Panic Attacks
It can happen before a high-stakes presentation, in the middle of a performance review, or, sometimes most disorientingly, on an ordinary Tuesday with nothing obviously wrong: a racing heart, tight chest, shallow breathing, a sudden conviction that something is badly wrong even when, rationally, you know it isn't. For many people in demanding roles, the first panic attack is also the first time their body has ever really been listened to, because it's often the only way it could get their attention.
Panic doesn't usually appear out of nowhere. It tends to arrive after a long period of pressure that's gone unacknowledged: deadlines absorbed without complaint, conflicts avoided, doubts pushed aside because there was never quite the right moment to deal with them. The body keeps a kind of account that the mind has been managing to ignore, until it can't any longer.
In therapy, we don't just look at how to calm a panic attack in the moment, though that matters too. We look at what's been building underneath it: the expectations you're carrying, the things you haven't let yourself feel, and the patterns that may have taught you, long ago, that needing a pause wasn't an option. Understanding what the panic is responding to is often what actually reduces it, far more than managing each episode in isolation.
This work isn't about becoming someone who never feels anxious. It's about rebuilding a relationship with your own body where its signals are caught and addressed long before they have to escalate to be heard.