My phone rings at 10:30 in the morning. It’s my daughter calling from school.
“Hello.”
“Mom, can you pick me up?”
“Why?” “What’s the matter?”
“ I don’t feel good.” “Can you just pick me up.”
I feel her anxiety through the phone but I ask anyway. “Are you having an anxiety attack?”
I go through the protocol of seeing the school nurse and the school psychologist with her when anxiety attacks occur.
She desperately replied, “Can you just pick me up.” “I don’t feel well.”
I scurried over to the high school. Within a short time we are in the school psychologist office allowing her to experience the anxiety attack which began in the classroom several minutes prior. Anxiety attacks can last 10 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes depending on the root of the trigger.
The school psychologist and I sat there watching her. We did not touch her, nor did we try to console or comfort her. We said nothing. We simply let her have the experience, holding the space she needed as she went through the pain. I looked across the desk, observing the staff professional. She’s been through this before, I bet dozens of times guiding students in similar situations.
Full-blown panic attacks are difficult to watch, especially when it is your kid experiencing it. There was a moment I wanted to pick her up like the three year old she used to be and make the pain go away but that would be me controlling the situation again. Besides, she’s a teenager now who wants very little touch these days. Most importantly, space was what she needed. We needed to hold space for her while she experienced the attack.
A few minutes had gone by and I felt the need to give her a reminder. “Remember to breathe.” That’s all I said in those moments of letting the pain pass. Remember to breathe will bring you back to your core. The breath dissolves the thought which allows the pain to go away and you are back in your center. It is in our center when we experience no pain.
After is was all over, she was asked what she was thinking about. Her thought was about the future, a ‘‘what if” situation that will probably never take place but yet that’s where her mind went. It’s amazing how a single thought can cause a full-blown panic attack. I am fascinated with thought forms and how powerful they are. Our thoughts are very powerful and we are unaware of this universal law most times in our lives. We go about our day, our hours, our minutes without even considering our thoughts. We do not realize how we unconsciously create experiences in our lives from a single thought.
I often ask my children, “how are your thoughts?” rather than asking them how they feel because their thoughts create their feelings. They know and understand this from mindfulness therapy. As for most of us, mindfulness takes practice, it is a lifetime practice. For my children, understanding about their thought process is a big step in learning how to manage their anxiety and depression.
Imagine what we can create in our lives when we are conscious, always aware of where our thoughts are. Unconscious, negative thoughts create mind body pain, the duality of this experience is to be mindful and become conscious. What would the experience be for us if we are aware at all times of where our thoughts are every day, every hour and every minute of our lives?