Panic/Loss: Separation Distress

Hi, its FreeEach, I am new here, so quick introduction to who I am relative to the
theme of anxiety/panic.
My first episode came in 1989 when I was the sole carer for my second wife who was
dying from terminal cancer. Her dying took place over some 9 months, and about
midway through this period, my first disabling anxiety episode appeared. As a selfreliant male of 45 years, who had been through many relatively extreme emotional
experiences including spiritual deaths/rebirths, etc., to have this fear rise so strongly
in me challenged my sense of self-respect and I felt some shame when I went to my
doctor for help. We were friends and he gave me a small amount of some
benzodiazepine (cant recall which one) with the comforting comment that he too
would feel anxious doing what I was doing and knowing me he was not worried about
me becoming dependent on the drug and just take a little and see if it helps. As I think
back on it, the disclosure of my vulnerability was probably the main helper, as I took
only a little of the medication several times and the anxiety went away for the
remaining period of my wifes dying and then through her death and my grieving over
the next few years.
Fast forward to 1991, and the anxiety reappeared even stronger (although not what I
now would term a full blown panic attack) then its first appearance. This was a period
where I went from a potentially very successful inventor of a new household product
that promised a fair amount of wealth to the loss of what funds I had. I was left with a
credit card and my wits to support myself and my love in a country where I was in a
legal limbo due to my past refusal to fight a war and being deemed a criminal by the
Empire of that time. My doctor gave me a tricyclic that enable me to get the sleep I
could not seem to obtain without it. I coped by working 14 hour days, 6 to 7 days a
week, doing daily workouts and running, and living with a wonderfully supportive
woman who loved me in spite of my inability to decide to marry her as she wished.
My anxiety (never a full blown panic attack) continued up and down until I decided to
marry her in 1993. From the time I decided to marry her until her death from cancer in
1996, I had no anxiety whatsoever.
A few months after my third wifes death in 1996, who was my Other Half, the
anxiety returned as I waded through the disintegration of who I was living out her
loss. From then, until my meeting my fourth wife in late 2005, the anxiety that had
mutated into occasional panic attacks, was a relatively permanent part-time partner
that I coped with by using tricyclics, drinking, working, working out at the gym, and
connecting with friends and loved ones as much as I could. For the two months my
bond was strong and clear with the woman who later became my fourth wife, my
anxiety disappeared. A few months later after our honeymoon period, my loves
bipolar strategic disorder (note I use these words rather than disease) came between
us, and although we were married, I knew our relationship would not continue as a
marriage. With our divorce in 2008, my anxiety/panic roared back and remained until
2010.
In this year I met another wonderful woman who moved in and lived with me. She
stayed with me a year during which I was doing my usual working, drinking and
taking the tricyclics as I had been doing since 1997. During this year of our intimate

and satisfying relationship, the anxiety/panic almost disappeared again. When she left
to live on her own, my anxiety/panic returned to a new ferocity that remains to today.
I did stop drinking and taking the tricyclics about a year ago and I am facing my fears
more directly and profitably, including obtaining Barrys Panic Away course.
My loss of loved ones and its linkage to the anxiety/panic episodes I think is evident. I
discovered that the well known affective neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp, identified as
one of his seven Primal Emotions, what he named PANIC/LOSS (including the
capital letters). It seems clear to me this describes the context and cause/effects of my
anxiety/panic episodes. I will add here, what I regard as relevant, other losses of loved
ones besides the two wives that died in my arms and the two divorces I suffered:
My mother died just before I turned three and my father died when I was fourteen.
My adopted son, labeled as a diagnosed schizophrenic, committed suicide. Along with
my son, I had a number of friends suffering from schizophrenic or bipolar diseases
who I accompanied in their attempts to cope with their separation fearswhat
Panksepp calls PANIC/LOSS and which I believe best explains the contextual cause
of what is named panic attack and general anxiety disorder. Here is a quote on
this Primal Emotion from the blog, MyBrainNotes.com
(http://mybrainnotes.com/depression-panic-attacks.html):
Jaak Panksepp explains that as indexed by diverse as primates, rodents, and birds,

PANIC/LOSS neurocircuitry is clearly distinct from FEAR neurocircuitry. Electrical

stimulation to very specic brain areas, that we will refer to in this discussion as
PANIC/LOSS neurocircuitry, produces the separation calls to which Panksepp refers.
Although he considered both sorrow and distress as labels, he decided to call the
neurocircuitry that generates feelings of loneliness, grief, and separation distressas
well as panic attacks in humansthe PANIC system.
Panksepp emphasizes that the PANIC/LOSS system is especially important in the
elaboration of social emotional processes related to attachment. He cites research that
points to early childhood loss as a major risk factor for future depression and panic
attacks. He proposes that one may be more vulnerable to depression and panic attacks
because of permanent developmental modification of the emotional substrates of
separation distress. Indeed, in Life Events Preceding the Onset of Panic Disorder
(1985) Faravelli writes that panic patients were more likely to have underwent a
major life event (death or severe illness, either personal or of a cohabiting relative) in
the two months preceding the onset of symptoms.
Panksepp explains that especially in intense forms such as grief, activation of
PANIC/LOSS neurocircuitry is accompanied by feelings of weakness and depressive
lassitude, with autonomic symptoms of a parasympathetic nature, such as strong urges
to cry, often accompanied by tightness in the chest and the feeling of having a lump in
the throat.
Panksepp explains: To be a mammal is to be born socially dependent. When young
animals are socially isolated, they typically lose weight even if they have free access
to lots of food. When the young are reunited with their kin, and a mood of apparent
contentment is reestablished, appetite returns.

" Brain evolution has provided safeguards to assure that parents (usually the mother)
take care of the offspring, writes Panksepp, and the offspring have powerful
emotional systems to indicate that they are in need of care (as reflected in crying or, as
scientists prefer to say, separation calls). Regarding such vocalizations, Panksepp
points out that specific locations in the auditory system, in both the inferior colliculi
and the medial geniculate nuclei, are highly tuned to receive and process these primal
communications.
So for those of you readers who have not fallen asleep or went away to deal with your
panic or anxiety, I invite you to consider what PANIC/LOSS might have to do with
your current panic/anxiety problems.
My next entry will continue on this theme, particularly on the only true, if temporary,
cure for and prevention of, panic/anxiety: intimate, responsible, freely chosen and
maintained, linkages with selective others, aka, love.
A quick recognition and acknowledgement of Barrys achievement with Panic Away
and of his genuine limbic maturity through which I believe he does his good work that
helps persons like you and me. Thanks Barry! Continue your good work! Cheers from
China, FreeEach.