Ep.61 How to Stop a Panic Attack Before It Spirals: The 120-Second Window

If you’ve ever had a panic attack that felt completely random, this episode is for you. It wasn’t random. Your body had been whispering long before it started screaming.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode, Sari shares a real, recent story — a panic attack that hit in the middle of recording a guest interview. Not on a hard day. Not during a crisis. Right in the middle of a normal Tuesday.

Because that’s how high-functioning anxiety works. You keep going. You keep holding it together. And your body keeps tapping you on the shoulder, throwing rocks, until one day it sends the train.

Sari breaks down how anxiety actually builds — through the small signals we override, the gut feelings we negotiate with, the whispers we tell ourselves we’ll get to later. She explains the nervous system loop that turns one thought — “something is wrong” — into a full panic spiral. And what the 120-second window is, and how to actually use it.

This episode isn’t about managing anxiety better. It’s about understanding what your body has been trying to say — and starting to rebuild the relationship with it. If you’re a mom, a high-achiever, someone who holds the whole world together on the outside while quietly falling apart on the inside… this one is for you.

Your body is not against you. It never was.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

•      Why high-functioning anxiety and panic attacks don’t come out of nowhere — and how they actually build

•      How ignoring your body’s early signals turns a whisper into a full panic attack

•      Why the thought “something is wrong” is what triggers the anxiety and overthinking spiral

•      How control and fear keep you from hearing your own intuition

•      What the 120-second window is — and how to use it before your nervous system takes over

•      Why your body is not betraying you — it’s communicating with you

•      How to zoom out when fear has the blinders on and anxiety is running the show

REFLECTION
Where in your life are you already getting the whispers — and choosing to ignore them?

What would change if you started trusting what your body is trying to tell you before it has to scream?

FREE NERVOUS SYSTEM RESET
If anxiety feels like it’s always one thought away from a full panic attack, download the free 5-minute Nervous System Reset. It’s a guided hypnotic meditation designed to calm your body and interrupt the anxiety loop in real time.

Download the Free Nervous System Reset

WORK WITH SARI
If you’re ready to stop living in high-functioning anxiety and want real support in changing it at the root, you can book a free Freedom Roadmap Session with Sari. It’s a free 45-minute call to map out exactly where you are and where you want to go.

