Panic Isn't The Enemy

In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna explores a powerful shift in perspective: panic isn't your enemy—it's your brain trying to protect you. She explains how the nervous system responds the same way to emotional threats as it does to physical danger, why panic can make clear thinking feel impossible, and how resisting those feelings often intensifies them. Instead of viewing panic as proof that something is wrong, Jenna encourages listeners to understand what's happening inside the brain and recognize that awareness is the first step toward self-regulation. 

Jenna also shares practical tools for navigating panic in real time, including naming the experience, slowing the exhale, grounding yourself in the present, and separating physical sensations from fearful stories. Through a relatable client example, she demonstrates how the brain can relearn safety with consistent practice. The episode closes with an empowering reminder that the goal isn't to eliminate panic altogether—it's to build the confidence and skills to respond to it, knowing that recovery, not perfection, is what leads to lasting resilience.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about panic isn't the enemy. I think we fear panic because it causes a fear response, but really want to talk about how you can use it to your advantage, what to do in the moment, and how to understand what your brain's doing so that you can actually use it as a tool rather than a blockade to your life. So let's start with imagine you're sitting in your car before you're going in somewhere. Your chest tightens, your thoughts race, your hands and feet feel cold or clammy, and the brain starts scanning for danger. Every one of us has been there at some point. Doesn't matter if it's a date, an interview, a meeting of someone, or just going to face the fear of what's going on, but that's panic. We've all been there. If you're sitting there and you're feeling all that, maybe you felt it physically just from hearing me talk about it. But that's stress. What if your brain is actually not trying to destroy you, but it's trying to protect you? So if you understand that all those physical and emotional responses you had to that moment that's going to be uncomfortable, that's just your brain trying to protect you. Yes, you're having reactions to it, but you need to understand that that panic you're feeling, that's you protecting yourself. And when you reframe it to, I'm thankful that I'm trying to protect myself, when you sort of think of it from that perspective, I'm grateful to myself because I wanted to keep myself safe. So that's using panic to your advantage. What if can also be so what? If you've watched other episodes, you've heard me say this. What if, what if, what if? Okay, that's your brain panicking. But if you say so what, your brain starts to calm down, your nervous system starts to call down. Panic is your nervous system entering survival mode. That's your key notification that you are entering survival mode and stress. It doesn't know the difference between a real physical threat or an emotional or psychological threat. It doesn't know the difference. Your thoughts about how that hurts, whether it's a physical hurt or an emotional hurt, it doesn't know the difference. Your brain just says, okay, this hurts. Panic. That's your nervous system. Remember, your brain is a part of your nervous system. So if you understand that and you just go, so what? Okay, that hurts, but I'll be fine. Your brain will start to calm down. Your nervous system will start to calm down. Whatever your sort of nervous tick is, just be aware of it. Be aware of how you respond to stress. And then instead of letting your brain focus on what if this happens? What if, what if, what if, so what? What if they don't like me? So what? It's when you get comfortable doing that, you will train your brain to relax. Your nervous system will relax. It might happen in the moment. That's where it's gonna start. But when you become somebody who says, so what? More often than not, I always think the most dangerous person in the room is the person who accepts. It is what it is. Sometimes it be like that is one of my favorites. Just because it was like that today doesn't mean it's gonna be like that always. So that's kind of what it is. Sometimes it be like that. So what? Okay, this thing happened. Now I can let it hurt because it hurt today, or I can keep letting it hurt me. That choice belongs to me. So what if? So what? Is it going to hurt tomorrow? Is anybody gonna care? No. The only pain I felt from it was the pain that I personally felt. So when I have trained my nervous system, and yes, it's taken me a couple of years to be the kind of person, so what? But it's just okay, it is what it is. I'm not trying to fake it till I make it, but sometimes it'd be like that. But it's only sometimes. It doesn't have to be like that all the time. Life's gonna hurt, but if most of us shoot a second arrow at ourselves, self-judgment penalize ourselves for not being perfect. So I only shoot the first arrow in my life