Mini Panic Attacks Different From Trauma Energy?

[WillowMarie]

So, my therapist said I was having a mini panic attack in therapy.

We were working on anger and telling me I could get angry and feel anger safe in the session. I was feeling a sense of scared/crying. She wanted me to list reasons I am angry with my dad. I was having a hard time concentrating and kept zoning out and she kept bringing me back. Which at times I thought was silly because my brain was blank a lot and she was reminding me I was safe and i was here in the room with her, but I still appreciate her saying that. After a bit, she was asking what was going on, where I kept going and whatnot.

I said I wasn't really going anywhere. I was just starting to feel emotions and it was uncomfortable, but I didn't really know what I was feeling. Then she was listing emotions to try to help me pinpoint them. I knew I was feeling anxiety, but didn't know what else. I told her, I didn't know it if was cold in here, but I had been trembling for a bit. That my hands were ice cold and my bottom lip was numb. That I could feel my abs/stomach being really tight. This has happened a few times in the past six months during therapy, and I assumed it was just trauma energy after I learned this can happen, and thought the same thing was happening and was just letting my body doing it's thing and not freaking out about it.

She said it was a mini panic attack... I was like, wow. I hadn't had a full panic attack since high school, and didn't know you can get mini panic attacks.

So I wanted to know, is mini panic attacks different from trauma energy? Are they similar? How are they different?

 

[arfie]

Hm-m-m. Both terms are new to me and I am not at all sure how to apply them.

However, you did make me think of my anger stages. When confronted with an object of my rage, my anger presents full force, automatically looking for any excuse to escalate. When I talk about the same object of my rage in a safe environment, the feelings are far more complex. I feel far more confusion, hurt and fear than anger. Anxiety is a typical by-product. I can easily imagine the progression looking like a panic attack, or even causing one.

Don't know if it applies here, or not. Just a random thought.

 

[WillowMarie]

I feel far more confusion, hurt and fear than anger.

Maybe that explains some of what I felt. After the first example I gave, it was hard for me to say that I was mad for anything because I had these emotions coming through that just made me want to cry. Those other emotions were overpowering any anger I may have felt over any of the examples.

 

[pamcoco]

Not sure about the mini part but I noticed in my early 20's that my panic attacks were really the suppression of information that overwhelmed me. Once I realized the panic attacks were worse than the information I let it in . I haven't had one since although I do have anxiety attacks very occasionally. But they are vastly dissimilar. Panic for me is overwhelm to the degree of immobility, and I lack all rational in that state.

 

[Hashi]

I'm a bit puzzled by the idea of a mini panic. Those two words sound contradictory to me. I associate panic with reacting without thinking. But I don't know what the medical/psychological definition is.

Did your therapist explain what she meant by that? Did she say what would define it, and therefore why she decided you were having one?

 

[WillowMarie]

Did she say what would define it, and therefore why she decided you were having one?

She said it was a mini panic attack after I told her what my body felt like. She did not explain very much, but it made sense in my head, so I didn't ask for clarification. When I used to have panic attacks in high school that were pretty bad, I read that all the body reactions are from adrenaline being released, and the body reacting to it. So I figured for some reason, in the appointment, my body thought I needed to be in fight or flight mode and released it, so that's why I was trembling and whatnot.

Not sure about the mini part but I noticed in my early 20's that my panic attacks were really the suppression of information that overwhelmed me.

I think I know what you mean. I sometimes panic in the moment when I am trying to say something that holds a lot of meaning to me. It is like I am on the verge of a panic attack as well as dissociating.

 

[WillowMarie]

I just had a thought this morning. I know she likes to normalize things and make them less scary for me. Maybe that is why she used the term mini panic attack. So I wouldn't be as freaked about it? I also think of a full blown panic attack when someone freaks out about having one and feeling like they are going to die, that's what it was like for me until I was able to rationalize what was happening with my body and talk myself through I was okay and not having a heart attack and dying, it was just the adrenaline.

 

[Hashi]

I've never experienced release of trauma energy as feeling like I was going to die. Going cold, shaking, involuntary movements - yes. Feeling like I might be having a heart attack - no.

