It was Good Friday, and I woke up to Spirit communicating with me as usual in the morning. Then I heard them say, "Don't panic." I was like, Oh shit! What's going to happen that I have to not panic about? Which, if you think about it, is its own kind of panic. So, I was off to a great start.

I was waiting to hear back about a job interview. Everything had been pointing in a good direction. The cards looked promising, and the guidance I'd been receiving felt solid. For the second interview, they had done interviews during the week and then contacted everyone on Friday to schedule interviews for the following week. I had it in my head that they would follow the same pattern, so after 6 pm that day, of course, I didn’t listen to Spirit, and I panicked. Yes, it was Good Friday. Yes, it was a holiday, but none of that mattered to my nervous system, which had decided we were in crisis mode.

So, I did what all spiritually evolved and rational adults do: I smacked a wall with both palms (ouch). Okay, I’m not proud of that, but this had been building for a while, and I was running out of time to find a job before my unemployment ran out, so I was extra anxious. Then I cried and let it all out, not the job specifically, it was just a job, but the fear and stress that had been building for months. Then I remembered what Spirit said, and I found my way back to center and trust.

Now, here is where I want to push back on something.

There's a guy I follow online. He is a genuinely great guy, and I love his content. He's always saying the same thing, though: just breathe, just exhale, breathe through it. He's not wrong that breathing can help. It can take the edge off a panic moment. It can buy you a few seconds before you say something you'll regret.

The reality check is that it doesn't fix what got you to that point. What’s worse is when people try the exhale technique, and they’re still upset. Then they cry, or lose it, or smack a wall, and suddenly they think they did something wrong. Like they failed at calming down. Now they've got the original problem plus the shame of not handling it perfectly.

I think a lot of this stems from a misunderstanding of what people think spirituality is actually supposed to look like. People get into this work, and somewhere along the way, they pick up the idea that the goal is to become emotionally untouchable. They think they have to be like some stoic monk with no reactions or fear, just peaceful serenity at all times.

Monks live in monasteries with low outside stimulus. No family drama, no job interviews, no unexpected bills. Their whole environment is designed around spiritual focus. That’s not real life. We have partners and bosses and health scares and financial stress, and crap happens. That is not a spiritual failure. That's just Wednesday.

So, what actually helps?

Not pretending the feeling isn't there. Not white-knuckling your way through a breathing exercise while the panic quietly gets bigger underneath. What helps is having more than one tool, and knowing that sometimes you just need to let the emotion out.

Cry. Scream into a pillow. Go for a walk. Take a bath. (Maybe skip the wall-slapping.) Get it out of your body and then come back to center. That's the actual process. Feel it, move through it, then return to yourself.

The good news is that the longer you work with this mindset, the easier it gets. You start to recognize what's happening a little faster. You don’t get consumed by it. You know you've been through it before and come out the other side. It's never going to be perfect, but you improve each time it happens.

So yes, exhale if it helps, but give yourself permission to be human about it when it doesn't.

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