06: How I Overcame Severe Anxiety & Panic Attacks in 4 Steps
Do you wake up feeling anxious every day? In this episode, I share my personal journey of battling severe anxiety and daily panic attacks for 8 years while I was healing from topical steroid withdrawal (TSW). In my work now as a shamanic practitioner, emotional integration coach, and registered nurse, I’ve learned not only how to manage my anxiety and mental health fully, but to help others do it too.
I share a powerful 4-step process that’s helped me take control and find relief from anxiety. Learn how to notice, locate, and name your anxiety, utilize deep breathing techniques, make grounding statements, and bring yourself back to the present moment. These steps, when practiced regularly (even individually), can bring you immediate relief and lasting calm.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 My journey with anxiety, panic attacks, and TSW
00:50 Step 1 - Notice, locate, and name your anxiety
01:16 Bonus Tip - Locating your anxiety
02:25 Bonus Tip - How to connect with your body
04:24 Step 2 - Take a deep breath
05:14 Bonus Tip - How to dissolve anxious energy
06:16 Bonus Tip - Visualization
06:43 Step 3 - Make a grounding statement
08:43 Step 4 - Bring yourself back to the present
09:11 Bonus Tip - How to use a grounding object
09:43 Bonus Tip - My favorite techniques
10:39 Recap and final tips
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Content Warning: This episode discusses mental health struggles. I'm a registered nurse sharing my personal story for educational purposes only — this is not medical advice. If you're struggling, call or text 988 (U.S./Canada) or visit https://findahelpline.com/
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[00:00:00] I know what it's like to wake up with your heart and mind racing and like you're battling your body before you even get out of bed. The good news is that anxiety doesn't have to control you. And today I'm gonna show you how. I'm Cassie. I'm a shamanic practitioner, an emotional integration coach and a registered nurse that used to be really sick.
When I was healing from a severe skin condition called topical steroid withdrawal, or TSW, I had extremely high baseline level anxiety and panic attacks almost daily for eight years. I worked really hard to heal my mental state for many years, and now when I feel anxiety come up, I know exactly how to work with it and it doesn't rule my life the way that it used to.
In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through four steps to help you feel relief anytime and any place you're feeling anxious. So here we go. Step one, notice, locate, and name it. Notice that you're feeling anxious and name it out loud or to yourself or to someone that is open to [00:01:00] supporting you. You don't need to know where it's coming from or why it's there in that moment.
The most important thing is that you recognize and acknowledge that you're feeling it because you can't address something that you don't know is there. It's like if someone were knocking on your door and you can't respond because you don't even hear them knocking. The extra step here that I mentioned that is so helpful, but not everyone does, is to locate it in your body.
And what I mean by this is that oftentimes there's a physical sensation that comes along with the anxiety and it's located wherever it is in your body at that time. It could be in your head, it can be tension in your shoulders. It can be a tightness in your throat. It can be palpitations that you're feeling in your heart.
It can feel like knots in your stomach. It can feel like. Tingling sensation on your entire body or in your chest. It can change from time to time, but these are often physical sensations and signals that your body is giving you that are paired along with anxiety sometimes. So it's helpful to tune into how your [00:02:00] body is feeling and where you're feeling these kind of sensations if you do feel them, so that you can more easily pinpoint and target your area of attention in order to bring the anxiety down.
If you don't feel a physical sensation like that located anywhere in your body specifically or even generalized, don't worry about it. The importance of the step is it's just giving you more information so that you can know how to work with it better and move through it from there. If you're someone that has trouble connecting with your physical body and the sensations that it might be feeling, you can start by doing just a routine little check-in practice with yourself on a regular basis throughout the day.
It doesn't have to be anything big, but just every now and then, take a pause and think about what sensations do I feel in my body? Do I feel any tension anywhere? How are my shoulders feeling? How's my jaw feeling? How's my back feeling? How my stomach feeling? Just kind of pausing throughout your daily life every now and then to check in and just do a quick [00:03:00] assessment.
Even if you don't feel any sensations at that time, repeating that practice is going to help you strengthen it. The reason this step is so important of noticing, locating, and naming your anxiety when you feel it is because there is an instant energetic shift that happens as soon as you notice and name it.
Even if you don't feel it right away. Naming it shifts you into feeling like you have more agency, more control or power. You have greater perspective now. It's like, imagine if you're in a little snow globe and someone is shaking it up right, and you don't know that you're in a snow globe, then you're gonna be like rocking and rolling and you're gonna be like, oh my God, this is so wild.
I'm suffering. You know? But then if you did know that you were in a snow globe, you might still be rocking and rolling and shaking all over the place, but you can look around and be like, okay. I'm just in a snow globe, like this is just what happens. Someone's shaking the snow globe. I'm going around in it, and that's that.
Even if I'm still banging my head against the side of the snow globe, it's like, okay, at least I had this greater [00:04:00] perspective. It allows me to have the experience in a really different way. Just know this is not necessarily an easy step for me. When I was going through TSW and I had so much physical pain, it was really hard for me to like tune into my body and to parse the sensations of like, is it pain?
