Introduction: The Wave You Didn’t Expect
Healing rarely moves in straight lines. It rises and recedes like tidewater, leaving small shells of progress and then, unexpectedly, a riptide. For many people on an integration or recovery path, that riptide is fear: sudden surges of anxiety or full-blown panic. It can be confusing, almost demoralizing, when panic returns just as life begins to feel steadier. This essay offers a compassionate frame for what’s happening, and a practice for meeting it without abandoning yourself.
1) Panic as Old Survival Energy
From a trauma-informed lens, many episodes of intense fear are less about present danger and more about the nervous system releasing stored survival energy. In overwhelming situations, when fleeing, fighting, or hiding couldn’t resolve the threat, the body mobilized immense energy and then had nowhere to spend it. What wasn’t discharged gets conserved: a physiological savings account of unfinished survival responses. Later, often without a clear trigger, that reserve can reactivate as a highly physical event: racing heart, tight chest, tunnel vision, trembling, the body’s way of saying, “I still have something to finish.” This isn’t weakness; it’s biology trying again to complete a cycle.
2) Why Symptoms Spike When You’re Healing
Paradoxically, panic can increase when things are actually improving. As your capacity grows, through therapy, regulation practices, safer relationships, your system senses more room to process what was previously impossible to feel. More room means more material surfaces. You are not “backsliding”; you are becoming able to notice what once had to stay buried. In other words: expansion invites release. It may be uncomfortable, but it’s a meaningful sign of movement.
3) Capacity, Not Control
The sustainable path isn’t to eradicate fear but to build capacity to be with intensity without being swept away. Capacity is the inner container, what some call ‘containment’, that holds sensations and feelings long enough for them to integrate. It is learned. If early life lacked coregulation, the skill of self-regulation wasn’t modeled; you weren’t deficient, you were under-resourced. Now, the work is not to white-knuckle your way through but to cultivate steadiness you can lean on.
4) A Practice: Learning Your Body in Three States
This is a gentle, content-light practice. It doesn’t ask you to revisit trauma; it teaches your system what “okay” feels like so you can orient back to it.
A) When You Feel Well (Baseline Expansion)
• Notice: Where is there space in your body? How is your breath? What is your posture like? How do your chest, belly, arms, and legs feel? What’s the mood of your thoughts?
• Record: Capture a few phrases in a notebook, “breath low and wide,” “shoulders soft,” “room feels bright.” Name this state “baseline” so you can find it again.
B) Mild Activation (Everyday Mobilization)
• During small exertions, climbing stairs, focused tasks, pause for 30–60 seconds. Sense your heart rate, temperature, muscle tone, and breath. Stay connected to the room with your eyes and hearing while you notice internal change. Practicing presence with manageable activation trains your container.
C) Afterglow (Settling)
• Track the moment the body starts to downshift. Feel the exhale lengthen, the jaw soften, the mind widen. Mark it: “coming down.” Over time, you will trust that arousal has an end, which weakens panic’s spell.
5) When Panic Arrives
When intensity surges, think “orientation, breath, boundary.”
• Orientation: Name five things you see, four you hear, three you feel on the skin. Place your attention in the room, windows, corners, colors.
• Breath: Don’t force deep breaths. Instead, lengthen the exhale by a beat or two and let the inhale come on its own. Hum softly if helpful.
• Boundary: Sit with your back supported or hands pressing into thighs or a tabletop. Clear, gentle pressure tells the body where you end and the world begins.
None of this is to make panic “go away.” It is to stay with yourself while it moves through.
6) When to Seek Support
If panic episodes are frequent, prolonged, or interfere with daily living, bring in skilled help, ideally a trauma-informed therapist or coach. Coregulation is not a luxury; it’s part of how humans learn regulation. If early life offered too little safety, borrowing steadiness from another nervous system is a wise, dignified step.
Conclusion: The Long, Kind Arc
Anxiety and panic do not mean you’re failing at healing. They often mean you’re finally resourced enough to feel what once had to be frozen. As you learn your baseline, practice staying present with mild activation, and gather support for the big waves, the nervous system recalibrates. You won’t always need to brace for impact. The arc bends toward more room: room to breathe, to choose, to be here. Capacity is crafted, not granted, and you are already shaping it with every gentle repetition.