It started in bed. I sometimes start the day by lying in bed, thinking about what I might wear that day. (Note to self: Unproductive. Get up, get moving – and then think about what to wear.)

Choosing what to wear is a challenge.

Especially in the New York summer because it is so hot and so humid, no matter what you wear, it will be drenched in sweat by the time you get where you’re going. And lately, I find that while I sweat a little while I’m walking around, once I get to my destination and stop moving, the sweat pours off me like the waterfalls coming off Ted Striker when he finally takes the plane’s controls in Airplane. I’ve taken to carrying around a handkerchief to mop it up with. Not a great solution.

And, in New York, you’re never just going one place. Today I was going to a professional meet-up and then down to Soho, then grocery shopping, then home. That meant I needed a professional outfit (probably a dress in the summer, because that’s cooler in the heat, but then I’d need a cardigan or jacket because the air conditioning would be turned on full-bore where we were meeting), shoes that look professional (and with a dress) but that I could also walk 4-5 miles in without destroying my feet, and a bag that looks professional but also could contain a carry-sack for my groceries.

So I lay in bed trying to do the calculus on all this, and my brain – as brains do – kept saying, Nope, too hard, and going back to sleep. I read a book once that said, if you’re having trouble sleeping, don’t lie in bed obsessing about sleep: get up and do that really boring thing that you’ve been putting off for so long, like prepping your tax paperwork or scrubbing the kitchen floor; after two or three nights of this, your brain will naturally escape into sleep rather than do that boring thing.

And that is what happened to me this morning.

I finally dragged myself out of bed at 7:50 knowing that, if I didn’t get up then, there is no way I would make my 9 am meet-up, only to discover, when I turned on my phone, that the meet-up was at 8 am.

Since that wasn’t happening, I had a full-blown panic attack instead.

For me, panic attacks don’t look like panic attacks on the outside – they are fully internal.

On the outside, I looked calm and cool while I sat quietly, doom-scrolling and sipping water.

Inside, klaxons screamed, the floor tilted, people ran from one side of the ship to the other, and fiery explosions went off. In my mind, I saw myself showing up in a sweat-drenched dress, feet blistered from my wrong selection of shoes, awkwardly not knowing what to say, and then stumbling through the rest of my day. Or, alternately, rejected by this professional group, doomed as a slacker and a no-show, ostracized, having ruined my chances forever.

And this was my frame of mind when I finally put down my phone and started to meditate.

Inner Child Meditation

Saying you’re not in the mood to meditate is a cop out. But I had a choice, I could struggle with the meditation, try to feel all peaceful and centered while the stress hormones were running screaming through my veins. Or I could try something different.

I know that stress and panic often comes from my inner child. So, rather than focusing on where I am now, I gave my meditation to her.

When I do an inner child meditation, I picture my skinny little self-kid in a hollow cave within my chest. Sometimes she talks to me, but often she just holds herself in a tight little ball, trembling with emotion, too messed up to even cry, sometimes babbling hysterically. I, the meditator, just take her in my arms, the way that you gather a weeping toddler, and hold her there, creating a safe space for her.

I don’t try to reason with her. If my mind starts racing down the path of making up stories about how my life is ruined or how the rest of my day is ruined, I tell it, Later, right now, our most important job is to hold this child. If my mind starts flipping through memories of other times when I wasn’t dressed appropriately, or things my mother or my friends told me about how I was dressed, I bring it back to the task of comforting or soothing this child who needs us.

When a child is upset, it’s really not important to understand everything that is going on. Sometimes it doesn’t even make sense – like a child I read about who threw a tantrum because she wanted to sit at the head of the table, the round table, that the restaurant had seated the family at.

I’ve written before about going to the park with my nephew who had a new remote-controlled plane that he wanted to fly. His emotions roller-coasted – up the steep hill when he knew he’d get an hour or two alone with his dad and me to play with a toy he had really looked forward to. Then crashing down when he realized that we were going to a park with wide-open spaces because people might see him make mistakes, being imperfect while learning to pilot the plane. Then climbed again as we worked through that. Only to plummet to the depths of despair when we got to the park and found that a soccer game of college boys was happening within sight of where we’d be flying the plane.

And then regained altitude when he realized that the college boys weren’t white – he actually said that part aloud – and my nephew comes from Asia. There’s a lot there to unpack, especially for his white dad and for me, his white aunt, too much to unpack in that moment. It was enough to recognize that the child was in distress and to get enough of his world-view to be able to reflect it back to him, to acknowledge his feelings, and help him work through them so he could get to the place where he could enjoy his new toy, which he did.

And, like my nephew, just by getting my attention for a few minutes, just by being told, I hear you, this was scary for you, my inner child calmed down. By the time my meditation chime went off, I felt her merging with my adult self and felt the stress leaving my body.

Why am I telling you this?

I hesitated about writing about this here: how could it possibly help you to know that one of my great fears is that I won’t be dressed “right” whatever that means or that I sweat like a pig in the New York summer heat or that I talk to an imaginary child who lives within me.

But there are two ways this can be helpful in the wider world:

First, when you are leading change, you’re going to run into resistance.

Our default is to try to overcome resistance with reason.

That rarely works.

Resistance is like a sales objection: the hard part is surfacing it. Then you need to figure out what emotion lies beneath it so you can help the customer get past that emotion to a place where they can move forward.

With my nephew, the resistance was the fear that people – white men, specifically – would see him being less than perfect. Surfacing that emotion helped him move past it and enjoy our outing to the park.

With me, the resistance is something to do with putting myself out there with new groups of people. I joined a networking group a few weeks ago, a group of people who meet and walk in the park for an hour each week. But it took me several weeks to get there because – you guessed it – I was obsessing about what to wear. I imagined everyone wearing well-put-together athletic outfits, possibly because the friend who recommended this group does dress like that. Or suits (in 94 degree weather).

Finally, I just wore yoga pants and a cool-max shirt. Did I look like everyone else? No, but neither did everyone else. Some people were business casual, some women wore dresses, some people wore shorts, some people were in coordinated jogging outfits, some people just made it work like I did. I confided my fear to one of my new acquaintances and she laughed, It’s New York, you can wear whatever. (Take that, Anna Wintour!) I had a wonderful time and this is one of my new favorite networking groups.

Second, acknowledging our feelings can help release them.

I have found myself, time and again, in situations where every fiber of my being is screaming, This isn’t right! In these situations, my grown-up thinking self urges remaining calm, reasoning that I shouldn’t feel this way, that maybe I’m wrong, that this isn’t such a big deal, all the while my inner self is stewing with anger.

Then someone else says, Wow that was stressful! Or Well, that was a strange conversation or something.

And that acknowledgement of my feelings is like permission to admit that everything is not the way it was being presented, is like turning a valve that lets all my stress flow away so I can reasonably deal with the chaotic situation.

Perhaps knowing one of those two things will help you, when you find yourself in a stressful situation or dealing with someone who is acting unreasonably.

What are some of your tricks for dealing with amygdala hijacks? Share in the comments.