anymore. I don't have to hit the panic button and set off all the alarms. Like something panicked me. Okay, so what? Now, if you knew me two years ago, you would know that I was quickly going to panic, ruminate, and probably turn neurotic, but not anymore. So my identity shifted because I became the kind of person who I wasn't that way overnight. There's a time buffer that happens, but I've learned to use panic as an understanding versus something that overthinks me into a panic the wrong way. The nervous system will feel like uncertainty, something you're not familiar with. It can feel dangerous. Like an email, a confrontation, some financial stress, feeling trapped, rejection, burnout, whatever it is. The amygdala in your brain, your alarm system, it's going to signal a stress response. A little thing like an email we didn't like will spin us out of control. We give it the same level as life or death. Well, it's not. You have to train your nervous system to undo that. Society and this digital era we live in of the now, now, now society has trained us that every little thing is a threat. We have done this to ourselves, most of us, right? We have let all this in and given ourselves away piece by piece until every little thing that's uncomfortable or not perfect sends us into complete and utter overwhelm. We go off the deep end. Um, your prefrontal cortex actually goes offline. That's the front of your brain, that's your logic brain. It goes offline during panic. You can feel irrational, reactive, overwhelmed. You're unable to think clearly. You're not crazy, you're in survival mode. That's why even the most rational people can do irrational things because in the moment of panic, they're going off the deep end and acting irrational. You gotta calm your nervous system so your prefrontal cortex can come back online. That way you can make rational decisions. But if you can understand that what you're feeling is panic, it's not your enemy. You become your enemy when you jump off the deep end. The biggest mistake I think we all make is that we try to fight panic. Resistance actually increases it. It's like the joke about you want you see someone freaking out, tell them to calm down. What's gonna happen? They're gonna freak out more because you're adding more to it. Your nervous system is already activated, so you're gonna freak out even more. That's the biggest mistake is don't try to fight it. Just try to be like, uh, it is what it is. Sometimes it be like that. This is making me feel uncomfortable. Your brain actually interprets that resistance as a confirmation that the danger is real. Think about that. As you're trying to fight the panic, your brain actually takes that as evidence this is real, this is scary. Your nervous system says, understood, let's stay panicked. You brace for the impact of worse things happening. Self-regulation actually starts with an awareness that instead of panicking, the goal is not to never panic. I think that's crazy. I think that's what we think is I just don't want to panic. I don't want to have any bad thoughts. Well, you're human. Guess what? Those are gonna happen. But if you switch it to, I know what my brain is doing, and I know how to guide myself through this, and that changes everything. That panic is gonna be there, but it's not your enemy. It's actually evidence for you to flip your script to reframe what's happening. You know, you don't have to keep hurting yourself. Just because something bad happened doesn't mean you need to jump off the cliff. Maybe you just go, okay, there's a cliff there. I don't need to jump over it. And as you breathe and let your nervous system regulate, your prefrontal cortex will come back online and you can make some logical decisions. What do you do when you're panicking to not fall off the cliff or jump off the cliff? Because most of us jump, right? We don't generally fall off. Here's some real practical things you can do. It's a four-step process, but it works well in that panic moment. So, number one, you gotta name what's happening. My nervous system is activated, my brain is panicked, this feels uncomfortable. I'm experiencing a panic response. Whatever that naming it works for you. So you start by naming it. Name it however you want, but step one is to name what's happening to you. Be aware what's happening. Step two is just a longer exhale. Breathe in for four, out for six. If that's all you can do in the moment, do that. But the longer exhale is what's going to calm the parasympathetic nerve system. During panic, your breathing becomes fast and shallow. Your brain thinks you're in danger. So it turns off other systems of your body naturally. Number three is you're gonna shift to safety. That's when panic happens, your brain narrow focuses on that threat. You get tunnel vision. So, how can you do this? You're going to intentionally widen your awareness by looking around the room. Find five things you can see and name them. I see the door, I see the window, I see the floor, I see the rug, I see the plant. Name five things you can see. Look for four things that you could feel. If I touch