Panic.

zombiegirl

How do you deal with panic? In mild situations, I can calm myself down, but this morning was a rather awful ordeal for me that I simply could not breathe through.

Long story short, around 4am I noticed some odd behavior from one of my cats. He was cleaning his genital area obsessively and going in and out of the litter box obsessively with no result. I was worried about the possibility of a blockage in his urethra (a potentially fatal condition my sister's cat died from) but my vet didn't open until 9am. He was otherwise acting fine, playing/eating, so I at least had that to leave me a little hopeful... but the point of the matter was, I forced myself to try and get some sleep and found it nearly impossible with my stress level, worrying over whether or not this constituted an emergency.

I care a lot (maybe too much) about my cats, lol. I tried breathing, focusing on the breath, but I mean... my heart was pounding in my chest regardless. I couldn't get a wink of sleep until I noticed at one point that he did indeed pee a little in the litter box. I am slightly disappointed that with my meditation practice, I could not provide any relief from my worries. I am no stranger to panic/panic attacks and it tends to be rather cyclical for me. My thoughts go round and round hitting over major points of worry again and again, stressing me out more and more. I have a lot of trouble controlling them when it comes to the big stuff and the only thing that ever seems to subdue my monkey mind at this point is actual resolution of the problem.

Is there a better way? Is there something else I could do? Is this simply something that comes with practice?

(Also, as an update for the cat lovers, my vet was able to get me in promptly and they suspect it is a bladder/urinary tract infection and he is now on antibiotics. It was extremely good news that he isn't blocked, however, this sort of thing can progress to a blockage so he's not exactly out of the danger zone yet. I still have to watch him and I'm still a little stressed about the whole thing. Just as a side note so as not to detract from the actual discussion, if anyone has any tips and tricks on this sort of condition with cats, I would love a private message with advice. I've been wondering what I could do as home care to help aid his recovery.)

Dakini

Fab that you got the kitty to the doctor, and they found out what was wrong and are treating it!

I'm inclined to say that sometimes stuff happens in life, and we're not superhuman, we can't overcome a source of major anxiety, like a death scare to a loved one. On the other hand, I remember hearing that Tibetans don't worry, because there's no point. What will happen will happen. You can't do anything about it in the moment, so you just let go. Our minds can torture us by catastrophizing. That doesn't help anything. This is all I have to offer. :-/

person

I find doing what you can to gain some knowledge of the situation helps. A lot of anxiety comes from not knowing and imagining the worst. So if you can fill in some of that knowledge gap I think that helps.

There's some teaching that goes something like:

If something can be done to improve a situation,
What need is there to worry.
If nothing can be done to improve a situation,
What need is there to worry.


My cat as a child died from a blocked urinary tract. Looking back he was noticably in pain a couple days before he died and there was crystalized urine in the litter box. Not sure if its the same condition but there were signs if we would have known what to look for.

possibilities

I am going through a situation with a very sick pet. In the beginning stages I felt unbearable pain over the anticipated loss. I think what you felt was possibly this pain rather than panic, though fear was probably part of it.
You can counter the fear with knowledge, as suggested above, but the pain is there and won't leave -- except when you realize you Don't Know what will happen - and that it makes more sense to enjoy the present moment with the beloved pet. Maybe that will help in the future.

DonB72

Lama Zopa has some advice that is very helpful in dealing with sick or dying pets.

http://www.lamayeshe.com/index.php?sect=article&id=213

ThailandTom

I would guess that panic could be dealt with in the same way as many of the afflictive emotions, letting go of it and seeing things for how they are with a sense of clarity. That way you will be able to handle the situation in a more beneficial manner. But as you pointed out, sometimes there appears to be little time to do such a thing as to let a strong feeling go as soon as it arises. We are not enlightened beings for the most part I would guess.

I recently saw that if I have little time to do something and panic, I make a mess of it and end up with a negative result. If I were to be rational and calmer, I would be more focus, that is where mindfulness comes into play maybe..

LesC

I recently saw that if I have little time to do something and panic, I make a mess of it and end up with a negative result. If I were to be rational and calmer, I would be more focus, that is where mindfulness comes into play maybe.

You never have time to do it right... but always find time to do it over.

zombiegirl

Perhaps I am hoping for too much, lol. I suppose you guys are right... it's probably natural to be stressed out by something like illness of someone/something you love.

@person I really liked that quote but I'm afraid it can fall under the "easier said than done" category, at least for this situation in specific.

@possibilities I am very sorry to hear about your pet. I wish the best of luck to you. I was talking to my aunt, who is sort of a cat lady (she has 7 cats... lol), and she gave me some helpful advice and helped to calm my nerves since she explained that this is a very common condition and it sounds as though my pet is in pretty good shape. However, we started talking about life and death with cats and she also said that I'm very lucky that at 12 years old, this is the first problem I have encountered. Death of pets (and everyone) is inevitable, I suppose, and there is a lot of wisdom in what you said about cherishing the time you have together.

mithril

You cannot deal with panic, because panic as a word (or emotion) itself implies some lack of control. Nor are you required to deal with it. It is something that happens after certain conditions are fulfilled. So you yourself know what kind of situation you feel panic in? Then you can see what lead to it. It is not simple lack of knowledge, as things will always happen out of the ordinary which we cant prepare for. So i think it's really all about the usual watching how things come to be and then by understanding them we can cope with them.

Like, when you saw something happening to your cat, what did you do? You might have thought "This is similar to what happened to another cat". You might have known the other cat died. So you might have remembered how it felt to know that other cat died. Then you connected it to the love of your cat. So this strong feeling (love) was now felt with the grief you pulled from the past into a strong mix you called panic (i'm all guessing here, i can't know what really happened when you experienced it). Essentially you made yourself grieve the death of your cat, even though the cat was still alive, possibly wondering how come you are acting so strange that day^^

This was a fantasy world really, a reaction constructed because you saw your cat had a problem and wanted to avoid the fact your cat had this problem (because you find this fact really disagreeable). So you spun into space (which most of us do, depending on the person there will often be something to get us out of the "now" and just flowing around reacting first to what we saw, than what we thought, than as a reaction to that thought etc etc. This is the same as loosing attention when focusing on your breath. When you get caught up in a thought, you have to wait until it all evolves to the end - then you go "i'm supposed to be meditating" and try again. When you are in a reaction, you are not in control; you have to wait it out until it ends).

So here comes the wish to "deal" with this state. But if you remember the ingredients for the panic they were:

1. love for your cat : nothing to do about it
2. grief when a cat dies: nothing to do about it
3. the idea that "sick pets" have to be taken to the vet: couldn't because the place was closed

So as there is no point in controlling any of these points, the panic is really the same - but because there are strong emotions involved, your brain will furiously try to figure out something creative (nothing you can do about that as well but wait). Really the same when you're in love with someone (you will try to figure out how to be with him), when you like something a lot (will think to figure out how to get it), when you dislike something (will think until you find a way to do something else) etc etc. When you are thinking about what to do in the evening, i'm guessing you also don't go "how do i deal with what do i have to do this evening". It just adds another layer of complexity to the problem and solves nothing. Kinda like:

1 + 1 = ?

The question might be "how do i solve this problem?"

So look what happens by thinking:

"How do i deal with solving this problem?"

Or worse:

"How do i deal with the dealing of solving this problem?"

See how every time you want to control your thinking (or in the cat scenario emotions) it gets more difficult to see the solution?

Hope i make some sense XD