Book Your Free Freedom Roadmap Session

Free 5 minute Nervous System Reset

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Welcome back, everyone, to another episode. Today I want to share a real life recent story, one that was unexpected, and also I should have expected it at the same time. Um, you know how let me take that back. Our body is always talking to us, and I feel like the universe is always talking to us. It's just, is it just the tap on the shoulder that we barely even hear? It kind of feels like a whisper. Or then is it a rock getting thrown at you trying to get your attention? Or then is it the train just piling into you, slamming into you like a map truck? And when are we gonna start listening? Is the question. Are we gonna wait till the train barrels into us? Or are we gonna start listening with just the gentle tap on the shoulder? And to me, this is where anxiety starts building. It starts building in little taps. And then if you push it down, shove it down, then it kind of starts turning into these rocks getting thrown at you. I feel a little bit harder, but we've become these humans who can just suffer and take pain. So we take the rock. And then all of a sudden, here comes the train. And now we're like, oh fuck, oh shit. And this is how anxiety starts billing. And I want to use this also in the realm of our own intuition. Our own intuition is so important. But usually our own intuition has like the volume dial turned so low because all of the other messengers and the parts and the ego and the fears and the worries and the judgments and the shame and the blame are so high that we don't hear the intuition most of the time. And the intuition usually speaks in those gentle shoulder taps. So last week I was ignoring something. I was ignoring the shoulder taps. And I don't know that it fully got to the train barreling at me, but it was definitely the rocks. And I had a panic attack. And this hasn't happened to me in a while. And it was was crazy because it was literally happening when I was recording a guest podcast. And so I want to talk about how sometimes anxiety feels sudden. It kind of feels like when you think about if you're in, you know, whether it's a mall or a school or a movie, and all of a sudden there's like a a kid who's just fucking around and pulls the fire alarm. And then there's not a real fire, but everybody's all of a sudden like running around, like, oh my God, what are we supposed to do? Is this a real fire? Do I freak out? Is there chaos? Is there urgency? Is there panic? And everybody's kind of reacting before we actually know what's happening. And this can be anxiety. And I say this because the minute that you think of that, there's something wrong, the alarm bells kick off, and then boom, your body is got so much adrenaline coursing through it that you're freaking out. And that's what anxiety sometimes feels like in your body. I'm just curious if you're listening to this, if you've ever felt that before, where all of a sudden it's like you have this one thought that's kind of like this oh shit moment. And then all of a sudden the panic really sets in and it's like doomsday. And everything gets really loud, everything gets really urgent. And but what most people don't realize is it usually didn't start there. And I've said this in past episodes before anxiety doesn't come out of nowhere, it builds. And the little taps on the shoulders, the little whispers before the alarm, if we actually listen to them before the alarm, then maybe we wouldn't have to deal with the train barreling into us or the rock hitting us in the head. So I just share, and and this is again my personal experience with anxiety, with panic attacks, always came from a bodily trigger of there being a feeling or a symptom in my body that I felt like was not normal. And I would then go, well, this isn't right. And now I'm freaking out because I know what my normal is, and this isn't my normal. And if I'm feeling this, then shh something's gotta be wrong. Shit's gotta be wrong. And so it's important to your body is so loud. Your body talks. And you know, there are definitely people that don't really feel things in their body that much. They're more in their head and emotional, and that's not wrong, that's not right. It's another type. Um, but for me personally, I'm very in tune with the feelings and sensations that are happening in my body. And if this is someone, if you're someone that is not super in tune with what's happening in your body, my guess is you learn to shove it down at one point and to not recognize it. And what's actually empowering is to start feeling it because this is the very thing that gives you the signal, gives you the light tap on the shoulder that gives you the little whisper of maybe this wasn't the best decision, or maybe we should do something else, or maybe we need to respond in a different way. It's the body giving subtle feedback. And I guess what was choosing to ignore it. There's some new supplements and some peptides that I've decided to start using for my body, and I tried to increase the dosage way too fast. And my body was telling me this isn't working, and then the next week I did it anyways. And I was second guessing my intuition, I was overriding it. And instead of, you know, seeing that as like, you know, sometimes we look at our decisions and we wish we wouldn't have done something, or we thought, like, damn, we fucked up. But maybe a better way to look at it, a more supportive, loving way, would be I just didn't fully trust it yet. I didn't fully trust that what my body was trying to tell me in that moment, the whispers, the gentle whispers of like, hey, you should probably not take as much as you did last week. I