Nuts & Bolts! On Transmuting Suffering, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Flashbacks & Nervous System Activation

Photo: Rusty parts, nuts and bolts at junkyard - Michigan. Copyright SJPhotography.

Nuts & Bolts! On Transmuting Suffering, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Flashbacks & Nervous System Activation

Welcome to the first run of HeartBalm Healing’s Nuts & Bolts edition. Nuts & Bolts! will be posted intermittently and will focus on the “nuts and bolts” of how things work and function; helpful, handy tools and practices for challenging times, as well as practical methods for healing and relief. These are handpicked “how-to’s” to help ease suffering when life and experiences have been turned up to frantic and unbearable, regulate when dysregulated, and offer further understanding and choice, healing modalities, and myriad options to ease the body, heart, and mind when facing times of stress or threat, at all levels. It will offer simple instructions, and graphics to help ease specific conditions, such as flashbacks, fight/flight nervous system activation, anxiety, fear and anger, and panic attacks, as well as helpful tools, methods, and other approaches to develop more hands-on, in-the-moment solutions to build your reflexes, and gift yourself with aid, self-loving habits and balm. This is not a one-size-fits-all offering but one that offers choices to find what works for you, customize and build your own toolbox and find ways that meet you where you are and fit your specific needs.

In this first offering, we will discuss practices to help during and after flashbacks, panic attacks, and nervous system activation, and how to regulate, balance and bring bodily systems and mind back to equilibrium using breathwork and grounding techniques.

I use the word transmutation, in the title, precisely because its meaning is specific to the outcome that we want to achieve: [noun] the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form. To feel yourself going into fight/flight mode, or sit in a flashback or panic attack is unbearable but to have the right gear in your toolbox ready to use to change from one state into another is empowering. Over time these practices will become more rote within yourself and automatically come to the fore when the body and mind become hijacked. Practicing these regularly is an art of coming back to the moment fully, of bringing presence and breath into your immediate notice so that you can bring yourself down from your head and somatically into your heart and body. It is a way to integrate, embrace and open to yourself and come back to balance and wholeness.

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Breathwork

At any stage of a flashback or anxiety attack, or during times of stress, fear and anger you may find yourself in a chaotic free fall or feeling out of control. In these instances, start by checking your breathing. Breathing is a normal function of the body and has its own rhythm and flow. In situations where your breath changes out of its natural and healthy rhythm, it can be an important signal to guide you back to the moment, and back to the breath. This is a great somatic response and transformative tool for moving down from the head and into the body.

Stress responses can range from nervous system activation like fight/flight responses that create quick, shallow, irregular breathing, whereas the freeze and fawn responses generate slow, shallow, halted breathing that oftentimes freeze your breathing, and bodily systems. Therefore, in all instances of stress – by simply coming back to your breath, intentionally breathing in deeply, and breathing out slowly will bring you back to yourself quickly and easily. This also slows down your heart rate and other bodily systems which can become elevated as part of the triggering process, and aid other areas of your body to slow and calm.

Breathwork techniques

• The single in – double out breathing technique. This easy breath work exercise focuses on releasing the out-breath more slowly than the in-breath. Begin by breathing in for a count of four and breathe out for a count of eight. And repeat.