The Global Panic Attack and the Reclamation of Fear Mcgarr Follow Apr 2 · 5 min read

When I was 21, sitting at home with my friends, suddenly, I felt a pain in my chest which triggered an overwhelming terror, the likes of which I have never experienced before or since. It was like somebody had injected my heart with adrenaline. I could feel and hear my heart pounding through me like a jack hammer. My internal consciousness changed dramatically to the point where I could not sleep properly for months afterwards. I was so convinced that I was going to die that I called an ambulance. When they arrived, they explained that I was just having my first panic attack.

Since then I have battled with anxiety and panic attacks and seen a lot of success in preventing them and dealing with them when I do. What I am seeing with the global response to COVID 19 is reminding me of the dynamics relating to panic attacks.

During a panic attack all blood is removed from the extremities and directed towards key organs. Just like how now many countries have abandoned non-essential industries and are focusing on necessities.

During a panic attack I would suddenly become acutely aware of my vulnerabilities and feel an enormous sense of fragility. COVID 19 has exposed our susceptibility to pandemics, our inability to protect our freedoms and the danger of having an over stretched, just in time, logistical system.

Often a panic attack would occur via a cascade of anxiety triggering thoughts. Often the first one could be legitimately concerning like for example “that is an odd pain in my chest” but then would quickly amplify into “oh my god I am definitely going to die any time soon”. This to me is analogous to how social media currently amplifies messages proportionally to emotional charge not veracity.

A panic attack is caused by over excitation of the sympathetic nervous system — which is responsible for the fight/flight/freeze response. In normal functioning it acts in balance with the parasympathetic system which is responsible for rest and we move between alertness and rest depending on context and natural cycles. The world’s focus on productivity at all costs is analogous to a body stuck in the fight/flight response.

I came to realise that I had been repressing adrenaline in my everyday life. Adrenaline creates the emotions of fear and anger in us. I had demonised both emotions just as most of society continues to do. I was working in a job where I was often in physical danger and conflict, but I was not processing the adrenaline that this was provoking in me. It was then coming out in uncontrollable eruptions.

There are a lot of things about the world that should be scaring us on a daily basis. Environmental collapse, pandemics and supply chain collapse were very real possibilities before COVID 19 hit but many of us suppressed the fear that thinking about them triggered. Now they have been forced to the forefront of our minds and the fear is overwhelming us.

Likewise, with anger. There are many things to be angry about in this world. Economic injustice and violence towards the environment should make us angry.

We need to feel fear and anger about these things. These emotions focus the mind, sharpen our senses and ready us for action. We will need all these things to make the changes necessary to survive as a species.

I have seen lots of people claiming the best way to respond to COVID 19 is to not allow ourselves to become fearful. They say that fear is the opposite of love. This is totally false. We only fear when we love. We fear because we love life, we love other people and we love the beauty of the world. Fear does not equal hate. Telling people that they are wrong or weak for feeling fear when we are all experiencing such an intense set of circumstances is basically victim blaming. It is very human to feel afraid right now.

When we repress our fear and anger we are more vulnerable to manipulation because all the media has to do is confront us with our shadow, wait for us to be overwhelmed and then guide us towards the solutions that favour the people who own the media. It seems paradoxical but processing fear and anger and integrating it into ourselves in a healthy way protects us from being shepherded around by them in irrational ways.

I’m not suggesting that we descend into panic or uncontrollable rage. I am saying that we need to learn to sit with the fear and anger the world provokes in us. To allow ourselves to feel it when we feel strong enough to process it. We need to allow it to propel us towards positive action and revolutionary change. If we sustain them for too long, then we burn out. Outrage fatigue is a real thing as are the effects of living in constant fear. It is like a dance; we can dip into them when we can, to spur us on, but not too much so we drown in them.

This is what I learnt to do to stop my panic attacks. They forced me to change my lifestyle. The feelings of fragility and sense of mortality they triggered in me propelled me to focus heavily on the basics of health — diet, exercise, meditation and sleep. Things to make myself more robust. I suggest that this is what we do with the feelings of fear that COVID is producing in us. We should focus our energies on making our physical supply systems more resilient, sustainable and nurturing for everybody not just the few. We need to create a way of organising that allows sufficient time for rest and recuperation and that can exist comfortably without the need for perpetual growth.

It was a refusal to face up to legitimate fears that lead us to be so unprepared for this pandemic in the first place. Had we had more fear of pandemics then we would have had restricted international travel in normal times. Particularly when it has such large environmental costs too. We would have ensured we had enough ventilators ready to cope with a sudden pandemic. We’re making the same mistake with climate change. We’re not so much rabbits stuck in headlights as rabbits pretending that the on-rushing cars don’t exist in the first place “thinking positively” as we idle across the road.

So, if you feel like you can handle it without being overwhelmed — be scared, be angry — the world is a mess — do something about it.