Thanks for sharing your opinion!
As a fellow dude who've been through panic attacks for 10 years and healed through a huge work from therapy and appropriate medication for the last 3+ years, and pretty sure it's now something of the past, it is very much appreciated to read your words, as I feel compassion for your story, as I do for my old self trying to find new ways to stop feeling bad.
So that may answer a little bit your last question as I'm translating your story on my own experience.
I'm sorry if I was wrong about you, I didn't mean to make you feel bad by doing so. I'm actually talking about my own experience and understanding through your story without the whole context, and I tried to make something rational in general even though I couldn't get it right. Please let me start from start first.
> suffering requires an explanation, or a reason behind. It doesn't. Sometimes things just happen.
I've been on this side but it actually helped me realizing that all suffering actually does have a reason.
We're a product of evolution and our body is way far more functional than what we can imagine. We may not be able to understand everything as our limited brain cannot compute the gigantic complexity of causes and consequences from reality. But everything is logical, including irrationality from our feelings itself.
Once I accepted that, and started exploring the tools we have for trying to understanding why we feel emotions and how we process them, after some time and work, things make a LOT more sense.
At least for me, that's when healing started to take effect, because I felt like I had control over my own existence again - and anxiety was a defensive mechanism from my brain to help me find a place where I feel safe.
For me personally, that helped because there's pretty much nothing more distressing than suffering without understanding why. And panic attacks feel something like that sometimes, right? They feel like they happen barely out of nowhere, which contributes to make them even more scaring.
It took some time for me to understand that I was entirely wrong about that. Panic attacks aren't triggered for nothing, and even though we may experience irrational feelings through them, they aren't illogical.
At first, it was also really scary for me to explore and ask why, as I feared I could "unleash" some feelings inside of me that I wasn't prepared for, but I've learned that is part of the trauma healing process.
Once I started to get answers (and it took several months of therapy before getting a single one), things got better from there.
> A damaging question when you can't let it go. And I see that a lot around me. We're very small; most commonplace answers to "why" are just things that make us feel something for a moment, and have very little value outside of that.
Aren't you minimizing the importance of feelings ? Even though they aren't permanent nor always rational, feelings need to be protected. They have a lot of value and can teach you a lot if you learn to read through them.
It's hard, and something harder for some people than the others. For me personally, my parents didn't teach me how to do that, as they have themselves no clue about how to deal with emotions. Most of people learn that skill naturally without even thinking about it, but for some people we missed the class, we don't get it and we are left behind within a society that wrecks you if you don't know how to do that.
Once I've realized I've missed some crucial lessons about emotional control, I felt like there was a chance I could get better someday.
> What was it about having "why" labelled as an arrogant question that got under your skin enough to comment? Why did you feel it was helpful to write something akin to an "armchair diagnosis" above? This kind of response contributes to me writing anonymously.
I'm more or less trying to help my old self, who was scared to understand what's happening. I was in denial, I described my childhood as good / "I can't complain" as I couldn't prevent to feel guilty to say otherwise. After few months of therapy, I finally realized that it wasn't so great at all, and actually suffered from emotional neglect. Love from parents don't teach everything we need to know. Of course being loved is great but it doesn't mean everything was right and appropriate. So once I've managed to get through the state of mind "I'm not allowed to say things weren't okay / we don't talk about things when they are bad", my healing process finally started from there.
So, when I see someone experiencing anxiety issues and expressing discomfort from "asking for explanations", I cannot help but thinking that it may be symptomatic of something else. If "why" is arrogant, maybe you can explore "when" did you start to feel that way ?
I'm not sure if my answer here is any helpful for you, as I have no idea of your story and your own way to deal with what you've been through. It's definitely not something meaning to hurt you, even though it may sound a bit provocative against your beliefs.
The only thing I know is, it would have helped my old self. My only regret was not seeking for help earlier (and the appropriate help I needed, finding a therapy that suit me took a long time). If only I could have understood earlier that I actually needed to listen to the things I didn't want to hear, including my own feelings that I didn't want to feel.
Hopefully, I hope my answer may help you, and if it doesn't, I'm sure you'll find your own way to help yourself the same way I did, one day or another. Our body is way smarter than we realize, it helped our species survive from atrocious conditions and it will help you too.
It may make you feel the worst things ever from anxiety (and you know what I mean, panic attacks are really brutal), but in the end, that's your body protecting yourself from traumatic experiences. They may feel bad but it's your nervous system doing its wonderful (and sometimes mysterious) work. Your body works perfectly even though you may feel like it's giving up on you, it's actually the opposite. Once you'll be ready, you'll be able to let your body experience the anxiety and won't need to fight the panic attack.
If you're interested in reading more about it, I'd recommend Janina Fisher's recent work about trauma, any of her book is absolutely worth reading from any trauma survivor.
Anyway, please keep writing, I know for sure that helps protecting yourself and you may help others in the process. I'm cheering for you, good luck man.