’s lots of things to do.

I’m going to cover a couple here. One is we start to tell ourselves panic attacks are not dangerous. They’re just unpleasant and inconvenient. Any therapist you talk to that works with panic attacks will tell you that grounding is a skill that somebody learns and that you teach in your practice different ways to ground. You can do it through five points, like let me listen for five sounds. Let me look at five things in my environment. What you’re doing is bringing yourself into the present. Let me touch five things. That’s a sense of touch I am safe. You can tell yourself I am safe. I am safe. This is not dangerous. It’s unpleasant and inconvenient. This is from the past. I’m going to bring myself to the present. I’m not having a heart attack, I am perfectly healthy.

Sometimes a thought comes in of maybe they missed something and I am having a heart attack and you have to talk yourself out of it. I am not having a heart attack. I have had a whole cardiac workup. I am perfectly healthy. I am perfectly safe. You can choose support statements. I gave a lot of these in the previous episode, but again you have to find one that works for you.

I already know from past experiences that this is a panic attack. It is not a heart attack. It’s okay to pull over. If I need to pull over, that’s if someone’s driving, this will pass. Sometimes I have people time them and invariably they’re less than 10 minutes, but in the moment it feels like they’re going to last forever. But often that will give them concrete data like this will pass. It will be gone in about 10 minutes. Very rare for a panic attack to last over 20 minutes, like an actual physiological experience of the panic attack. Now, anxiety can last over 20 minutes, for sure. We live with anxiety all day, but the actual panic attack pretty rare for it to go past 20 minutes. So it’s like, okay, I’ve just got to hold on here, this is going to pass. I’ve done the best I can. I’m working on this. I’m practicing skills. It’s okay to take my time.

I was working with someone who had a fear of driving and sometimes people will have panic with someone who had a fear of driving and sometimes people will have panic attacks and they have a fear of driving. And then they’re like what if I have a panic attack in the car while I’m driving and then I get into an accident and something awful is going to happen? So we work through that and it’s pretty rare that they even have a panic attack in the car. So I always ask about that, like, has it ever happened? And 95% of the time they say no. It’s the fear that it will happen that stops them. So it’s like, okay, I understand, I have this fear. It may happen. We can’t say it won’t ever happen. It may happen, but I’m doing my best to manage it. So that might be a thought that someone holds on to.

So this is the human part that comes in. You could tell yourself this is my chimp. Who’s active? My chimp is trying to protect me, but it’s my human that will protect me. The chimp just makes an attempt, but does not a very good one. It’s just just trying to, you know, throw messages at you. It’s the human that will protect me.

Here are a few from the books. Page 114 of the book Security can never be absolute. We cannot guarantee that we’re always completely safe. So sometimes, going to that side of things, that thought is more reassuring than I’m completely safe. Maybe you’re not. Maybe you heard something and you’re not completely safe.

I think everyone has had the experience of hearing something in your house and you’re like it’s some, does someone break in? That’s not a normal noise. What do I do? There’s sometimes a panic that comes up, sometimes anxiety. Sometimes it’s a more calmer response, but let’s say it’s on the panicky side. It’s like, okay, I have a choice here. I can get up and check it out, I can go back to sleep One of the two you choose.

But security can never be absolute. Sometimes, if someone has an alarm system secured or, let’s say, a dog that would bark, they would say I have an alarm system that will go off if someone actually breaks in, or the dog would bark. Believe me, my dog would not bark if someone broke in. She was super cute, but she slept pretty hard. But that could be something that you might say to yourself. Part of that list is some days will be good and some not so good. But I’m working on this. You could add that I’m an adult and can manage whatever comes my way. That’s a good one. I can manage whatever comes my way. If you don’t have that belief installed underneath, that one’s not going to fit for you and that’s something to work on.

