"From inside the fire" - When Panic Takes the Body and Fear Eats the Future.

(If you’re not willing to read this all the way to the end, don’t read it at all !)

This is not a comforting piece.

This is not educational.

This is not written to reassure you.

What follows is a report from inside my panic, fear, and collapse - not after it has been integrated, not once it has been made meaningful, but while it is happening. If you skim, intellectualise, or look for inspiration, you will miss the point of this article entirely.

Read this fully, or close it now.

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MINUTE 1 . . .

I don’t notice it immediately.

That’s the first thing.

It never announces itself clearly. It doesn’t knock on the door and say this is a panic attack or this is fear. It starts much earlier, much quieter, almost politely, as a tension rising somewhere between my shoulders, like a subtle tightening that could still mean anything, according to my defensive mind. Maybe I slept badly. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m getting sick. Maybe it’s just a long day. My body knows before my mind does, but my mind doesn’t trust that yet.

MINUTE 5 . . .

I’m still functional. I’m still talking. Still doing what I was doing. But something is already off. Sounds feel sharper. People feel louder. If I’m with others, I start to get annoyed without really knowing why. Their voices irritate me. Their presence feels like too much information. I judge. Internally first. Then my mood shifts just enough that people start to feel it. They ask if I’m okay. I say yes. I don’t know, or don't want to know yet that I’m not.

Somewhere around minute five, my mind starts trying to solve a problem that hasn’t been named. It scans. It reaches for explanations. Maybe I need to eat. Maybe my back is acting up again. Maybe I need coffee. Maybe I need to lie down. I take a deeper breath, I stretch. I roll my shoulders. I try to fix the body, because that’s still easier than feeling what’s actually coming.

And then . . .then there’s a moment , sometimes very small , where I realise: oh shit, not again...

This isn’t physical tiredness.

This isn’t sickness.

This is something else.

By then, the urge to be alone has already kicked in. Not a preference, but a desperate escape, an imperative. My system starts shutting down socially. I can’t track conversations anymore. I’m not present anymore. I become blunt, distant and unavailable. Being with people starts to feel dangerous, even though nothing is happening that putting me in danger. If I leave, if I’m alone, it doesn’t get better - but at least I don’t have to perform.

My whole system start to scream: I NEED TO GET AWAY . . . NOT THIS . . . NOT AGAIN!!!

MINUTE 15 - 20 . . .

My vigilance really comes online.

The walls don’t literally close in, but it feels like they do. Space feels smaller. My breath gets shallow without me deciding. My chest tightens. And then my mind . . . god . . . my mind, which until now was trying to help - turns against me. Not aggressively at first. More like a slow poisoning.

You’re alone.

This is how it’s going to be.

This is how it's ALWAYS going to be.

You’re not going to find love EVER again, or friendship, or people you can trust.

Money is going to be a mayor problem.

You’re too much !

People never really have your back.

Why should they, you can't even have your own back...

The thoughts are not abstract. They come with images. Harsh and dark future images. Me older, alone. Me struggling financially. Me being abandoned. Me realising too late that I fucked everything up. And at the same time, my body starts to hurt in very specific places. My lower back. Old pain waking up. Or nausea creeping in. Sometimes just a deep, unsettling sense that something is fundamentally wrong.

MINUTE 30 . . .

At this point, I’m often still trying to cope around it. I stretch again. I change position. I tell myself to breathe. Sometimes it helps a little. Sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, the fear tightens further, and the darkness deepens. This is the part people don’t like to talk about.

My breath starts racing, like crazy.

And sometimes, somewhere in here, the idea that this life has to end passes through my mind . . .

Not as a plan. Not as intent. But as an image. As an idea. As a door my system shows me and says, this would make it stop. It’s not a desire for death. It’s a desire for relief. And I’m very clear about this: having those thoughts does not make me broken, weak, or dangerous. It means my system is overwhelmed and looking for an exit. That’s all.

