Intentional Stress Challenge: Cause Yourself to Have a Panic Attack

The power of interoceptive exposure or deliberating causing undesirable symptoms to enhance resilience.

I often wish I could do a public service announcement on how interoceptive exposure is the fastest and most proven way to treat panic attacks. That’s because purposefully bringing on symptoms of panic and facing what you dread uncouples stress and anxiety symptoms from escalating interpretations.

- Jennifer Taitz

In keeping with the theme of my previous post where I described the time I almost had a panic attack when I lost my son, I’d now like to make it a challenge. Intentional stress is one thing that may already seem extreme to some but recommending the practice of causing your own panic attack feels crazy, even to me as I write it. Causing a panic attack feels crazy only because it is a more intense version of, or at least more extreme way of describing, what I already practice in intentional stress. Extreme intentional stress can really teach you about yourself and the symptoms that push you to panic or other undesirable actions. As in many effective methods to optimize your health and well-being, unusual and crazy usually just indicate challenging or not commonly practiced regardless of benefit. Many people avoid difficult solutions even if their outcomes are significantly better than easier alternatives. 

In her outstanding book, “Stress Resets,” Dr. Jennifer Taitz, clinical psychologist, gives many practical examples for anyone to more effectively manage stress. As I read her book and added to my tool kit, I came across her “body buffer”/physical strategy focused on interoceptive exposure. Interoception is the sense of knowing what is going on with your body. Individuals high in interoception are often excellent at self-regulation. Interoceptive exposure is the act of intentionally experiencing physical symptoms you’d typically avoid. Dr. Taitz describes how research has shown that experiencing and accepting your bodily sensations, even if they’re unpleasant, improves functioning in an overwhelming number of people with anxiety disorders. This is because purposefully causing symptoms of panic with prepared strategies shifts our conscious and subconscious perspective of those symptoms. The more we can learn through intentional experience that these symptoms are temporary, reversible, and not dangerous, the more we will be able to effectively function in their presence whenever they arise.

Agency starts with what scientists call interoception, our awareness of our subtle sensory, body-based feelings: the greater that awareness, the greater our potential to control our lives.

-Bessel A. van der Kolk

The stress response isn’t linear. Our expectations, perceptions, and reactions to symptoms are what make it feel that way.