them. This sort of talking goes nowhere. Sympathize, but try to get them
back on the track of putting their troubling experiences into words.
“I know how much you want them to go away,” Jane’s husband
says. “I do too. I think talking about them might help.”
Jane draws her knees to her chest, scrunching her body into
the smallest target possible. “You just don’t know what it feels like.”
“No, I don’t. But I really want to.”
“When I have the attacks, I feel like I can’t breathe,” Jane
says, and begins to sob.
Her husband puts his arms around her. “And then what?”Your questions may bring on tears, but they’re not hurting. Don’t let
your own fear of making the situation worse turn you away. You won’t.
Treating fear disorders means encouraging people to take one small step
at a time. If you ask them to go on twice and they don’t continue, it means
they’ve gone far enough for one day. Try again tomorrow.
The overall goal is to give fearful people a place to stand outside fear
where they can observe it, and to see that, rather than being an amorphous
mass of awfulness, it has shape, form, content, and duration. It’s helpful to
have people time their attacks and rate them on the 1 to 10 Richter scale used
to measure earthquakes. They can go on from there to paying attention
to what they’re thinking at the time and what they do.
Jane has that funny look on her face. Her husband takes her
hand. “Attack, huh?”
She nods. “It’s about a 6 now, but it might be getting
bigger.” She takes a deep breath. “My chest is getting tight. I
probably need to walk around a little.”
“Let’s go,” her husband says. “I’ll race you.”
Jane manages a tiny smile. “No racing today.”
As they walk, she says, “I had an attack at the bank yester-
day, but it was only a 4. I think I was just in a hurry and got
uptight about waiting in line.”Panic is like a Chinese finger puzzle. The harder you pull away, the
more tightly it holds you. The only way to escape is to stop fighting and
accept it. Easy to say. To actually doit, panicky people must have some
114 ❧Explosions into Fear