Panic Attacks Outside - An EMO Telephone Consultation

The client Dan (name has been changed) let a lot of energy flow out of his head and his hands before he was able to get his coat and his keys. On the threshold, there was a pressure in his chest and his stomach, which flowed away very nicely and then he could go out and lock the door behind him, which caused another small incident with energy disturbances around his mouth and throat.

As he started to walk towards the pre-defined target, a shop on the other side of the street on which he lived and perhaps a hundred yards away, I noticed his voice was becoming strained. I suggested that he should walk more slowly as it appeared that he was getting short of breath, something that he strongly associated with the onset of a full blown panic attack.

There was a resistance to slowing down in his legs, especially in the upper thighs which felt very hard and blocked up. On the conscious level, he said that since his panic attacks had started, he would try to run from point a to point be whilst holding his breath to get out of the situation as soon as possible and now realised that this was certainly not a good way to go about this, and even might have caused panic attacks to happen in the first place.

I asked him to stop, and we worked on the stuck energy in his legs. Once this was released which was very quick - perhaps 30 seconds or less - Dan said he felt much lighter and his breathing was much easier as well.

Dan felt now able to cross the road and that went well, but the energy blockage in the legs came back and he had to stop on the other side again to slow himself down. I thought it was interesting that the fact that his legs were not working properly immediately made him try to walk faster, which in turn would cause shortness of breath, which then would make him panic and feel he was completely unable to breathe.

But because it was always the same feeling in the same place, Dan managed to flow that away more and more quickly as he made as way down the road and towards the shop.

He could see that there were quite a few people in the shop which triggered off another feeling in the neck and chest area. This he noticed himself and dealt with immediately and without me having to do anything which I thought was a very good sign.

He entered the shop and purchased a newspaper as had been decided, then left the shop.

Looking towards his home across the street and down the street caused another reversal in his stomach to become apparent. He decided to sit down on a wall nearby so he could concentrate on that feeling which was, in his words, "The worst place of them all and where most of the trouble always starts."

We worked on the stomach area for about two or three minutes until a big blockage or disturbance was released and he reported a shift in how he was viewing everything around him, also he said the sounds of the street were different.

I wanted to make sure that we should take full advantage of this session so I suggested some frightening ideas that he had previously mentioned to me. He laughed at most of these but one caused a reaction of strong pressure on his chest - "Like squeezing the air out of my lungs."

We worked on that and it dissolved very quickly indeed, flowed away down his arms and that is where he took a deep sigh of relief and stood up to help the energy flow through the rest of his body.

After that he said that he wanted to end the telephone conversation and walk home by himself! He was very keen and excited about it. He said he wanted to find out if he could really feel as good as this by himself, and felt he needed to find out.

I said ok I'll stay by the phone, ring me when you get in.

A few minutes later, Dan called up. He was home and quite excited still about everything, especially about the moment when the stomach blockage had shifted, and the pressure on his lungs had gone.

I found out a week later that he had gone out again the same day to buy some bread and had called a friend on the phone who wasn't a therapist and didn't know what was going on just to chat on the way. He had a few moments where he felt "a bit wobbly" but overall was very pleased with this trip, and a number of others he had undertaken since then.

Dan is now practising EMO at home as well on random thoughts that cause him to become stressed and has booked another telephone session, this time to go further into the town and deal with crowds and queues. He said he was looking forward to it when before it would have been a source of dread.

This is not an instant cure but Dan feels his progress after all these years where there was no progress at all in spite of so much therapy and other approaches has been remarkable.

He said that the greatest pleasure of EMO is that he is learning so much about himself, that he doesn't have to deny the way he feels but instead can work with how it really is and improve it from there. Those things together with the energy nutrition have brought him relief, practical results in being able to go out again already and Dan feels strongly there is much more to come in the future.


Katie Jacobi
EMO DL Student