believe – The Panic Spot

My anger quelled today. I realized a number of things that were flawed in my thought process about my aunt dying at the hands of the pandemic.

The magic that I believed in was tested and I feel like I partially failed at that test. Here’s what I learned.

Anger is Part of the Normal Grieving Process

My anger was bad, but it was part of my personal grieving process. Had I acknowledged that fact, I would have come out of it a lot faster.

When you lose someone you deem special, and they go so fast that you feel like you barely even had a moment to digest what was happening before the outcome, it is frustrating. I will always miss her laughter as well as the fun conversations we would have. This is hard to accept because I really enjoy her jovial personality and all the amazing times I have had with her. Knowing it won’t happen again, gives me a loss of control which is frustrating and enraging to me.

You Can Have Trust or Control…

I did a bible study a few weeks ago that had never left me. The Bible study devotional said:

“Nothing is going to happen without me being forewarned and prepared to face it.
The problem, however, is that trust and control do not coexist. You can have control or you can have trust, but you can’t have both.”
YouVersion Bible App

Reading this really opened my eyes to some truth I never realized. I have spent my life thinking I was trusting when truly I was forcing myself to be controlling of each situation in hopes I could navigate the outcome somehow. I am now making a conscious effort to be more trusting.

I have to tell you, choosing to trust is a more beautiful way to live. Living with trust over control is also one of the most challenging things I have ever had to do. I didn’t realize how much effort it is to change an adherent quality of myself until I started making an effort.

With all that being said, by honoring my journey to choosing trust over control, I have quelled the anger of my aunts passing by remembering that I have to trust that this was meant to happen.

Additionally, a conversation with my aunt B. opened my eyes to how being inquisitiveness doesn’t always serve us. Sometimes you have to accept the intricacies of human existence as it is because you cannot change the past. Why question what happened when it all worked out as it should? (But I suck at this because I need answers when frankly there aren’t always answers readily available.)

Love is The Beginning & Love is the End

The last thing that helped stop the angry and frustrated thinking was remembering that I loved aunt Joanne. I loved her like a mother figure, like someone who believed in me with fierce loyalty no matter what I did. I never felt as if I deserved that level of faith, but if she was capable of that for me, don’t I owe her my loving support in her departure?

Love begot the world, and love will be there in the end. She was loved and maybe she didn’t hear it enough, but at the end, we made sure she knew how loved she truly was. We comforted her with our voices while she laid in a coma, telling her how much she meant to us. I will never be able to thank God enough for that.

The pandemic is terrible. Many people are dying alone. It’s enraging and devastating, but please try to take a moment to pray that God is opening his gates to all these souls, even if they haven’t had the chance to come to Him before dying.

I could never believe anyone is unworthy of the love of our Lord, no matter what the Bible or religious leaders teach. The Jesus I have come to know is so full of love that there is no way he would leave even the worst of us to burn in some hell fire. That love from Jesus makes the anger within me feel less severe.

I didn’t intend on turning this post into a religious one, but when death, grief and loss are involved, it’s hard not to share faith and belief.

Today I am grateful I found a way to let go of my pain and anger. The feelings are still raw and the wounds deep, but I know that I can’t be angry forever. Thank you all for not judging me as I ranted about my disgust and rage yesterday. I am only imperfectly human and the shock crippled me.

Rest In Peace my sweet Aunt Joanne. You are loved everywhere you go and missed deeply. Your loss is not what I would have ever wanted, but I’m eternally grateful to have had you in my life, to have had your love, and your faith in me. Rest easy my angel. 🙏

I think research is flawed on the topic of panic disorder. I have been diagnosed with Panic Disorder, which according to the symptoms, I definitely agree that I have (had) panic disorder for a period of time. Let me give you a some information.

I developed panic attacks after my son was born 11 years ago. Prior to his birth, I was a soldier. I never feared things out loud. I was scared all the time but never let the fear stop me from living my life.

In my life, I had experienced many of the phobias or fears people live with everyday. For example, I have been stuck on the road in the middle of nowhere when a tornado came out of the sky and right for the road I was on. I have been stuck in an elevator on a cruise ship with my aunt and 2 other people when the elevator lost power, dropped between floors, and stopped functioning. I had viral pneumonia after my trip to Bali, and I stopped breathing in front of my two children. I was in a relationship with a man who threw my head into a window sill and I was trauma hawked to a trauma hospital with bleeding in my brain. I was in a hit and run car accident when a man decided he would kidnap my two friends and I. I had my heart broken when my first love hung himself from a swing set. I watched a dear friend die right in front of me from a drug overdose and I called for help that didn’t make it in time. I attempted suicide nearly 3 times and one of those times, I barely survived. I have been in numerous fist fights, including with girls 3 times my size, for bullying my handicap brother or anyone who couldn’t defend themselves, and I didn’t get killed. I got jumped at a skating rink for no reason in which I was attacked by a man and 3 women when I was 14. I suffered severe injuries and I vowed to never let myself be caught like that again. I traveled to a country that I knew nothing about and had no friends or familiar people to meet there for 5 weeks by myself. I have had to endure over 10 surgeries. I gave birth by emergency c-section when my child was born and endured 2 years of him screaming till he lost his voice or passed out because he is autistic. I sat through over 50 funerals before I turned 20. And the list goes on and on.