the couch, it's soft. If I touch the plant, it feels like a leaf, it's it's crumbly, whatever that is. And then name three things that you can hear. I hear the fan, I hear the TV, I hear a phone ringing, whatever that is. But that's your five four three. That's the shift to safety. I personally find that when I'm in panic, I can't process that far ahead, but I can think 5'4 and I've had panic attacks. I remember the first one I had. It was way back when when I was still pregnant with my daughter. So you're talking 21 years ago. I can remember I was in the grocery store, I was standing in line, and I felt like I was breathing through a straw. My chest got really tight. I thought I was gonna faint and die. I could barely breathe. The guy behind me was like, ma'am, are you okay? And I was like, I can't even tell. I couldn't even utter something out. That was the first panic attack I've ever had in my life. I literally thought I was gonna die there in the grocery store. It's amazing how within like 10 seconds, you will start to feel better. And by 30 seconds, you'll have full control of yourself again. And then the fourth step to that is to just stop predicting the future. That's what your brain does. It makes up dramatic stories like I think I'm gonna die, the worst is about to happen. Your panic actually loves prediction. And it's usually future focused. Oh, these bad things are gonna happen to me. I'm gonna fall off the cliff. Bring yourself back to what's happening right now before I jump off the cliff. Right now I'm panicking. I'm going to breathe longer. 543. Stop predicting the future. Wait until your prefrontal cortex, your logic brain, can come back online. It's pretty simple. And I think right now it might seem like a lot unless you're in the middle of a panic attack. And if you're in one, you're going, that sounds crazy. I can't do that right now. Just breathe and name what's happening to you. It's very different from I'm dying, I'm trapped, I'll never. Refrain from using always and never, especially in a panic moment. Your brain will calm down when it separates the sensations from the story. What does that mean? It needs to separate from the what if to where you're at now. Once you get back to now, your prefrontal cortex can come on and your logic brain can work. Every one of us adults has had that moment where you're like, why did I do that? Well, because you were panicking. You were freaking out and you had no logic and you were in survival mode and you acted irrationally. Stop predicting what's gonna happen. Just so what? I had a client that started having panic attacks, which I identified with, right? Me telling you about having mine, but she would have them before and during work meetings. Meetings became a threat to her. She would literally go into a panic attack just to get in a room full of people that she knew and they respected her. At first, she thought she was having a heart attack at the first one, right? She told me about this experience where in the meeting, she literally thought she was having a heart attack. She couldn't breathe, thought she was gonna faint. Not because the meeting was dangerous, but because her brain started associating meanings with danger. Every Monday as she's going to work, her nervous system would activate before anything even happened. She would start panicking on the drive to work before she even got there, hours before the meeting. So we coached her to just try something different. That what happened differently is that before every meeting, she would tell herself when getting out of the car, my brain is predicting danger. My body is just responding. And after about two or three weeks, she wasn't panicking. We had to get her to a place of where she could name this is not an emergency. These meetings are not life and death. I've just associated with them. So after about three or four weeks, the meetings started no longer panicking her. And I'm happy to report that a couple months later, she hasn't had a panic attack about the Monday meeting, but it what it started with was naming it, being aware that she was having a panic response and telling herself, it is not the enemy. It is not life or death. I have learned to associate this uncomfortable meeting with panic. My brain sees this as danger. Remember, panic loves to predict the future. Panic lives in the future. The worst case scenario. It reinforces it. Remember, the brain looks for evidence. The same for panic. So you have to reset that. So this particular client stopped treating panic as proof she was unsafe. Her brain had learned in about a month that the activation in the amygdala, that fear center, it doesn't equal danger. Every time you stay present instead of separating, you're rewiring your brain. And yes, it's going to take a couple repetitions to unwire it because you've wired it to believe what it believes now. You kind of have to unwire and understand that panic is actually like a warning, it's an awareness bell. It's not really a warning or danger system. It's just an alarm bell going, hey, pay attention. You don't like it already. How long do you