"People, places, and events are panic-provoking only after we apply meaning to them," writes Brantley. "A store is just a store, a speech is just a speech, a drive is just a drive, until the brain interprets them as 'dangerous' or 'threatening.'"
So how does one learn to intervene at the point of interpretation? Certainly meditation helps because this slows us down enough to recognize how we are interpreting any given situation that causes us stress. Meditation will also help you to see your thoughts and views and modify the ones that stimulate the fear system, the fight-or-flight reaction.
This doesn't mean that this will happen quickly. This means it will take practice and patience. To make this easier start with the situations in your life which currently trigger the fight-or-flight response in you. Your job? A person? A location? Does your heart race ever time your employer calls you? Do you begin to panic the moment you see a letter in the mail from the IRS? Just notice what your mind does and see if you can interrupt your panic thinking and introduce instead the don't know mind.