was just like, I was negotiating. I was trying to figure out, well, maybe it's just it just takes a certain amount of time for this to really regulate in my body. And and I want you to, you know, whether this this also happened to me with a friend recently. It happened to me with a friend that was actually a coach of mine, also. And I was getting very much the signal that we should no longer work together. It wasn't good for our friendship. And yet I was living in FOMO. I was thinking that she had something that I needed and I needed to just do that anyways. But in reality, I was emotionally entangled and I was choosing to do it anyway. And the universe hit me with a big ass rock and said, this isn't gonna work. And so, whether it's your body, whether it's a situation with a friend, your lover, your partner, your mother, like whoever it is, your boss, when are we going? Are we gonna let ourselves get to the point to where it's really fucking bad? Or are we gonna start slowly listening to the gentle shoulder taps, the gentle whispers, and let ourselves start making decisions from there because that's our intuition. And when we do that, then the anxiety doesn't have to be this big ass problem because we're actually deciding from alignment, from that intuition, from that place where, you know, whether it be, you know, I decided taking these supplements and these peptides because I felt like it was going to support my body in a certain way. And in so many ways it has. It was just that we need to go slow. And I was trying to go too fast. And so by going too fast, I was feeling in favorable symptoms in my body, where now that I've slowed it down, I'm not feeling that. And so all it is is feedback, right? And in the same way, I could have gone in this situation with my friend and got in her program and then felt really remorseful about it because I didn't listen to the inner guidance system. And so when your body, whether it be physical or emotional intuitive, giving small signals, why are we questioning them? Why is there an inner negotiation? And I guess there's a part of me that maybe thought it was fear instead of guidance. But I wasn't ignoring myself on purpose. I just didn't trust fully what I was hearing yet. So, what would really change your world if you actually started trusting the little whispers? I'm not talking about the really loud, you know, if it's coming from worry or fear, it's probably not your intuition. If you could just take fear out of the equation, what would be left? So let's also just remember that this is a nervous system loop that when the body first notices, again, whether it's physical or emotional, that something feels off. You're fine, don't overreact. That's what the mind says. Then the body slowly increases the signal. And then the mind says, wait, what's wrong? And then now the alarm goes. And that's when the anxiety spikes, that's when the adrenaline, that's when the cortisol starts spiking in your body and you start freaking the fuck out. This is your nervous system trying to get your attention. It's not random, it's pattern and it's looping. And your body is not betraying you. Man, I can't tell you how many times I thought my body was betraying me. That I thought, how could I be in this fucking situation again? But what it was actually doing was communicating, was communicating that there's a problem that you're not hearing, that you're not listening, that you're continuing to shove down. And you know, the the questions that I would have would be what if this is just fear? What if I'm overreacting? What if I'm making a wrong decision? And that's where you get to trust in the moment and get to ask, is this intuition or fear? That confusion is part of learning to trust yourself again, the negotiation, which one is truly right? And you know, looking back even just to my situation, these two situations that I'm using as an example, whether it was the supplements that I was taking, or whether it was my friend deciding to work with her again. I knew there was like this inner knowing that I knew what I should be doing, and yet I wasn't choosing it. And again, this is not wrong. This is not right. This is literally just learning to trust yourself. And part of that is second-guessing it. It's making mistakes, right? Like so many times with my 14-year-old right now, I tell her all the time, like, I want you to make mistakes. Because if you don't make mistakes, how are you gonna learn? How are you gonna know what does feel good? How are you gonna know what's right? But just because I'm 41 years old doesn't mean that I'm not gonna keep making mistakes and that I'm not even learning more in this moment how to trust myself more. So we have to make the mistakes, and that's okay. So if you would, maybe there's something pressing in your life. And could you just pause for a second? Where in your life are you already getting the whispers about something? Is there something that you're just brushing off? Is there something that you are trying to put behind you? Like you don't even see it, but you know there's a knowing deep down that it needs to be addressed. And how long is it gonna take until that anxiety spike hits? When that physical symptoms hit, and the immediate thought is what's wrong? And then the spiral begins. And it hits you so fast. And the moment that I thought something was wrong, boom, the alarm bells, the fire alarm got pilled, got pulled, everything escalated. And I, as I said, I was in the middle of interviewing a guest for a podcast, and I asked myself in that moment, what am I not seeing? And we are actually talking about something about being held by the universe. And when fear is present, we forget the expansive panoramic view