Edvard Munch - The Scream
A recent news release recounted a study of more than 3,000 older (ages 51 to 83) women which found that having panic attacks could signal upcoming death from vascular and other causes.
Alvin Powell from Harvard University's News Office wrote,
". . . (P)anic attacks were relatively common, suffered by about 10 percent of those in the study. While heart attacks and strokes were relatively rare, those suffering panic attacks had four times the risk of heart attack, three times the risk of heart attack or stroke, and twice the risk of dying from any cause as those who didn’t.
“This adds panic attacks to the growing body of evidence that emotional states and psychological symptoms are relevant to physical outcomes,” said Jordan Smoller, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), associate professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the study’s lead author.
Smoller said the link between panic attack and health remains unclear. The study controlled for 14 known variables, including age, race, income, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking, hormone use, high cholesterol or blood pressure, level of physical activity, atrial fibrillation, depression, and history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease. A panic attack’s influence on health appears to be independent of any of those factors, Smoller said." (Study was from the October, 2007 Archives of General Psychiatry)
Yet, it is not only older women who are susceptible to the ill effects of anxiety and panic attacks. Another Harvard study found that men who complain of chronic anxiety are six times more likely than those who are free of it to suffer from sudden cardiac death. Dr. Arthur Janov in, Why You Get Sick, How You Get Well (1996), wrote about that study and concluded that ". . . anxiety is becoming one of the strongest risk factors for sudden death by cardiac arrest. . . . " (p. 105)
[Definition of cardiac arrest from the American Heart Assn. website: "Electrical impulses in the diseased heart become rapid (ventricular tachycardia) or chaotic (ventricular fibrillation) or both. This irregular heart rhythm (arrhythmia) causes the heart to suddenly stop beating."]
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Although not a codable disorder, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) lists the symptoms of panic attacks:
- Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate
- Sweating
- Trembling or shaking
- Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering
- Feelings of choking
- Chest pain or discomfort
- Nausea or abdominal distress
- Feeling dizzy, unsteady, lightheaded, or faint
- Feelings of "unreality" or being detached from oneself
- Fear of losing control or going crazy
- Fear of dying
- Numbness or tingling sensations
- Chills or hot flushes
The symptoms of an anxiety or panic attack are in reality the unconscious memories of events which most of us experienced during our earliest beginnings. Panic attacks are blocked feelings which attempt to rise into our consciousness. Emotional and physically traumatic triggers in the present - ones which have the emotional and/or physical content of the repressed traumatic feelings in our past awakens and gives energy to those blocked feelings.
Q: Which early events were the dubious desperados?
A: Our traumatic births and/or uterine experiences were the derelicts which set us up to experience these dastardly discomforting developments.
Once again is the listing of symptoms of anxiety/panic attacks, but followed by a description of an actual birth regressive experience involving the particular symptom of a panic/anxiety attack. These are described by therapists, authors and patients in the regressive psychotherapies:
| 1. Palpitations, Pounding Heart, or Accelerated Heart Rate. |
"My heart is beating fast, I'm fighting desperately for breath." "I'm working hard to breathe now." "Please do anything, but let me breathe." "I can't understand why I am breathing so hard." "I'm being smothered. I'm just fighting for existence."
--Dr. Frank Lake in Birth Trauma, Claustrophobia and LSD Therapy (patients)
". . .suffocation and feelings of lack of oxygen: cardiac distress and palpitations; sweating; blushing; chills and hot flushes; and muscular twitches can be traced back to the complex of somatic phenomena, which form a logical and understandable part of the birth experience."
--Stanislav Grof, M.D. in Birth Trauma and Its Relation to Mental Illness, Suicide and Ecstasy
(During reliving birth), "(t)he body temperature usually oscillates in a wide range, sweating may be profuse, and nausea with projectile vomiting is a frequent occurrence."
--Stanislav Grof, M.D., in Realms of the Human Unconscious.
"Some physical birth traumas which I re-experienced in primals included . . .
profuse body perspiration. . . ."
