The Panic That Shaped Everything
<<The first panic attack I can remember was in 2008. I lived with my ex husband D but he was at work and I was home alone. I was in the bathroom and I think I just had some existential panic which I was prone to do but would often repress it. This one spun out of control and made my body feel like it was sweating, going to die, have a heart attack. I panicked that my body was going into some kind of panicked state where I may die from panic. Maybe the sign of a heart attack coming. I called the nurse line and they asked me questions. They suggested I come into the ER to get evaluated in case I was having a stroke. They told me I shouldn't drive. I didn't have anyone to ask so I called a high school acquaintance who lived near by who had just had a baby. And she and her baby came, picked me up, and brought me to the ER and sat with me until my husband showed up. I was humiliated. But also, I was having these symptoms while in the lobby waiting. I felt like I was dying and the ER wasn't doing anything about it. They checked my vitals and I landed low in their triage list so I sat there for 3 hours, panicked, shivering but also embarrassed. Once I got in, they couldn't find anything wrong with me but wanted to do a CAT scan anyways to see if I had a lung clot. Jesus Christ, a long clot. Had liquid injected into me that made me feel all warm inside in a scary way and got scanned. Nothing in the scan. Sent home told it was likely a panic attack. That experience was foundational for me feeling like I am totally alone with this body in this world. I had faith in science and doctors after leaving religion but even they couldn't help here. Or wouldn't. I sought more help to handle the panic but as you know it never really made meaningful change beyond enabling more of my control efforts.>>
ChatGPT: That experience makes so much sense as a foundational moment. It wasn’t just panic—it was a full betrayal of everything that was supposed to keep you safe.
Your body betrayed you by feeling like it was shutting down.
The medical system—which you were hoping could offer certainty and help—shrugged, left you waiting in terror, and ultimately gave you nothing.
Your support system was so thin that you had to call a high school acquaintance with a newborn, which only added to the humiliation and sense of isolation.
It makes sense that after that, you walked away feeling like:
"I am totally alone with this body in this world. No one can help me. No one takes this seriously. And I have to figure it out myself."
That’s huge. And you’ve carried that belief ever since. Of course you have. Because what else were you supposed to conclude? Every authority figure—doctors, science, even your own body—either failed you or refused to explain what was happening.
And then, the only thing that did seem to “help” was control—managing, monitoring, trying to stay ahead of panic before it could take you down again. Which makes it even worse that now, after all these years of trying to fix it, you’re still here, feeling like nothing has truly changed.
But here’s the thing:
That ER visit wasn’t proof that no one can help you. It was proof that the system is flawed, that they don’t prioritize something unless they can see it on a scan. It was proof that medical care is built for physical emergencies, not existential terror.
That experience felt like abandonment, but it wasn’t actually proof that you are unhelpable. It was proof that you were asking for help from a system that isn’t equipped to give it.
So what if this whole time, you haven’t been failing at healing—
You’ve just been looking for the wrong kind of help?
What if you don’t need more control—
You need proof that you can be in your body and survive it?
What if the only way out of this pattern is to start trusting, little by little, that your body is not your enemy? That panic is not a sign of actual danger? That you don’t have to spend the rest of your life waiting for an authority figure to validate that you are, in fact, okay?
I know that sounds impossible right now. But I want you to at least consider the idea that this isn’t just the way things are. That your nervous system isn’t broken beyond repair. That there is a way to build a new relationship with your body that isn’t just fear and control.
<<What do you think the intersections of being raised by emotionally immature parents (rejecting and passive) and then as a child getting more involved in religion than the rest of your family?>>
That’s a powerful intersection—one that sets up a pretty intense internal landscape. Let’s break it down.
1. Emotionally Immature Parents (Rejecting & Passive)
Growing up without emotionally available caregivers leaves a hunger for structure, validation, and safety that never gets fully met.
If parents were rejecting, you might have felt emotionally abandoned, like your feelings were burdensome or unwelcome.
If they were passive, they may not have outright rejected you, but they also didn’t provide warmth, guidance, or emotional engagement—so you were left to figure out life alone.
2. Turning to Religion More Than Your Family
When your emotional world feels unstructured and unheld, religion can feel like a lifeline—a place that offers order, certainty, and a sense of purpose.
If your family wasn’t deeply religious but you dove in, it suggests you were searching for something they weren’t providing: a sense of belonging, meaning, and a “parental” force (God) who actually cared.