I don’t judge that anymore. I notice it. I name it internally. And I keep staying.

Eventually - and this is different every time - I reach a point where coping stops working. Where distraction fails. Where thinking stops. Where there is nothing left to do but feel. And that’s usually where my body takes over completely.

Sometimes it’s rage first. A need to scream. To make sound. To let pressure out. Sometimes that helps a little. But more often, what actually wants to happen is crying. Not pretty crying. Not cinematic crying. Full-body crying. The kind where I end up on the floor, back against the wall, knees pulled in, arms wrapped around myself, crying like something ancient is finally allowed to speak.

There are moments in those waves where my body purges. Where the contraction is so intense that I vomit. Where everything tightens and releases at the same time. It’s not graceful. It’s not spiritual. It’s raw, mammalian, deeply human.

THE NEW . . .

And this is where something important has changed for me.

Because alongside the panic, the fear, the despair, there is now another presence that I'm starting to discover. A spine. A mature part. Not fixing. Not arguing with the thoughts. Not trying to get out. Just staying. Like a loving father with a terrified child. Holding. Breathing. Saying nothing or maybe just this: I’m here. I'm not leaving. I've got you.

The only questions that matter at that point are very small:

What would make the next minute slightly more bearable?

What about the next ten minutes?

What about the next hour?

Sometimes the answer is a warm bath or shower. Sometimes music. Sometimes self-touch. Sometimes just staying exactly where I am and letting the crying move through completely. And sometimes, unexpectedly, there’s even something almost enjoyable underneath it - not pleasure, but aliveness. A sense of being profoundly alive in the middle of all that fear.

When the wave passes - and it always does, even if it takes hours - what’s left is emptiness. Fatigue. A silence. And a familiar voice that says, I’m too tired for this. I can’t keep doing this. It’s too much.

That voice lies!

Not maliciously. It lies because it doesn’t know what else to say.

Because every time I stay, truly stay, without collapsing, without outsourcing myself, without abandoning my body, something shifts. Tiny. Almost invisible. A baby step. A little more capacity. A little more self-trust. A little more evidence that I can hold myself in the places where no one else can.

This is not a story about healing in a straight line. It’s not inspirational. It’s not meant to be. It’s a report from inside the fire. And I’m writing it because I know I’m not alone in this, even when it often feels like I am. There are many of us who live these waves quietly, who function during the day and fight for our lives at night, who are not broken but deeply sensitive, deeply alive, and learning - slowly - how to stay with ourselves when everything in us wants to run.

I’m still here.

Minute by minute.

And for now, that’s enough.

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ANNEXE . . .

What We Get Wrong About Panic, Fear, and Falling Apart

Let me step out of the story for a moment.

What you just read would, in most therapeutic, medical, and social contexts, immediately raise red flags. Panic attacks. Crying uncontrollably. Rage. Suicidal thoughts. Collapse. People rush in to fix, medicate, contain, stabilize, normalize. Not because they’re cruel, but because we don’t know how to be with this.

We’ve been taught that fear is pathological.

That panic is a malfunction.

That crying as a man is weakness.

That suicidal thoughts mean danger instead of distress.

So we panic about panic. We fear fear. We exile the parts of us that are already terrified. And then we wonder why things escalate.

The spine I speak about is not toughness. It is not stoicism. It is not “holding it together.”

The spine is the capacity to stay lovingly present with the parts of us that society still deems unlovable, unmanageable, and too much.

The parts that learned early on that intensity was the only way to be heard.

The parts that were abandoned so long they now scream instead of whisper.

The parts that don’t need fixing — they need company, thex need love.

If we want panic to soften, fear to reorganize, suicidal thoughts to lose their grip, the answer is not control. It is relationship. Not with only others — but with ourselves.

This is not pretty work.

It is not peaceful all the time.

It does not look spiritual.

It looks like staying.

And that, quietly, is one of the bravest things a human nervous system can learn to do.