Chronic anxiety, depression and panic attacks are your initiation: you are the highly sensitive, the highly intuitive, the healer, senser and feeler (My journey with anxiety and panic)

My own 20-year anxiety journey led me to understand:

• Nothing is wrong with me, or you. The current environment we live in is what’s what's wrong.

• The way we are taught to repress, suppress and ignore our sensitivity is what’s wrong.

• The ‘eye rolling’ and rejection of our sensitivity by others (often at an early age) is what’s wrong; this rejection then turns inwards into self-rejection.

• Being able to sense deeply is a gift and a skill that needs to be honed.

• Panic attacks are wake up calls that will continue until you hear them.

• There are very real biological reasons for anxiety, depression and panic (including micronutrient deficiencies, gut dysbiosis, birth control pill usage, amongst others) BUT the emotional-mind-spirit-energetic aspects are often the root causes of these biological responses. (For example, school being incredibly anxiety-invoking, this chronic fear and stress turning into gut and hormone issues, which are then exacerbated by diet, medication use, and then turn into panic attacks at age 16), which brings me to:

My journey

16 years old, I’m at the train station with a feeling of doom deep in my stomach, something is happening to my body but I have no words for it.

At this point, we didn’t have easy internet access to be able to understand the experience or vocabulary of anxiety and panic.

I go to the doctors and I’m given some information on ‘CBT’ videos, but I’m told I’m too young to see an NHS therapist/psychiatrist (I’m 99% sure that this process has now changed, 20 years later). So, I go to the library and look at the tiny section of self-help books, I still don’t have the vocabulary of ‘anxiety’, I just know I have this awful feeling in the core of my body, that is very concerning. Somehow, I find a book about panic and I start to understand a little of what’s happening.

I learn to drink alcohol, including in the morning (secretly), which helps me to disassociate from these intense feelings in my body.

I learn loud heavy metal music, and ‘floating outside my body’ helps to disconnect me.

When I was at college, one of the tutors had seen me walking around campus and thought I was on drugs, because I looked ‘high’. I wasn’t high, they were picking up on my coping mechanism of disconnecting from my body and going ‘into the clouds’. I didn’t realise what I was doing, but I was intuitively protecting myself from the deep feelings and energy that I felt, but couldn't cope with or describe.

24 years old and once again, I’m at the train station, only this time I’m commuting to an office. My body is shaky, I cannot contain or control my energy and I feel panic. 

Over a long period of time, I go through multiple doctor visits, I’m experiencing intense dizziness, often feeling as though I’m going to fall over. I’m even referred to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist and I have an MRI scan… nothing to be found. I later understand that these mystery symptoms were actually classic anxiety symptoms.

25 years old and I experience an almighty panic attack in Barcelona, where I was taken in an ambulance to the local hospital, only to find ‘nothing wrong’.

25/26 years old and I realise I am living a life I do not want, even though my job 'sounds good' and has great 'career potential'. 

I detest working in an office with 100's of other people's energies, emotions, projections, drama, and judgements. Despite many of the people I work with being good, kind hearted people at their core, I had a distinct feeling of being completely different and feeling frustrated that I couldn't communicate easily, and that I found everything hard (not the actual work, but all of the other dynamics) when everyone else seemed to be..fine?

My sensitivity or 'uniqueness' is mocked, my quietness is misunderstood, I don't blame anyone for being confused by me - I was confused by me too!

I’m prescribed SSRI’s (anti-depressant medication) because I was struggling in the mornings to peel myself off the bathroom floor, frozen in fear of going to work.

The first breakthrough: Through various synchronicities, I find myself signing up to a year long Clinical Hypnotherapy course in Leeds with an incredible teacher, Angela Glasgow. This was a life-changing course for me. I learnt self-hypnosis, spent hours in hypnosis and hours putting others into the state of hypnosis.

An unintended happy consequence happened: the panic attacks I’d been experiencing for years dissolved! I believe this was due to the deeply relaxing hypnosis training my nervous system, I must have finally accessed how to ‘turn on’ my parasympathetic nervous system. I also studied Reiki level 1 and 2, beginning to understand my energy sensitivity. I eventually started working one-on-one with clients who specifically were dealing with anxiety and panic, I understood that the root causes were multifactorial (for example, a client I had who consumed an insane amount of coffee and Mars bars but hadn’t made the connection between that and his anxiety).

The 'How did I end up here chapter':

29/30 years old: Okay, I had what appeared to be a backslide. I’m raw vegan, 7 stone (very underweight for me), and once again finding peace (but this time intentionally) using meditation to float ‘out of my body’. I experience a breakdown, which I now believe was partly due to mould that was in the property we were renting, and also the raw vegan diet. [Let's keep this part short as it needs its own blog post!]

The second breakthrough: I start studying integrative nutrition health coaching in 2019, I understand that the way I’ve been eating (raw vegan and vegan) is pure insanity, and that I need some dense foods to actually feel grounded and rooted in my body. I begin the 'Healing with Meg' instagram (hello soul's purpose).

Fast forward to:

35 years old and due to living in a house with damp and hidden mould in the bedroom, anxiety and panic is triggered like never before. Guess what, ‘nothing is wrong!’ and I’m given SSRI’s again.

36 years old

The last year has been my final wake up call, and I now understand:

• Each time, the panic attacks and anxiety I experienced, were direct ‘calls to action’, signals from my body that something needs to change; whether it’s my environment, the way I’m living, eating, OR the way I’m ignoring my soul’s purpose.

• Depression showed up every time I went ‘off course’ and denied my soul’s callings.

• Nutrition is unbelievably important BUT so is energetic awareness, energetic hygiene and addressing where every aspect of my life force is being directed towards.

• Harnessing, understanding and accepting my energetic sensitivity quite literally heals the body, because I’m no longer rejecting her for being so sensitive (self acceptance = pure healing).

• Deep meditation, hypnosis have been magic for anxiety, when used correctly (and not used as a way to escape the body).

• Yoga and dance have helped to move energy where needed.

• Certain food and supplements have also been game changers.

FOR SENSITIVE PEOPLE, your awareness and feelings are gifts - your anxiety, depression and panic are signalling that something ain't right! Often, it's the job, and/or the disconnection from your gifts.

I’d love to say anxiety is totally cured for me and that I’ll never experience it again, but I know better than to say that.

I will continue to honour my body's sensitivity, hone my gifts, and accept myself, hopefully helping others to do the same.

I think anxiety has many root causes: environmental, spiritual, incoherent/unhealthy terrain of the body, life circumstances. Ultimately, I think it’s a painful ‘gift’ that we can learn from and heal.

Hi, I’m Mehgan, a 36-year old from Yorkshire in the U.K, I’m qualified in Clinical Hypnotherapy (2016), Integrative Health Coaching (2021), and I’m currently doing a degree in Nutritional Therapy, however, I have learnt that nutrition is only a small part of what it takes to heal (for the sensitive ones) ~ make sure to stay in touch on Instagram at @healwithmehgan