Maria: Transcending Fear and Panic

When I was sixteen, I had an intense panic attack and wound up in the hospital. The severity of it eventually subsided, but I never felt the same again. Sometimes I would have panic attacks daily, and other times I’d have them every couple of weeks. Nothing seemed to work: therapy, medication, yoga, herbs, the medical establishment.

It felt like I was living my life through a kind of a fog. A lot of it had to do with fear — fear of getting sick, fear of death. It was visceral. Anything that went physically wrong with me would trigger crazy anxiety. The panic became my constant companion. And I couldn’t describe it to friends or to medical professionals; no one understood what was happening. One psychologist said: I can’t help you because you are asking me questions I can’t answer. By my mid-30s, I was resigned to living with this for the rest of my life.

And then I walked into the Center, and that was a game changer. Here, people openly addressed all the things that caused my panic. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by others who questioned who and what we were and what we were doing here, and what the point of all of this was supposed to be. Even better, people had answers.

I started coming to classes, learning the Buddhist view on life, death, and reality, and how to meditate. It was so beneficial to understand the difference between myself and my thoughts. To understand that I was not this inherently anxious person who was going to be riddled with this panic forever.

About two years after coming to the Center, I realized I hadn’t had a panic attack – or even felt foggy – in months. Somehow, along the way, I stopped paying attention to those thoughts, and they vanished. Because of Dharma, I’ve got coherent answers to why I’m here, what I’m doing, and what happens after I die. I no longer fear what I feared because I understood what the underlying cause of my panic was. Now I am actually so deeply grateful for having had these challenges, because without them, I’m not sure that I would have found my way here.