 

[Abstract]

Hi Willow,

This is how I understand it although I am still learning about trauma release and am no expert. A panic attack isn't really about someone panicking and is rather adrenaline poisoning in a sense. It is a physiological reaction to an excess of adrenaline. That can happen purely as a result of thoughts and emotions or can be caused or be contributed to by other factors such as drugs, caffeine etc. Shivering can be part of it, feeling hot or cold, hyperventilating, palpitations, dizziness, depersonalisation etc etc etc.

The limited understanding I have of trauma energy release is that it is the release of adrenaline associated with a release of emotional energy connected to a trauma. So that would usually mean shaking etc. Maybe someone can say more on this. I would be interested too. As far as I understand it part of what keeps the trauma locked in is when we don't shake it off after like animals do.

It seems to me you learned how to stop panic attacks from escalating and so you are not freaking out in other ways but are still having symptoms. I suspect how someone looks during a panic attack varies a lot depending on the person and other factors.

I have to say too that I found accessing anger in therapy very challenging and it brought up a lot of stuff. In fact in the past I had a lot of trouble accessing anger at all. My feelings about anger and the state itself seemed to become very entwined with trauma for me in certain ways it seems.

 

[WillowMarie]

I've never experienced release of trauma energy as feeling like I was going to die. Going cold, shaking, involuntary movements - yes. Feeling like I might be having a heart attack - no.

I did not feel like I was going to die in my appointment, but in the past when I have had full blown panic attacks, I felt like that. In the session, it did not scare me that my body was trembling and my fingers felt cold, I assumed it was trauma energy or something along those lines and didn't freak out.

The limited understanding I have of trauma energy release is that it is the release of adrenaline associated with a release of emotional energy connected to a trauma. So that would usually mean shaking etc.

Hmm... I wish there was a concrete way to know if I was accessing emotional energy connected to the trauma or if it was just a panic attack. But I guess either way, it is still adrenaline affecting how my body feels.

I have to say too that I found accessing anger in therapy very challenging and it brought up a lot of stuff. In fact in the past I had a lot of trouble accessing anger at all. My feelings about anger and the state itself seemed to become very entwined with trauma for me in certain ways it seems.

Thank you for sharing this.

 

[Hashi]

WillowMarie, sorry I misunderstood.

I'm afraid I still don't understand what symptoms made your therapist say panic attack (of any size). I don't understand how she's defining panic. If it's not trauma energy release, it sounds to me more like stress/anxiety. I'm not saying that to be nit-picky, it's because I think it's very confusing and I'm not sure it's helpful. Maybe it could be if she clarifies what she meant and why she classified it as this.

I think it's possible that it was neither a panic attack, nor a somatic release of trauma energy. It could have been processing of a different type. But I'm not clear enough about what actually happened to suggest any more than that in general panic and somatic energy release aren't the only two possibilities.

understanding I have of trauma energy release is that it is the release of adrenaline associated with a release of emotional energy connected to a trauma.

I don't think it's about emotional energy. I've never experienced that and haven't read that it's connected to emotion. Being fight or flight energy, trauma energy release isn't to do with emotions. It's purely physiological.

Imagine being in a very cold place and involuntarily shaking from the cold temperature. You might feel emotions as you observed yourself doing that, but there are no emotions being processed or released by the shaking itself.

Or imagine a coiled spring being released and unwinding. (In craniosacral therapy, one aspect of the trauma energy release is actually called unwinding.)

What does get released is fear, but it's the primal, survival fear of trauma response. It isn't emotional or cognitive fear/anxiety. It can have an effect on that, but I'm talking about what's actually being released from our bodies at the time. Just as fight or flight is an autonomic response (it comes from the primal/automatic/instinctive part of us, not the emotional, more complex part), the physical release of trauma energy characterised by cold and shaking is autonomic.

 

[WillowMarie]

Imagine being in a very cold place and involuntarily shaking from the cold temperature. You might feel emotions as you observed yourself doing that, but there are no emotions being processed or released by the shaking itself.

The few times I have had this happen, I do wonder out loud, did it just get really cold in here? because I started to tremble. Sometimes I am not feeling anxiety or panic. Although this last appointment, I think I was feeling anxious.

I think it's possible that it was neither a panic attack, nor a somatic release of trauma energy. It could have been processing of a different type. But I'm not clear enough about what actually happened to suggest any more than that in general panic and somatic energy release aren't the only two possibilities.

Ok, thanks. Something for me to think about. I appreciate all the input, thank you.