There’s plenty of people who think I can’t manage anything when I’m doing core healing, which we’re looking at deeper beliefs and changing deeper beliefs and which ones get in our way. I do assessment. I have them rate on a scale. I feel like I can manage things, or sometimes they rate them very low. I’m assessment. I have them rate on a scale. I feel like I can manage things, or sometimes they rate them very low. I’m dependent. I can’t manage things on my own. It’s often paired with everyone depends on me. I’m the responsible one. I assess that one too. I always think is like okay, what’s going on here? Someone’s switching between the two, everyone’s depending on me and I don’t feel like I can manage it. That’s legitimate. That’s often a feeling too. Another one on this list page 114, is there are always people who will help me. That’s a good one. If the chimp says you shouldn’t accept help from anyone everyone is dangerous then we have a problem with the chimp. It’s the human that has to come in and say it’s okay to accept help from people who want to help me. There are always people who will help me.

When my daughter went to Italy for her freshman year of college and she was flying internationally alone for the first time and I said, mia, there are always people who want to help you. Like if something happens, you look for a woman to help you. And something did happen. A flight got canceled in between, like Bain in Italy or France in Italy, something like that. Oh no, she got stuck in England. That’s what it was. She got stuck in England and called home. It’s middle of the night.

My ex-husband always keeps his phone on, so I don’t have to, and so he’s trying to handle this. But finally, when we talk, she said mom, nobody wanted to help me. And I was like what she said? No, no one wanted to help me. They were very mean and I was like, really, and so we talked through it and it’s like, oh, people did help her actually, they just weren’t very nice about it. I guess when I sent her off and I said people want to help you, she expected them to be nice about it, as did I. I was flabbergasted because usually, honestly, when I travel, people want to help me and they’re often very nice about it. But she got the experience of. They were not very nice about it, but they did help her. They got her checked into a hotel until they could figure out the flights, all this stuff. So people did help her, just not very nice about it.

Another one he lists on page 114 is to stop my chimp from worrying. I need to draw a line. This one’s really interesting to me. I need to draw a line. This one’s really interesting to me. I need to draw a line. So this means we talk back to that chimp. We say, hey, I am handling this, I am doing my best, I am getting better day by day.

Because, believe me, the chimp can come in and ruin everything. I had an incident recently where I just felt like an awful mother and I know in general I’m a really good mother. I’ve worked very hard to be a good mother and I don’t consider it something you’re born with. I do consider that a skill. And the chimp came up and said you’re an awful mother and I said I’m not. I did my best. Came up and said you’re an awful mother and I said I’m not. I did my best, I’m trying. I’m still trying to do my best. I’m still trying to solve this. I made a mistake. This is a lesson I’m learning as a mother. Like those types of things, set a limit on the chimp. You’re not going to ruin motherhood for me for the rest of my life.

Remember the chimp is irrational. It is the irrational part of your brain. But we’ve got to acknowledge the irrational and it really helps if someone can do that with you, whether that’s a partner, a therapist, a doctor, I don’t know a friend that we’ve recognized the irrational part. The other day I was crying and I just wanted my husband to listen to me. He started going into fix-it mode like well, you know, this is this. And I was like, no, I just need you to listen and understand and that in itself is beneficial.

My dog died in January and man, those first couple of weeks were hard. I was crying every single day for weeks and one of my friends she said I know people say it’s just a dog, but that’s not true at all. Like my dogs are like my children. She has children like human children okay, so she knows the difference. But she’s like my dogs are like my children and it is devastating. And she kept telling me about how devastating it was when one of her dogs died and that helped so much, just for her to understand that this was significant. That Zoe was a daily part of my life. My work schedule was around that dog because she had to have medication in the middle of the day and she stopped using the pet door. She had to have medication in the middle of the day and she stopped using the pet door. So I’d have to go home, let her out, give her medication, go back to work. I mean, really, that dog was a significant part of my life, so much comfort, and so she never minimized that.

And when you have someone in your life that doesn’t minimize it, rather validates it, listens we call that sometimes. Hold the space, just hold the space for you to cry. It can be very healing. The chimp’s whole role is to express unhappiness, panic, anxiety, sadness. That’s the chimp’s role. That’s it. The human’s role is to listen and understand and then find solutions. Sometimes we need someone in the middle there to help us out to do that listening and understanding without finding solutions and then our human can come online and find some solutions. But sometimes, if the chimp seems to be getting really out of control, what we can do is put in a regular structured exercise for the chimp.

