The Causes Of Panic Attacks

What causes you to have panic attacks? Many people with better credentials have offered their opinions, but here’s what I discovered to be the source of panic in my life. Once you understand the causes, it then becomes just that much easier to end any panic you may be feeling yourself.

What starts it all? I’ve found three different energies that unite to create a fourth factor and it’s this fourth cause which holds the panic in your life. This fourth factor I think is the main cause of panic attacks.

1. Experiencing Shame When You’re A Child

For many people, growing up was an unpleasant experience because of the shame dumped onto them by their parents or other grownups. We learn at a young age that the world can be a very scary and dangerous place to live.

When you’re young and small and helpless, and those massive people referred to as ‘grown-ups’ pile their own shame onto you, that will cause you to feel fear. Sometimes a lot of fear.

So does that mean shame will always lead to panic? Not necessarily. The shame can take many twists and turns and involve many different manifestations. Certainly fear always comes with being shamed, but it doesn’t have to manifest as panic attacks.

To look at it another way, does panic have to start from shame? Probably. I couldn’t imagine a person experiencing panic attacks when they had no problem with shame as a child.

I started out with a foundation of shame. Which meant I lacked security in my life. When you are immersed with shame, you can’t ever feel secure. Shame robs you of your security. Which will tend to make you scared. Which lays the foundation and is the root cause of panic attacks.

2. Repressing Your Fears

I learned at a young age that you’re not to supposed to reveal that you’re scared. We’re taught to not feel fear. Be a brave little girl or boy. “Don’t be scared”, I was conditioned to believe.

But I am scared! The world is so huge while I am so tiny. Events that grown-ups can slough off are overwhelming to me. I’m much too young to understand what’s going on. I don’t know how things work. There’s so much I don’t know. And thus the fear increases.

Childhood can be frightening, but I don’t want to feel the fear! Which means I’ll cram as much of my fear as I can down into my shadow. Unfortunately, sooner or later I’ll be forced to come to terms with that fear.

I can either travel down to the shadow directly and release it there, or else I’ll have to deal with it in the world.

I can only keep the fear repressed for so long. At some point, that fear will come up. I’ll create situations that scare me half to death. Or maybe the fear will seem to come out of nowhere.

And the whole time, the shadow is just doing the job it was meant to do. It keeps all the stuff I don’t want to deal with. It holds my power and emotion safe for me, and then returns it when I’m ready to be responsible for it. Of course, it often explodes in my face when it happens.

So this is the second factor that contributes to panic attacks; when all the fear that we stuff down into the shadow now comes to the surface.

3. Making Up Fear Stories

Fear stories exist as an attempt to explain the fear. Rather than just feeling our fears and releasing them, instead we become trapped by rationalizing the fears.

The fear stories; all the reasons why I really do need to be frightened. “Don’t you see? It absolutely is not just in my imagination. I have to be scared – because I really might have that dreaded disease.”

Now, the trick is, you could really have a legitimate reason to be concerned. Please understand I am not saying to just ignore the story totally. Rather, I’m saying to carefully look at it. Just don’t blindly give in to it.

Listen, if there’s a wolf at the door, then you better deal with it! But is there really a wolf at the door? That’s what you need to ask yourself. That’s where discernment and evaluation and thinking and feeling become necessary. 99 times out of 100, the wolf is not really there. Or more clearly stated, I am the wolf.

Regardless, you want to set the story down so you can feel the fear. Because even when a threat really exists, running after a fear story won’t make the threat go away.

And this may be one of the hugest fear stories:

“There must be something wrong or else I wouldn’t be experiencing all this fear.”

The fear story traps you. You become stuck in fear. It doesn’t end. It can end up wearing you down. Plus it’s so, so easy to rationalize the fear. You end up managing fear instead of feeling fear. Or most likely, you try to manage it.

You try to think your way out of feeling. Which never ends well. Panic is basically a fear story that’s gotten way out of hand.

So far we’ve got shame, repressed emotion, and fear stories that all join together to cause panic attacks. But that’s not all. There’s a glue that holds it all together.

4. The ‘Freaked-Out Me’

That glue is – quite literally – a part of your consciousness. The ‘scared me’ or the ‘panicked me’ or whatever other label you want to slap on it. A part of your consciousness ‘broke off’ and formed this entity who’s scared out of his (or her) mind.

The ‘Freaked-Out Me’ – The Ultimate Cause of Panic Attacks

And it’s this part of you that keeps cranking out those fear stories. While simultaneously trying to suppress the fear, so it has to blow up in your face. It’s also the aspect of you that won’t deal with that scary childhood.

But when you meet this part of you face-to-face, you can come to peace with it and retrieve your power from it. To get started, simply go to this page on the causes of panic attacks. It shows you exactly how to meet and then heal this part of you that’s creating so much pain and suffering in your life.