Some tips on identifying and dealing with Anxiety and Emotional Shock
During the COVID-19 Pandemic
From Someone with C-PTSD
I’ve spent pretty much my whole life with, at minimum, a low-level feeling of being under threat. Feeling like something, someone, somehow – is about to attack. On bad days, that sinister feeling ramps up to an overwhelming sense of imminent disaster.
The strange thing about being a survivor of child abuse with C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder) right now is that, on the one hand, you’re going to be triggered way more than usual.I know that from just the past week or so of escalation of the virus in the media and around the world.
Example: Just this past week, I was going along, seemingly fine, getting my office work done (from home) and I started to struggle to breathe. I ignored it for a bit, kept working. I started to feel dizzy. Okay … time for some intervention, I realized. I started to bring out a few of the laundry-list of techniques that I’ve learned over the past 6 years that I’ve been engaged with healing my trauma. The first few didn’t really work. I ended up in full blown “Flight” mode (As in, Fight / Flight / Freeze) – pacing back and forth around our little apartment, rushing out onto the patio, back inside again. In my head started the doom loop about how I couldn’t breathe because it was COVID-19 and I was going to die.
And yet … I’d had exactly those symptoms before. In fact, for about a year and a half these attacks happened quite regularly. So I managed to hold on to that tiny part of my brain that remembered and could match up the symptoms, then and now. When I made that connection, I engaged a series of Acupressure points on myself that had worked in the past. And viola! I could breathe again!
And think again.
So wait, what was the pro-side? After 6 years, I’ve finally started to learn some techniques to help mitigate panic, anxiety, and emotional shock, and – perhaps more importantly, I’ve started to learn how to track my body and mind, so that I can tell when it’s happening.
So that’s why I thought I’d share. Because with the world-changing events going on around us, the depth of the uncertainty about what’s to come, I know that a lot of others out there, even those without C-PTSD or PTSD, will be feeling intense anxiety and even emotional shock.
First, a few ways to identify if you’re headed into a full blown anxiety attack, emotional shock, or perhaps if you’ve been triggered into your own trauma. Here are a few things to watch yourself for to try to catch yourself before you’ve fallen too deep down that rabbit hole:
1. Fear, anxiety, panic attacks. This includes a whole range of symptoms. Overwhelming sense of dread or terror, going blank, irritability, feeling jumpy. Physical symptoms can include heart palpitations, upset stomach, headache, dizziness, shortness of breath, shaking, insomnia.
2. Brain fog. You can’t think straight, can’t concentrate, lose focus easily.
3. Dissociation. This is the process of disconnecting from your own thoughts, feelings, memories, identity, and even your body. You could even get a sensation of floating, or like you are watching your own life as if it were a movie, or like you’re a ghost watching the world (this is a further form of Dissociation called Derealization/Depersonalisation, which I am quite familiar with).
4. Physical side effects. I mentioned some in #1 – but essentially this is because your body has been triggered to go into fight or flight mode. This releases adrenaline and a whole host of other hormones. In addition to the list above, also add things like random aches and pains to the list.
5. Exhaustion/Fatigue. This tends to come with more long term symptoms – but even in the short term in can take hold. This can be because of insomnia, but a general sense of unrelenting fatigue without having a reason is a key sign of trauma.
6. Your emotions are all over the map. One minute you feel amazingly powerful, happy, positive, the next like a small child about to be punished. Cycles of shame can arise, as well as blame, anger, and guilt.
7. Old patterns raise their ugly heads. Old habits that we’ve managed to come to terms with may come back: from negative thinking patterns to addictive behaviors.
8. Depression and hopelessness.
9. Inability to feel compassion for yourself or for others.
So … if you’re tracking yourself and noticing some of these arising. Or even just that nagging pit of the stomach feeling of anxiousness – what can help?
Before you can start to address the emotions and the overwhelm, it’s important to get yourself out of shock, back into your body and to fully engage your brain. When we are triggered into Fight/Flight/Freeze, a large part of our brains actually go off-line and so we lose access to logic and compassion. It’s important to reboot, get the different sides of the brain talking to each other again, in order to start to address the trauma.
These techniques can help with the reboot:
1. Cook’s Hook Up. It’s a technique where you cross one ankle over the other, then one arm over the other, twist like a pretzel, and do deep breathing. You can find tutorials online. This helps get your left and right brain talking to each other again and also helps reroute disruptive energy in the body.
2. Ice. This is more for when things get a bit extreme, but it works. Put some ice on your forehead or the back of your neck. It kind of helps reset your brain into the here and now, getting it out of a shock or trauma loop.
3. Intense smells. Like ice, it’s a way to cut through the noise. Essential oils are great for this. Lavender is really calming – but Peppermint can be great for clearing out the fog.
4. Tapping. This can be just one finger on each hand, or your feet, or your hands on your knees. Tap back and forth, left-right, left-right. Again, getting your brain to connect left to right.
5. Touch parts of your body and name them. Hold your foot, say “This is my foot”. Touch your left shoulder, “This is my left shoulder.” Sometimes it’s good to do this a few times, or to tap or squeeze the body part. You’re bringing your attention to that place, re-entering your body.
6. Box breathing. There are so many different varieties of breathing techniques that are useful. Box breathing is using a 4/4/4/4 pattern: in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold out 4, repeat. Count as you breathe. Feel the air in your lungs.
7. Heart Math. This is a great technique that allows us to reconnect with our heart center. Look up more details on line. The basics are: first, focus on the area where your heart is, basically center of your chest. Just focus for a bit. Then, start to breath in and out and imagine that your breaths are going into and coming out of your heart. Do that for several breaths. Next, think of someone or something you love. Try to feel the sensation of that feeling in your heart as you continue the heart breathing.
8. Swallow water. I know this sounds a bit strange, but it is weirdly efficient. Basically just take a small sip of water, cool/cold is usually better because you can feel it more easily. Feel the water travel down your throat, all the way into your stomach. Give yourself space between sips to notice your throat, your body, your reactions. You know you’ve got it when you notice that your body makes a small involuntary sigh after a sip of water.
9. Notice colors. Pick a color, say blue – now notice everything in the room, the car, the store, the area, that is blue. When you find something blue, say the world blue in your head or out loud.
10. Acupressure points. Here are some great points for dealing with anxiety (taken from a pdf I got online called “Self-Care for Anxiety – Tips from Chinese Medicine”. These are the ones that helped me with my recent panic attack. I do them in the order shown, but I don't think that that is necessary.
When you’re stuck in shock, triggered, it’s easy to believe that the feelings or thoughts you have at that moment are forever. Once you are back – in your body and your mind, it becomes easier to see that all things change. All things pass. This doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t make the suffering of the world or yourself less … but believe me, it makes a difference. It’s a door.