So you choose a time of day when you can think through your feelings and emotions and express these either verbally or in writing. If you can’t manage every day, then try to pick a weekly slot and when you release your emotions you’re just writing your emotions. Then you try to move forward by addressing underpinnings of them, the beliefs underneath. So you could write down a list of the areas of your life that are unsettled or uncertain. Perhaps you write down the belief that you think is generating the panic attacks and then you look at it and say, okay, now that I’ve seen this, now that I’ve heard this, let me make a plan for this. Let me make a plan to soothe the chimp that may be expressing feelings to a friend, writing a letter to yourself or someone else, regardless of whether you send it or not. Often you need to shred those, revisiting the event, checking what beliefs you’re holding that cause the emotions to persist, and then work on changing those beliefs. That’s realistic for you. We’re not asking you to switch to unrealistic beliefs. In fact, I think it’s really important to find one that is believable for you. We’re not asking you to switch to unrealistic beliefs. In fact, I think it’s really important to find one that is believable for you.

You know I’ve seen people do this in video blogs or particularly TikTok. This will be the last story I tell and then we’ll wrap up here. There was this one woman on TikTok. Her account went viral. I cannot tell you her name, but you can search her up and she’ll pop right up when she had dated a psychopath who had constructed this whole false universe, had fake conversations with people that were supposedly his relatives, with her in the room, like all this stuff. All this came unraveled. She did TikTok videos brief, telling the stories, part one, part two. They had, like I don’t know, a hundred parts or something and it occurred to me she is getting those emotions out. This is a way for her to process what happened to her and help a lot of people along the way, because that happens and it was very validating to other people, like then it happens to them too.

You don’t see a psychopath coming. Sometimes you do, but if you get caught up in it, part of it is that you didn’t see it coming. You figure it out later. Part of it is that you didn’t see it coming, you figure it out later. There was a guy I dated who my business partner at the time had known for 20 plus years 20 plus years and said, no, this is a great guy. He’s not perfect, but you know, he’s been in the military. He’s this, he’s that. He was a complete psychopath. Complete, checked all the boxes and turns out that he had pretended to be in the military all those years. She never figured it out and this was not someone who was dumb. Okay, she had never figured it out. I was dating him a couple of months. He made some very dangerous threats. I had friends check had he ever been in the military? And the answer came back no. Now she could have checked, but if this is someone that’s in your life since I think she’d known him since high school it never occurred to her to check. It never occurred to her that he was lying about his entire life. He had lied about property he owned, he lied about military service. He lied about all kinds of stuff. So, due to my own personal work, therapy experiences, all this stuff, this is not the first psychopath I had dated. By the way, I picked it up pretty quickly this time and that was done. So it’s not like you see these people coming.

Anyway, my point is that this woman on TikTok this is a way for her to work through feelings. Maybe you choose to do that Understand this very public way. You’re going to get some pushback. There’s risk to that. I’m not necessarily recommending that way. I actually recommend much more private working through things. I’m not necessarily recommending that way. I actually recommend much more private working through things.

I think there is an important part of psychotherapy that’s called confidentiality, meaning that’s a safe space and no one’s going to discover what you’re talking about. Okay, there’s not going public. That is one of the tenets of psychotherapy. That allows for healing Because you don’t have to worry about being public and having public shaming coming in, which often happens on social media. But anyway, I would say that’s one example of someone working through that. All right, people. Let’s wrap up here about panic attacks. I hope this helped somebody. I do recommend the book Path Through the Jungle. It is chock full of all kinds of good stuff for you to work through in terms of anxiety and panic attacks in particular, as well as other other. He doesn’t. The book is not focused on panic attacks. It’s focused really on developing emotional resilience and all kinds of ways to do that I hope you are healthy and safe and I will talk to you soon. Peace.

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