When fear arrives without an invitation—and the body remembers what the mind forgets.
There are moments when the world around me is perfectly still, yet something inside begins to race.
No trigger. No warning. No visible storm.
Only the sudden throb of a heartbeat trying to outrun itself, and a breath that feels caught between two invisible walls.
I’ve sat in that waiting room.
Not in a clinic, but within my own mind—
a corridor of questions, fear, and unnamed dread.
It’s the space where panic often waits for no permission.
Where the body speaks the language of alarm even when the intellect insists there is “no reason to feel this way.”
At first, I used to resist it—this unexpected surge of anxiety.
I would intellectualize it, wrestle with it, distract myself from it.
I tried to remind myself: “There’s no threat.”
But that logic did nothing to ease the tightening chest, the trembling fingers, the quiet scream behind the eyes.
And then one day, I stopped asking why.
I began to ask what now?
What if this wasn’t irrational fear,
but a message from deeper within?
What if panic wasn’t a malfunction—but a messenger, bearing the truth that something in me felt unsafe, unseen, or unheard for far too long?
I realized that modern life—however polished on the surface—is often emotionally bankrupt beneath.
We carry too much and express too little.
We sprint through days and silence our tremors.
We smile at others while hyperventilating on the inside.
Panic is not weakness. It’s backlog.
A backlog of denied grief, invisible pressures, held-in tears, ignored needs, and the fatigue of always pretending we’re fine.
In the mind’s waiting room, healing begins not with control but with surrender.
With placing a hand on the heart and whispering:
“I hear you. I know it’s been hard. You are safe now.”
This is not about fixing the feeling.
It’s about making space for it.
Not to be consumed by it—but to let it move through, like a wave that loses strength when it’s allowed to break.
To anyone reading this who knows the sting of unprovoked panic,
you are not broken.
You are responding to a world that rarely gives space to feel without performance.
You are not weak.
You are just full.
And sometimes the only way the soul empties itself is through these involuntary awakenings.
So, the next time your breath shortens without cause, don’t tighten.
Soften.
Sit with yourself in that waiting room.
You are not alone there. You never were.
Letters for the Inner Journey by Pushkar
