I'm glad you've turned this recording on.
You've just woken in a panic.
I'm glad you have this recording that you can listen to my voice as you stabilize and come back into awareness that you're safe in this moment.
You're having panic right now.
You might be feeling fear or terror,
Shame,
Feeling of hopelessness.
A panic episode is a response in your brain and nervous system.
It can be hard to figure out what activated this.
You were sleeping and you don't have any memory of what it was that triggered this panic.
With a night panic,
We might not have explicit memories.
We wake up alarmed,
Perhaps gasping for breath.
Take a few deep breaths now.
Exhale move your body around a little open your eyes look around your sympathetic nervous system is in high arousal.
It happened while you were sleeping,
Which is very disorienting.
It would be common to worry,
Is this going to keep happening?
What if it gets worse?
What if I start having them all the time?
Maybe you've had them in the past and you don't want to return to that experience of waking up in a panic.
Maybe this is something new to you.
You're wondering,
What is it that's going on?
Fear is racing through my body.
Take a deep inhale through your nose and a long exhale.
Let your shoulders soften and let your body move a little.
Sometimes when we have panic,
We freeze,
We feel immobilized.
Prove to yourself right now,
Yeah,
I could move my shoulders around a little.
I could get out of bed,
I could walk around.
I could have a glass of water.
If you have something cold,
Put it on your wrist for a moment.
That helps our body come back into awareness that we're here in this moment.
Do a little bit more movement.
Maybe look out the window.
Look at pictures of people you love or a beautiful painting that you have on your wall.
Hold your own hands.
Feel the warmth and support of your own hands.
Take another deep,
Double inhale through the nose,
And then a long,
Slow exhale like you're breathing out through a straw.
Inhale again,
And then a long,
Slow exhale,
Breathing out through a straw.
Notice your body now.
Notice your feet,
Your seat.
Rub your hands together again and notice the warmth.
Look around the room that you're in.
It can be helpful to have a night light or turn on a light.
As you look around,
Notice five things that are a certain color.
I see red in a picture in someone's shirt.
The lid on one of my spices.
Name them out loud as you look at them.
This is a night panic.
And now your heart rate is likely slower.
This is not going to feel like this forever.
One thing about waking with a night panic is that we're terrified and we have no idea why.
This is something that can happen with people who've had trauma,
And it's not going to be like this forever.
In this few minutes of working with coming back,
Feeling safer after a night panic,
Our breathing starts to slow.
We feel safer.
That starts to build the experience,
The knowledge in our body that this doesn't last forever.
We've woken up,
Our heart pounding,
And now we're breathing,
We're moving around,
We have the lights on.
We realize now that we're going to get through this and we will feel better.
If it feels okay to take some deeper breaths,
Keep doing that.
You might want to move your body around or even do some shaking.
Lift your hands up,
Form fists,
And then on the exhale,
Throw that energy down into the ground.
And then a long,
Slow exhale.
Breathing out through astrality.
If you don't want to move around that much,
Maybe put your hand on your heart and offer yourself some reassurance.
Your seat.
It's really scary when we have a night panic.
It's an abrupt change from sleep into heart pounding.
I'm terrified.
We're not actually in danger now.
We're safe.
As we breathe,
Relax our body,
Look around,
Notice that in fact we are safe.
We can notice what has changed.
We're not a child anymore.
Your brain has developed into an adult brain?
It might feel discouraging when night panic starts to happen or happens again.
And we can work with that.
We can turn on this recording.
We can remember that we're safe and that we're loved.
We could come back into our present moment.
Experience right now in the present moment a feeling of safety.
Relaxing and softening our body.
Deeper breaths.
We know what we can do to help ourselves come out of this and to come back into a steadier state.
We might have a residue for a little while.
Certainly,
We might have a reluctance to go back to sleep.
So no pressure.
You might stay up for a while,
Read a book.
You might connect with your younger self who's scared.
You're not alone in this anymore.
You're safe now.
It's not your fault that you've had trauma and now it's showing up as a night panic.
As we move through the day,
There are so many things that we can do to support our nervous system.
Relaxing our body.
Working with our breath.
Perhaps also working with underlying trauma,
If you feel that would be helpful and supportive.
And as you're coming back into a state of calm after a night panic.
Be extra kind to yourself.
This is a really difficult situation to be in.
It's scary.
It's disappointing.
We might be scared that it's going to happen every night.
One of the things about having a panic attack is that we are afraid that it's going to keep happening.
It might.
And each time that we get up out of bed and we do practices like this,
We reassure ourselves,
In fact,
We're safe enough to soften and breathe and relax.
Put a hand on our heart.
Be kind.
This is an unwelcome event,
Waking up in a panic.
This starts to build the confidence.
There are many things that we can do right now in this moment.
Taking some more deep breaths,
Let your body soften as you breathe out.
And make a commitment to work with us during the day as well.
Supporting your nervous system with these practices on a regular basis makes a big difference in a situation like this.
I'm glad that you're here.
Healing is possible.