--John A. Speyrer, in Diary of a Self-Primaler
"When I first came to this place, I was reexperiencing a lot of feelings that went back to birth -- a lot of tremendous pressure, choking, gagging, spluttering, writhing around, incredible body tension. For a long time I had the feeling that my body wanted to shake, just shake to pieces. Sometimes I would feel it inside my hands, or inside my legs, my head, or my neck -- some part of me would shake for awhile. But as soon as it would start to happen, my body tension would multiply ten times. I would lock up like steel, and that would stop the shaking straight away. And for months and months I went through that where I'd shake a little bit, and once again the body tension would clamp down and I couldn't shake. Gradually, I could let more and more happen until my whole body would be shaking uncontrollably all over the place, which is what people call a convulsion or a seizure."
-- Anon. in Reflections From Within The Denver Primal Journal
During a birth regression, "The body generally goes through movements of struggling, twisting, twitching, convulsive movements, tremors, and severe shaking."
--Frank Lake, M.D., in Birth Trauma, Claustrophobia and LSD Therapy
| 4. Sensations of Shortness of Breath or Smothering. |
"Breathing difficulties were almost universal; 10 of the 13 subjects, in fact, provided unsolicited and explicit reports of breathing problems. Several subjects considered their breathing difficulties to be quite painful. There were reports of not getting enough air, of choking or feeling suffocated, or desperately attempting to get more air, and of becoming terrified when such attempts failed. Often breathing was shallow, came in jerks, and spasms, or stopped for long periods."
-- Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D., in Birth Feelings A Phenomenological Investigation
"I began working with a pre- and peri-natal therapist over a year ago, and have connected with the primal, disowned feelings that threatened to overwhelm me as a tiny, ego-less being—intense, smothering feelings about annihilation itself, which laid the foundation for my very psyche."
-- Marcy Axness, Ph.D., in Many Hands: An Adoptee's Healing Journey
"At two o'clock in the morning, I went to the Center and before I knew it, I was writhing on the floor in extreme agony. It felt as if my chest was being crushed. I couldn't catch my breath. I kept gasping and choking, fighting for air. It seemed as if my screaming went on forever; I felt I was in the midst of my birth . . ."
--Dr. Paul J. Hannig, in Feeling People (patient)
"I felt the forceps on my head, I was choking and coughing and suddenly went into the fetal position."
--Gabriela Ortiz-Monasterio, in Being Born and Giving Birth
| 6. Chest Pain or Discomfort. |
"The terrible discomfort is still in my upper chest and with Tony once more pressing down on it, I begin to make strange little sounds which I repeat like a mantra. These sounds then become the cries of a new born baby and last for around ten minutes or so."
-- Margaret Coyne, in Breakingdown, Breakingthrough
"I mentioned that my chest ached, and he began pressuring it on my request. The physical struggle to get born was beginning to be felt. But, his hand pressure was not enough for me to really connect to the feeling. I needed still more chest pressure, so he lay on top of me, his chest on mine, and used the full weight of his body to maximize the pressure. My wanting to get out -- to get born, then felt even more intense and imperative."
--John A. Speyrer, in Four Therapy Experiences at the 1999 Int. Primal Assn. Convention
| 7. Nausea or Abdominal Distress. |
(During reliving birth), "(t)he body temperature usually oscillates in a wide range, sweating may be profuse, and nausea with projectile vomiting is a frequent occurrence."
--Stanislav Grof, M.D., in Realms of the Human Unconscious.
"The fourth case was of a man who suffered from migraine headaches with nausea. When the patient allowed himself to relive his birth feelings in primals the migraine headaches resolved themselves between ten and fifteen minutes. The number of migraine headaches he had after therapy were greatly reduced and when he has an attack he is able to resolve it quickly."
--E. Michael Holden, M.D., in Primal Pathophysiology
| 8. Feeling Dizzy, Unsteady, Lightheaded or Faint. |
"The patient then experienced himself as regressing to being a terrified baby, crying and screaming and feeling he was falling backwards. He reported dizziness and disorientation. His legs went up on to the wall until he was nearly upsidedown. This man reports his certainty that the primal had to do with his being held upside down right after he was born."
--Hal Geddes, M.S.W., in The Art of Primal Midwifery
"Predictably, many subjects felt exhausted after completing a cycle of birth feelings, which lasted anywhere from several minutes to many hours or even days. Subjects had a range of experiences from pleasure and relief, on the one hand, to feeling angry, dazed, dead, helpless, or hopeless, on the other."
--Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D., in Birth Feelings: A Phenomenological Investigation
| 9. Feelings of "Unreality" or Being Detached From Oneself. |
"I can feel, that still, my pattern is very much controlled by my birth. I felt like I was alone, in this dead chunk of meat, having to fight my way out. Whenever I get in a stress situation, even if there are people around helping me, I don't even see them. I'm somehow back in that place where I'm alone. . . it has to be my struggle, and if I'm going to survive, I've got to do it. There's no one there to help me."
--"Onna", in On Being Born: A Mother's View
(The patient) "reported dizziness and disorientation."
--Hal Geddes, M.S.W., in The Art of Primal Midwifery
| 10. Fear of Losing Control or Going Crazy. |
(One stage), "(w)hile reliving the onset of biological birth . . . characteristic for this state is a sense of dying, going crazy, and never coming back."
-- Stanislav Grof, M.D., in Psychology of the Future
"I was in the birth canal and being pushed out too fast before I was ready. I felt panic; I wanted everything to slow down to my pace; I wanted to control what was happening; I desperately wanted to stop until I was ready, but I was not being allowed to."
-- Dr. Arthur Janov, Imprints, The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience (patient)
"During the deepest primals, a feeling of fear of dying in the birth process was sometimes immediately followed by a feeling of wanting to die in order to stop the mental and physical suffering, and occasionally by an incredibly intense dread that I would not be able to die during the birth process, but would rather continue to suffer without end the anguish of my birth pain."
-- John A. Speyrer, in On the Fear of Death: Dying in the Birth Canal
"Birth and death are interchangeable terms. Of life after death we cannot be certain, but we know that we lived before birth in the pre-natal state. The change-over from pre-natal to post-natal life involves an ordeal as severe as dying. Hence the fear of death begins at birth. . . ."
-- Nandor Fodor, in The Search For the Beloved
| 12. Numbness or Tingling Sensations. |
(Some subjects) ". . . became hot and sweaty, experienced numbness or shivering."
-- Stephen Khamsi, Ph.D., in Birth Feelings: A Phenomenological Investigation
"A short time later I become aware that my hands are curling inwards and are being slowly drawn upwards towards my chest. Numbness sets in all over my body. Then it all begins to happen. I let go this long drawn-out scream which seems to come up from the lowest depth of my being."
-- Margaret Coyne, in Breakingdown, Breakingthough
| 13. Chills or Hot Flushes. |
"The typical physical symptoms accompanying various psychopathological manifestations can be very logically derived from the birth experience (belt headache, difficulties in breathing, various cardiac complaints, nausea and vomiting, muscular tension and twitches, hot flashes and chills, sweating, and constipation or diarrhea."
-- Stanislav Grof, M.D., in Birth Trauma and Its Relation to Mental Illness, Suicide and Ecstasy
"Some complain of the heat and experience the birth as an unbearable stuffiness. 'I am frightened of heat and of sex and of rage. They are all down here. I shall explode.' On the other hand, after a severe labour in which shock has occurred, there is intense experience of cold."
-- Frank Lake, M.D., in Birth Trauma, Claustrophobia and LSD Therapy (patient)
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Margaret Coyne in Breaking Down, Breaking Through, describes her body's attempt at resolving her birth trauma even before she entered therapy:
I'd be lying on my back when suddenly, for no reason, my body would start to move and I would begin to scream. Usually I would end up, still on my back, with my head hanging over the edge of the bed, choking and spitting and frantically trying to free myself from some imaginary restraint.
Towards the end of '94 I began to feel an overwhelming need to explore my strange behaviour which had by then become an almost everyday occurrence. It had not only begun to take over my life, it also at times threatened my very sanity and I knew that the only way l was going to stop this terror was to face it head-on in a safe and loving environment.
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Because of the close similarity of the multiple traumatic events which took place both before and during our births, to the symptoms of panic/anxiety attacks, it seems reasonable to conclude that such attacks are the products of unprocessed and therefore unresolved predecessor experiences.
What cinches this conclusion is that the reliving of these traumatic events in regressive type therapies will cure these panic/anxiety attacks.
Read the account of two of my incomplete birth regressions which changed into panic/anxiety attacks: The Aftereffects of Two Uncompleted Primal Sessions.
Read the story of one man's curing his panic attacks: Finding a Place to Cry: My Path into Primal by Norm Cohen
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