Case Study: Anxiety Attack and Childhood Trauma

Serena is a diligent and relentless seeker with a rational mind. However, she grew up with an emotionally unstable mother, whose unpredictable anger often targeted Serena. For example, when Serena once fed a kitten a box of milk without sharing it, her mother lashed out, saying, "Is my life less important than a cat?" Such destructive behavior had a detrimental impact on Serena from a young age, leading her to experience symptoms of depression during her middle school years. This early exposure to emotional turmoil sparked her quest for a deeper understanding of life and a path to healing from a young age.

For decades, she had been seeking healing, exploring countless books and experimenting with various methods. Though initially resistant, after trying a few eye movement and hypnosis videos, she noticed a significant shift in her emotional state:

I woke up suddenly at night with some fear and panic, it's psychological (not serious as I said before), it happens occasionally, I would try to let myself sleep and forget this feeling when I encountered this kind of situation before. This time I chose eye movement, moving my eyes from side to side in the darkness, and the fear disappeared after a few minutes.

For the first time, I was able to overcome this sudden fear, and it turned out to be not as scary as I thought it would be. Before, when I was suddenly attacked by an inexplicable fear, I was on the verge of psychological collapse and even thought of committing suicide to escape. This experience made me realize that this is just a kind of feeling that comes and goes, and may just be a symptom of anxiety. I thought of someone who once told me that when he had an anxiety attack, he would go to his heart to feel it and would not let himself be carried away by his emotions, so I decided not to run away anymore in the future.

Thank you for urging me to try eye movement. To be honest, I was quite reluctant at first, but if you hadn't reminded me twice or thrice, I probably wouldn't have really tried.

We often hesitate to confront our negative emotions and inner pain, not because we fail to recognize them or dismiss them as unimportant, but because facing these emotions feels like opening Pandora’s box, unleashing a flood of painful memories. These emotions become obstacles we struggle to overcome, yet each attempt often leads to repeated battles and a sense of failure, gradually wearing us down. In psychological terms, this is akin to "learned helplessness." Instead of continually battling our minds on a cognitive level, we turn to various healing techniques to ease the process and help resolve the pain more effectively.