want to let it hurt? When the alarm goes off, don't jump off the cliff. Rewire yourself. And when that happens, you'll find your peace again. The real goal for you will not be becoming someone who never panics. I don't think that's the goal. I think that's unrealistic. But if the goal is becoming someone who knows how to respond to it, it's very much the same thing in resilience. You're not gonna be someone that something bad doesn't happen to. We're all human. Bad things happen to everybody, even if we don't deserve them, right? We all know that. Life has goods and bads, they're all lessons for us. That's really my goal in this episode of teaching you that panic isn't the enemy. I want you to just be someone who's confident that you can overcome it. Self-regulation is not perfect, but it's part of recovery. When you understand the brain fears losses more than it feels gains, that's a loss aversion. The brain has that, but it's awareness. When your brain has fear and you sort of name it, it loses some of its mystery, it loses it some of its uncertainty, and your brain can enter back into safety mode. Panic is not your enemy, but it will help you be aware of things because panic is a response we all have. It is something we've all been through. When you become aware of it, it loses its mystery. And when it loses its mystery, it's going to lose its intensity. And when it loses its intensity, it's not going to throw you into panic anymore. Just like today when I'm driving somewhere and running late and everything's in my way, and I don't like any of it. I have the choice to say, okay, I feel this way about it. I don't like this. I understand how I feel, but it's going to be okay. And then when I show up, I'm not in complete and utter panic. I didn't ruin my drive by panicking, ruminating, and trying to predict the future. Sometimes it'd be like that. Sometimes we're late, even when we don't like it. But I think these are real life things that happen. So again, the goal is not to become someone who doesn't panic. It's really someone who knows how to handle it, how to respond to it, how to deal with it. There was a joke my mom used to tell me when I was a kid. You want to see a match burn twice? Light it up and put it down on your skin and it'll burn twice. Did she ever do that to me? No, let's be clear. My mother never did that to me. But I think we do that to ourselves. We we burn ourselves even more than we've already been burned. That's what panic is usually in us. We actually harm ourselves again. Like the thing happened, life happened, this bad thing happened. I had a stroke, but instead of beating myself up, I just chose to get better. I can remember talking to a therapist and going, I think the stroke is my fault. And she's like, Are you actually blaming yourself for almost dying and having a physical response? But that's what we do to ourselves because it's so uncomfortable, it's so uncertain. We sort of have to rationalize it and have a reason. The brain needs a reason to have closure. You're either choosing to keep hurting or you're choosing to change something. Again, if you want something that you've never had, you have to be willing to do something that you've never done. All these concepts I talk to you about in this podcast are an overall picture of what's going to make things great. We're somewhere in between science and spirituality, they say the same thing in a different language. I'm giving you tools and resources to bridge the gap between the two. I hope to help every single one of you get to where you're going. But understanding panic is not the enemy, I think, is such a key concept to managing your nervous system. Your brain is adaptable. Your nervous system can learn safety again. And if you're capable of regulating yourself, you can do this. Panic doesn't want you to believe that you can regulate yourself. I would rather you be dead and have a solution that live in this uncertainty. Your brain is actually going to do that to you. You don't have to control every feeling within you to regain control of your response. The second I recognize that my brain sees me as an endanger, I just take a deep breath and exhale longer than I inhale. That is like the most important step. Because just by that longer breath, I pause before I respond to something. Life can suck sometimes, but the thing is, is do I want it to suck in this moment or do I want it to continue to suck? That is my choice. Panic is actually not the enemy, it's just an alarm signal. It's like that little blink on your phone that tells you you have to do something. Understanding that panic is a human response, it's a biological response. You can't control biology, but you have control of how you respond to it. So if all you've learned out of this episode is to just take a longer exhale and a deep breath before you do anything, you've learned the very basic. I hope I've helped y'all understand that panic is not your enemy. It's actually just a sign that you have control to do something about it. Thanks for joining. Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious. Check your vibes.