How I Exorcised My Panic Attack Demons One Dish At A Time

August 2, 2015. I’ll never forget that day.

It began over a year of absolute hell in my life. A hell that consisted of daily panic and anxiety attack benders that ultimately cost me untold amounts of money (ER’s are very expensive) and but more importantly emotional energy.

You lose a little of your soul or at least you think you do when you’re battling the demons of panic attacks.

From that Saturday morning in August, I would spend most of the next year locked in my home. Going out to do the most normal things like grocery shopping or having lunch with my family was out of the question. I tried and the results were flat our horrible.

I tried every kind of therapy known to man. Talk therapy, NLP (hey Tony Robbins does that stuff so it must solve everything right?), Hypnosis… NOTHING touched it.

I ultimately found some technology that helped me break out of the panic cycle and back into living. I don’t have time to hash out that technology in this post because this drug free method is not without controversy. (Completely manufactured controversy mind you but still it’s there.) I hope to find the right way to write about it in the future.

But there were some simple accessory methods that helped a lot as well.

One was something for sake of easy labeling we’ll call The Dish Method.

Panic Fuel

A quick set of side notes here. There are all kinds of theories on why panic attacks rise up seemingly out of no where. There are people a lot smarter than me that can talk all about brain chemicals, genetics, etc… They may or may not be onto something.

From my vantage point, having lived it for over a year of my life and came out on the other side I think panic feeds on two primary elements can be contradictory; voids and speed.

Voids. Simple definition, when things are completely empty. I think if most folks struggling with panic and anxiety take a look back and when the attacks came on, they will find that there were void in their lives. Places where there was something (A job, project, relationship… purpose) and it’s not there anymore. Nothing goes in its place. In the voids come the panic. In other words…

… Panic seems random, but for my money it’s not. It’s simply the crescendo of voids not properly dealt with.

Speed. Panic loves speed. Panic attacks make anyone feel like they are on fire. Like the environment along with their body is moving a million miles an hour. Funny thing, when we fail to properly fill the voids which normally requires some deep work, we instead stuff our life with filler activities. Constantly checking our social media, email, partying, jumping from one interest to the next, living on initial surge rushes like we get when we order something online only to have it arrive a few days later and it sits on the shelf never to be touched.

Busy up your brain enough… to cover up enough voids… and you’re set up perfectly for panic.

Enter The Dishes

Like most people, I have a proper dishwasher in my house. You rinse the plates, toss them in, throw in a dish tab, hit a button, and you’re done.

Remembering what we discussed earlier, that panic is made or starved via voids and speed, one of the pathways to kill it is to slow down physically and mentally.

I started washing dished by hand. I still do when things are ramping up in my mind.

Washing dishes, in my case for a family of five, and cleaning up the kitchen post a dinner meal takes about twenty minutes.

It’s a meditation.

See my hands are soaking wet so I can’t grab my phone to check something, turn on a podcast, or crowd my thinking more with noise.

The warm water, the bubbles, put me in contact with my senses in a deliberate way.

The swish of the brush back and forth across the plates creates a rhythm. A metronome of sorts getting me back in time with myself and my life.

You can’t speed it up or you make a mess. It’s slow.

My attention to detail gets keyed in, working to get the last of the melted cheese off the bottom of the pan, or drying each glass to a clear finish.

I breathe differently. Slower, deeper…

And sure, sometimes I think. About what’s bothering me, what’s ailing me, what’s potentially ramping me up. But it has a timer. There are only so many dishes left. My church of warm water, scrub brushes, and bubbles will be over soon.

All of these things are the antithesis of what panic needs to live.

When I feel a little more on edge for a day, that the demons of panic are right outside the door of my mind. I wash the dishes by hand.

When I feel really well, I was the dishes by hand because I know you truly break the back of panic and anxiety by the practice you employ on the good days, not just the reactions you try to manage on the bad days.

Give It A Try

Should be obvious disclaimer here… I’m not suggesting that all of your panic and anxiety problems will be solved today simply by washing the dishes once.

I am certain though, that you should try this simple practice to slow yourself down. It’s a lot cheaper than therapy and the ER and you’ll have a few times a day to practice it.

Put your hands in the warm water my friend and wash the panic away.