My personality is a nervous type. You might not think so, but it is. She can easily get slightly panicked. When she's lost, for example. Or when she has to parallel park and there's little space. Panic especially sets in when she's lost something – her glasses, her phone, her keys. Before she knows it, fear strikes her heart. The result: her heart starts racing, her breath quickens, she gets warm and agitated. She gets a kind of haze before her eyes and can't think clearly anymore.
I really don't know how that panic originated. In the past - it's my profession after all - I've paid a lot of attention to it. There will certainly be some roots in my childhood, but I've never been able to put my finger on it. So I gave up thinking about it. That didn't help me.
What did help and what ultimately turned out to be the 'solution' is that I have gotten to know my personality better and better throughout my life, which resulted in the emergence of the metaphor of The Flower.[1] My essential discovery was that I am not only my personality, but first and foremost myself, my invisible heart.
In addition to The Flower with its three petals (the personality) and its heart (myself), there are also other metaphors I use to express this essence. So in recognizing, acknowledging, and exploring[2] my panic attacks, I have found the metaphor of the surface sea and the deep sea to be very helpful.[3]
I see my personality as the surface sea. She is easily disturbed by circumstances: rain, wind, storms, and sometimes even a hurricane. She has no control over that, the disturbance is there before she knows it. In the past, she automatically went along with it, she couldn't do otherwise, she didn't know any better. She was a plaything of her own waves, to use a metaphor within a metaphor;).
A whole new world opened up for me when I discovered my own deep sea and gradually learned to make contact with it more easily and quickly. The deep sea is always silent, calm, and peaceful. It is undisturbed by anything. It just IS. I noticed that, whatever happened in my surface sea, I could always come home and rest in my deep sea.
And every time I come home there, in that pause at the end of my exhalation, the miracle unfolds - the 'solution', which is not a solution. The miracle is that in those moments I am both the deep sea and the surface sea.The focus of my attention lies in my deep sea, in myself, my place of silence. And in the periphery of my attention, I am fully aware of my surface sea, still raging. Although she has my attention, she no longer has power over me. She can no longer automatically drag me along as she used to. I am firmly anchored in my heart, and from there I observe the disturbance in my personality, without having to react to it.
This miracle means that the panic no longer needs to go away. I no longer need to find a solution for it because it is no longer a problem. I no longer need to get out of the panic – I am already out of it, because I have been liberated from its grip. And yet I am still in it, because I am and always remain my personality as well. The deep sea and the surface sea are one, and the surface sea can be observed from the deep sea, without identifying with it. This paradox is not a theory, I experience it in my breath time and time again.
That doesn't mean it's fun to experience all that turmoil in my surface sea. On the contrary, it can make me feel quite miserable. Then I can't sleep and my personality is restless and anxious. I let her do her thing and shift my attention through my breath to my deep sea: out - pause - in - out - pause - in - out.... I breathe in my panic and bring it on the exhale to the peace of my heart, again and again.
So yes, my personality is a nervous type, often struck with fear. And yet, in essence - in the depth - I no longer suffer from it. What a relief!
I breathe out and find peace. I breathe in and smile –
coming home to the now, this moment is a miracle.[4]
[1] For the origin story, see Eva Wolf, The Flower (2022), ch. 1. The Flower (2022), hst 1.
[2] Same, 4.11
[3] Same, 5.2
[4] Adapted from Thich Nhat Hanh, see www.aandacht.net