Reawakening the Tiger

I have been reading a few blogs about a trauma intervention called Self Regulation Therapy, or SRT for short, which is based on Peter Levine's book, Waking the Tiger. It sounds similar to CBT, but there is one crucial difference: in SRT the focus is on repressed energy in the body, rather than faulty thinking patterns. It is psychosomatic, rather than just cognitive, or psychological. You could call it psychophysiological, which is rather a long word, and difficult to pronounce. Whatever the name, SRT has resonated with me, because I have been disheartened with CBT for quite some time. Session after session, I have met with K.A. at Your Strengths in Wyong, or Dr Goripati, to receive their wisdom, and pretend that they are actually helping me. They keep stressing that the solutions to my panic attacks are cognitive, I just need to change the way I interpret my thoughts, blah blah blah. They say it over and over again, but I can't get it to work for me. They claim the thought comes first, then the fearful reaction, but in my experience it is the other way round. First I feel anxious, and then I cognize, and catastrophize. It has led me to believe that panic is a symptom of the hindbrain, the reptilian brain... the part of our anatomy that we share with the birds, and the beasts. I notice that whenever I disturb the lorikeets which abound in my parents' garden they shriek instinctively, empty their bowels, and then burst into flight. For them it is the equivalent of encountering a wild lion, but they do it every day, and they never appear to suffer from any mental trauma afterwards... (For my complete observations on SRT and how it may help with panic disorder, click here.)