panic

Imagine a flowering plant. A baking cake. A rising stock price. A healing wound. Time passing can be a beautiful thing.

When challenging or unwanted thoughts, emotions or behaviors arise most of us want to avoid or distract ourselves. We may use food, drugs, work or exercise to temporarily sooth, comfort or numb the difficult internal experience. Unfortunately, repeatedly coping in this way creates a habituated pattern that carries with it more shame and fear, and the hope of change slips further away into a seemingly endless out-of-control cycle.

An exclusive excerpt from "calming the rush of panic" by Bob Stahl, PhD and Wendy Millstine, NC

For James Henry, a psychiatry resident at UC San Francisco, the question is not just theoretical. While a medical student at UC San Diego, Dr.