Is it anxiety? A lot of times it was both, but just know the more that you practice the skill, you will get better at it. Now to step two. Once you name it, just take a deep breath. Now, there are a lot of different breathing techniques and breath work that really help with anxiety, but honestly, the most important thing is just that you breathe, period.
And if you feel called to go deeper into like a breathing practice, then follow your intuition because it's probably gonna work really well for you and your body. But if you don't really feel called to get into the details of any kind of breathing, then a general helpful tip, which is just what I do, is to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.[00:05:00]
And it's also really helpful to exhale longer than you inhale. You can count during your inhale and your exhale if you want, but honestly, the most important thing is just that you remember to deep breathe. And if counting helps, then you should do it. So now going back to when you were locating your anxiety, and if you could feel it in any specific place in your body and naming kind of like what it felt like, what the sensation was, then you can use that information now with your breath as well to bring the sensation down.
And you can do this by just bringing your attention to that place in your body where you were feeling the sensation of anxiety, bringing your attention there in your mind. As you exhale, then imagine whatever sensation that was, whatever tension, whatever, tightness, whatever tingling, whatever it felt like.
Imagine it just dissipating and dissolving as you exhale, and then when you take your next inhale. You re-up [00:06:00] and exhale and imagine it dissolving even more. And as your attention is there on that place in your body, then you can even start to feel in your body that tension or whatever it was, the anxiety dissipating and dissolving.
And it can also be really helpful to add visualization to it if it's helpful for you. So if the sensation felt really hard, that as you're exhaling. You can visualize whatever it looks like in the place that you're feeling it softening, and start to feel that in your body too. So with this step of taking a deep breath, it's meant to be repeated as much as you need to in order to bring that sensation down.
Now, step three is to make a grounding state. So after breathing or during, if you need further help to just really ground yourself in your body, in the place that you are, then you can say a statement with the intention of really grounding yourself. And the point [00:07:00] is to basically bring yourself back to the present and remind your body that, hey, you're actually safe.
You're not really in danger. This is just anxiety. So some examples of statements that you can use are things like, I'm okay. I'm safe. I am here. So the most important thing here is that the words you're saying actually resonate with you. What works for me might not work for you, and so the trick is to make sure that it resonates.
But how do you know if it does? When you say it and hear yourself, you'll feel a tiny shift. It'll feel like a tinge of comfort. Of reassurance. You won't be in your mind anymore. It'll feel like your body can hear you. It's kinda like if your friend were to give you bad advice and you're like, what? It didn't resonate right?
But if someone that really understands you and says something to reassure you, to comfort you in the moment, and it just hits the nail on the head in a different way, [00:08:00] you had this feeling of like, oh wow. Thanks for saying that. Thanks. That really helps. The statement that you make when you're talking to yourself and making a grounding statement is meant to hit on target like that.
You'll notice it's really nuanced too. Sometimes telling yourself I'm okay, feels really different from you are okay. As long as whatever you choose to say resonates with you at that time, in that moment, then it'll help you move through the anxious feeling that's coming up. And if you want more help with this skill, specifically finding the right words that truly resonate, I have a free video training on it called affirmations that actually work.
The link is in the description. Finally, number four, bring yourself back to the present. There are a lot of ways that you can do this. Sometimes the grounding statement is enough. Sometimes it's a different statement, like maybe I needed to say I'm okay to ground, and [00:09:00] now to really bring myself back to the present and in the room that I'm in.
I wanna say, I'm here now. I'm here now. So maybe it's just a different statement. Another helpful tool that you can use is to focus on a grounding object. So wherever you are, you wanna just pick an object that's within your eye line and focus on it and think about all of the details of it and name those details.
And so whatever that object is, you just wanna notice each and every little detail about it. What size, color, shape is it? What's the texture? All of the little details of that one object, and it'll help bring you back into the room or the space that you're in physically. Another really helpful one that I use a lot with my healing clients to really bring them back into the present, into the space is to focus on a physical sensation and not the one that your anxiety was coming from.
If you did feel a sensation like that earlier. But there are a couple that really help to [00:10:00] ground you, and my favorite are to plant your feet. Just plant your feet firmly on the ground, shoulder width apart, and feel your feet pressing into the ground. Feel your feet supporting you. Another one is to feel the seat underneath you.
Focus on the surface supporting your body. Bring your attention there and let yourself slowly come back to your body, present where you are right now, and that helps to bring you back to the present. If you want more help with this specific skill, I have a perfect video all about how being present changed my life.
I'll link it at the end and in the description below, and those are the four steps to help you relieve anxiety in any place and at any time. Number one, notice, locate and name it. Number two, take a deep breath as many as you need to and imagine any areas of tension or high sensation just [00:11:00] dissolving as you exhale.
You can also use visualizations here as well if it's helpful. Number three, make a grounding statement as long as the words you're saying resonate with you, and if they don't change them. And number four, bring yourself back to the present. The more you practice these things, even as individual steps throughout your daily life and make them routine, the easier it will become to default to them in times that you really need it.
If you found something valuable in this episode, let me know with a comment what resonated with you and give it a like to tell the algorithm that it was helpful so that it can help more people just like you. Be sure to subscribe. I put out new episodes every Tuesday with more stories and tools for your healing.
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