Panic Attacks and Poetry

On anxiety, art, and getting a little better over time

Jul 07, 2026

When I read my poems I sometimes feel like they are too simple to be impressive

And then I do my best to remind myself that I’m not trying to be impressive, I’m trying to hear myself. I’m trying to love my own thoughts, my inner world, the images and visions that come to me when I listen to music, when I read a book, when I write with a pen on paper. I am trying to make sense of the world as I experience it; and that is no simple task.

Poetry is an art form, a skill, a craft, a pursuit, a lifeline, and an inevitability for some of us. I’ve written poems my whole life, starting at age 8 when I was pulled from my regular classroom and put with the other children who didn’t fit the curriculum for one reason or another. I was given a notebook and zero instructions, and my little hands began to write in verse. I can still remember how easy it was for me, how like a magic trick it was to get the words to fall into pattern.

Usually, when I tell the story of how I started writing poetry as an adult, I begin with getting sober in 2018. That is when I began to write poetry and share it on social media. It’s always felt like a tidy beginning to the story, vulnerable but also hopeful.

The messier version begins when I was having debilitating panic attacks in college. I spent about 7 years locked in my own swirling mind, my body out of my control, going to the ER thinking I was dying, asking close friends to be with me while I slept in case I started to die. I really don’t like talking about that part of my life. My existential dread was fierce and unrelenting, and by the time I was 25 I couldn’t go to the corner of my street in Chicago without having a full-blown panic attack. I finally did the hardest thing I’d ever done at that point, and made an appointment to see a therapist.

This was in 2006, before smartphones and short-form video made connecting with other neurodivergent people and resources easy. Mental health was not a topic I heard spoken of casually. No one I knew had panic attacks. No one I knew had agoraphobia. My family didn’t understand (not their fault) and I had no idea what was going on with me, only that I was terrified out of my mind all the time. I didn’t believe talk therapy would help, I didn’t believe anything would help. But, of course, that wasn’t true.

There’s no quick fix to a nervous system on fire and no short cuts to moving through trauma. It took a lot of time and patience. The first time I took an anti-anxiety med, I had to take it in my therapist’s office because I was so afraid of what would happen. But slowly we put the pieces of my life in some kind of emotional order, we connected behaviors and coping mechanisms to parts of my childhood. We began to unwind some of the beliefs I was holding on to, and after the tightest crush of panic released its grip on me, my therapist recommended I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

“The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.” - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

And then, creativity saved me. It’s as simple and as complex as that. The connection Cameron describes between creativity and spirituality was a profound revelation for me, and one I return to over and over again when I am lost.

We are all creators

Until that time, creating had always felt like a particularly personal act for me; one that was entirely MINE, with a capital M. But once I began to create regularly (as a spiritual practice and not just a hobby), the act of creating changed how I thought and what I believed.

When I was deep in my artistic process I felt connected to a larger energy, one that had infinite resources for me to draw from. As I became more prolific, my confidence in my artistic nature grew and so did my connection with that energy.

From there, I started a photography business. Eventually I went to seminary and became a UU minister. I got sober, I began to write and share my work. All of these moves are essays in and of themselves, of course (or maybe a memoir down the line?)

But today, I wanted to remind myself, and anyone who needs it, that you are allowed to write because it is what you do. You are allowed to create just because it makes you happy.

I am a poet and visual artist at heart, and when I drift too far from that truth, my whole life starts to feel wrong in my body. It’s just that serious for me. This means that I don’t write to be impressive, to win awards, or even to earn the esteem and acclaim of an imaginary set of judges (though those things are welcome and desired!). I write because I don’t know a better way for me to connect with the flow of the world and to feel my place within its turning.

As Gloria Steinem says, “writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel like I should be doing something else.”

And if you are in one of those terrible seasons where your own mind feels like an unsafe place to live, I hope you can believe me when I say that things can change. Not all at once, but with help and time, and with the right support, things can (and usually do) get better.

I am 45 now, and I know myself in a way 25-year-old me could not have imagined. I still have the occasional panic attack, but I also have tools. I have medication that works. I have a beautiful life I could not see from where I was standing then.

And I have poetry, which has been with me all along.

words from a sermon I wrote in 2016, self-portrait from today

Thanks for being here, friends. I don’t often share this part of my journey because it feels far away these days, like a distant dream of something that happened to me. But it’s been on my mind lately, just how much life can change; how even when you cannot imagine how it could get better, it so often does. I am holding that personal experience close right now, as we go through such trying times in this country. If I can believe it for myself, perhaps I can extend it to the collective.

And at the very least, I can write until the knot in my chest loosens and the connection I feel to the universe rises up to meet me there.

with hope,

Alix

Our next Zoom writing circle will be on July 25th from 11am-1pm Eastern time. This session is FREE for ALL subscribers, as a little summer treat. Be sure you’re subscribed and not just following, as the Zoom info will go out in an email and not be posted to my page.