that we have of life. When we are focused on fear, and I say this all the time. Imagine pouring out a gigantic bag of rice, and there's just thousands of grains everywhere on a table, and you pick up one grain of rice, and that's that one fear, and that's all you're experiencing. But if you look up, you would see all of the grains of rice on the table. There's so many other things that you're experiencing, but you just choose to look at one grain of rice. That's the narrow focus. And if I expand my focus and remember that I'm held by this universe, that I'm not alone, and that this fear is not the only thing that exists right now, even though it feels like it does. That's how anxiety takes the mic and says, I'm running this show. And now I didn't feel magically calm, but I caught it. I caught that I was feeling this way. And the only thing, you know, this is such a mic drop moment of a line that I heard, and it says, the only thing wrong is thinking that something is wrong. And most of the time, when we're someone who's experienced anxiety over and over again, we know we've been here before. And we're not actually in danger because when we come down from the high horse and the adrenaline of anxiety, and we slow back down to normal, where we can rationalize, we know there was never any danger. It was an illusion. We had created it out of fear by the simple ask of what's wrong. Thinking that there's something wrong. The only thing wrong is thinking something's wrong. And in that moment, when I was with my podcast guest and I remembered who the fuck I am, I slowly started grounding because I was not wearing the narrowed-in blinders of fear anymore. I was slowly starting to zoom out. And that takes time. For some people, it takes hours. For some people, it can even take days and weeks. But the refractory period is what's so important every time you catch yourself when those alarm bells go off. What's the amount of time that passes between the first cortisol and adrenaline spike that causes the fire alarm to get pulled to the minute that you actually slow down and realize that you're okay? It's not necessarily a fix-it-fast energy, even though we want it fixed fast in that moment. It's about awareness, it's about regulation, and it's about being gentle and compassionate with yourself that it's okay that that thing happened. Support your body first. Breathe, hydrate, move, eat the right foods. Can you move the energy in your body that you're experiencing that moment? Sometimes the best thing I could do was just get the fuck out of the house and go for a walk. And also bring in curiosity. Instead of what's wrong, what about what am I feeling and why am I feeling this? There's this small window where you can really support your body before it begins spiraling further. It takes 120 seconds for the chemical emotions to get out of your body for that adrenaline, that cortisol to set and to go back to normal. 120 seconds. And so if after 120 seconds you're still thinking the same looping thoughts, then the timer sets over again. But if you can stop it within that 120 seconds, you can use your tools, you can go out for a walk, you can call someone, you can do some gentle breath work. Breath is so important. And I know there's people out there that shit on breath work, but it is literally the tool that you don't need anything for that is in your body. God gave us breath to regulate our systems. And there's a real science to it. There's so much information about breath out there. And so the fact that we can just use our breath, just simply even taking a slow deep breath and slowly exhaling, having your exhale be longer than your inhale can really start to activate that vagus nerve and to slow things down. So remember the more you ignore the whispers, the louder your body has to get. And I know if you're experiencing anxiety, if you're experiencing anxiety and panic attacks, the last thing you want is to go through another episode like that. And believe me, I know you're waiting for it. You're preparing your whole day based off when that fucker might show up. Anxiety is not the problem. It's the messenger. It's just the fact that it escalates because we ignore it. Is not against you. And this is the relationship that you get to rebuild. You get to learn to hear yourself sooner, faster, and allow those whispers to be more of a regular intuitive voice that you hear. The more you listen to those whispers, the less your body has to scream the fuck at you. And if this is you right now, you're not the only one learning this. And you don't have to figure this out alone. There's so many resources on this podcast. There's a five-minute nervous system reset that I recorded specifically for you guys, free. There's links in the show notes. Go check it out. I'm here with you. I've experienced it. I understand. And I'm here to hold your hand. I'm here to walk you down towards the path to a life you didn't even know existed. If I if you would have told me seven years ago that I would be a living in Austin, Texas, in a completely different city with my family, I would be going every day without a panic attack. I would actually be living a really luxurious life of slow joy, listening to my intuition and feeling more powerful than ever. I would have been like, what fairy tale are you living in? But what's so important about this work and why I do this work is because I've lived the fucking hell, you guys. And I know what it's like on the other side. And I just want you to believe in a reality that is so much more, that a life that you get to experience everything you want. And if you don't know how to get there, that's okay. I'm here to support you. So keep listening, and we'll see you next episode.