When I think about all the times in my life where fear should have captured my attention, but didn’t, I cannot imagine panic. Logically, I question why? Why is it so? Why should I live with panic now after all I survived already?

There are too many things we are conditioned to believe as society. This is something I call a mass belief. The definition of belief is
an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists. So therefore, mass belief is an acceptance by a large group that something is true and exists.

I can’t remember where I read this, but an author wrote about mass beliefs. When people all believe something exists, or something is a certain way, the spiritual, physical and mental belief becomes the reality. Interesting how the truth can change when everyone believes the same story.

When I apply that reasoning to panic disorder, I learn that because it has been written that panic disorder has no cure we must believe it is with us forever and we are are doomed to live our lives in fear.

…. well I am here to tell you that it isn’t true.

I have never ever followed the mass beliefs nor do I care if that makes me an outlier of scientific numerations. The reason is due in large part to my belief in evolutionary theories. For example, what we believed, and what I was taught in school, about our solar system is that we have 9 planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune & Pluto. Now they have determined that Pluto is a dwarf planet and therefore doesn’t constitute a planet in the solar system anymore, so we now have 8 planets. Furthermore, there were 5 oceans, now there are only 4 oceans. If you ask a school aged child how many oceans there are, they will tell you there are 4; Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic. I remember the Antarctic Ocean, and I additionally remember being taught in school that the Gulf of Mexico was an ocean too.

When you think of how evolutionary theories have changed due to access of new information or simplifying, we find that nothing in the world is set in stone. The main reason I shared these two examples are because no one thought it was weird that educators proved a theory, that trickled down to the public and became a mass belief. Yes, they reevaluated the true facts and realized it wasn’t accurately describing what was real, but an entire ocean and planet of the solar system that existed in science books when I was a child, is no longer true.

Much like a google search on panic disorder will yield results that you are doomed for a life of panic attacks, I disagree. Panic attacks are just a phase in life, a way to remind us to pay attention to ourselves. Science has no evidence to prove that this is forever, other than the words or experiences of a panicker who feels the disorder is forever. Let that sink in for a moment, do you want to be panicking forever? My answer is HELL NO!

Science of Panic Disorder

Researchers have said that panic disorder is a chemical imbalance. That panic comes from an imbalance in neurotransmitters.

Naturally occurring chemical messengers, known as neurotransmitters, send information throughout the brain. The human brain is thought to have hundreds of these different types of neurotransmitters, and biological theories suggest that a person can become more susceptible to developing panic disorder symptoms if one or more of these neurotransmitters do not remain balanced.
https://www.verywellmind.com/is-panic-disorder-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance-2583984

Hold on for one moment, let’s look at this more prominently. A chemical imbalance is also where Bipolar Disorder comes from, which science has proven involves the neurotransmitters being damaged in production causing severe symptoms of high-highs and low-lows, but now it is said that panic disorder is doing the same?

Let me level with you, if you want to have panic attacks forever, by all means, have it your way, science will support you. However, if you are like me and believe that you have the power to heal this, then start to believe it now.

I didn’t drive for 6 years, then I decided I was done being a victim to panic attacks and panic disorder. I didn’t need medication or therapy to change my outcome, I simply needed a belief in myself, to let go of the fear of a panic attack, and push myself past the discomfort. Anxiety is natural and everyone has it, but I will not be stopped by sudden moments of intense fear anymore because they are not true and they manifest through me. My chemicals will heal with my belief in being stronger than the panic and by my ability to take charge and live, instead of letting life happen to me.

You are strong for having fought a panic attack and won, therefore you are strong enough to believe this is not forever. The science of the brain will never be solved. Brain mapping is never going to be possible in my opinion, because the brain is the epicenter of evolution and change.

The brain is too strong and resilient for any scientists to make sense of it. That my friends is why I choose to believe that EVERYTHING is curable if we choose to believe it is. Just like many cancer patients are cured out of the blue, Panic disorder is curable and I am proving that.

You want to know the secret to ending panic disorder? Do you want to know how you stop yourself from panicking? It’s incredibly simple, and took me far too long to realize, you must stand up to it! Believe in something other than the doom and gloom, believe that there is something bigger than you out there and that what is meant to be will be with or without your acceptance.

I will not allow myself to dwell in the darkest parts of my mind, I will believe in something bigger and better because I know that my brain is a gift from my higher power and no human will ever tell me that it is not working.

Be free! Give yourself permission.