You might have also felt morally or spiritually responsible for your family. When kids aren’t getting enough from their parents, they often take on the fixer role, believing if I do this right, I can save them, I can make things better.
What This Combo Sets Up
Hyper-Responsibility:
You may have felt like you had to be the moral/emotional anchor because your parents weren’t stepping up.
Religion may have reinforced this with teachings about duty, righteousness, and being a “light” to others.
Deep Existential Longing:
Because your human caregivers weren’t enough, you may have searched for divine care instead.
But the absence of embodied parental love may have made God feel intellectually present but emotionally distant, mirroring your real-life dynamic.
Internal Conflict Between Control & Despair:
Religion likely gave you rules, structure, and a way to feel in control.
But deep down, the emotional needs that religion couldn’t meet might have left you with a quiet, gnawing despair—like no matter how much faith you had, it never fully soothed the loneliness inside.
Sense of Being “Different” or “Separate” From Your Family:
If they weren’t as religious, you may have felt both superior (I’m on the right path) and alienated (they don’t get me).
You might have felt like an outsider in your own home—not fully belonging with your family but also not fully belonging anywhere.
How This Might Still Be Echoing Today
Feeling like you have to “parent” yourself because no one else will.
Swinging between hyper-control and existential freefall (because when control fails, the abyss is right there).
Having a deep but complex relationship with structure—craving it, but resenting it for failing you.
Struggling to trust emotional connection because religion was about rules and beliefs, not felt safety and love.
A sense of profound existential abandonment.
So Now What?
The key isn’t to reject the whole path you took—it made sense why you latched onto religion. But now, the work is in giving yourself what you were originally looking for:
A sense of safety that isn’t rigid control.
A connection to yourself that isn’t just intellectual.
A relationship with meaning that isn’t rooted in fear or duty.
I think you’ve already been unraveling a lot of this. But seeing why it all fit together might help you stop blaming yourself for how hard this has been. You weren’t just “extra religious” for no reason. You were trying to survive in the only way that made sense at the time.
<<I felt like becoming a missionary would make me exceptional, more grown up among my peers when I was in high school. And my extreme religious experiences made me feel like I was right and my American friends and family disgusted me when I returned.>>
That makes so much sense. It wasn’t just about belief—it was about elevation. Becoming a missionary wasn’t just devotion; it was a way to rise above, to be someone, to be taken seriously, to escape the smallness and uncertainty of being a teenager.
And then, when you had extreme religious experiences, they validated that you were different, chosen, on a path others couldn’t see. It gave you clarity and certainty, which probably felt intoxicating after growing up in an emotionally barren environment.
So of course, coming back to America felt disgusting.
Your friends and family hadn’t seen what you had.
They were still caught up in meaningless, self-indulgent lives while you had touched something real.
Their comfort, their trivial problems, their lack of urgency—it all must have seemed shallow compared to the life-or-death spiritual reality you had been living in.
But Here’s the Twist
That disgust? That superiority?
It wasn’t just about them being wrong.
It was also about protecting yourself from doubt.
Because if you had let yourself feel any hesitation—if you had admitted, Wait, maybe this isn’t as clear as I thought—it would have threatened everything. It would have meant that your mission, your purpose, your sense of exceptionality… might not be as solid as you needed it to be.
That disgust probably wasn’t only about them.
It was a shield, a way to double down on certainty so you didn’t have to face the terrifying possibility that maybe… you weren’t as sure as you thought.
And Now?
You’re on the other side of that. You’ve already let the doubt in. You’ve dismantled so much of what once felt untouchable. But that pattern of needing to be exceptional, needing to be different to matter—that’s old wiring, and it doesn’t just disappear.
Maybe now, instead of trying to be spiritually exceptional, you’ve felt pressure to be intellectually exceptional—to understand everything about yourself, to have the deepest insights, to outgrow what others still struggle with.
Maybe that disgust you once felt toward your family and friends…
Now gets directed at yourself when you feel lost, uncertain, or just human.
But you don’t need to be exceptional to be worthy.
You don’t need absolute certainty to be safe.
And you don’t need to define yourself against the people around you.
You don’t have to be anything other than exactly where you are right now. And I know that’s hard to trust, because your whole life has been about figuring it out. But maybe, just maybe, you already make sense—even when you don’t have all the answers.
