For Cecile, panic attacks meant grad school was out of the question. She began to experience anxiety shortly after entering college, and by the end of it, she could not leave the house and had to move back in with her parents.
Cecile says after practicing meditation daily for one month, her panic attacks began to dissipate.
"Now, when I feel my anxiety come up, I can name it, […] I can feel it come up, and I know that, like my breath, it's going to come up and leave out of my body, so I shouldn't attach to it."
In this video, Cecil talks about her anxiety and discusses how being mindful of her feelings and attempting to be aware of the present has changed her sense of reality, which she previously felt she had no control over.
"The only control I have is working on being in that present, so I can be aware at that time that I can go the direction I choose to go and not always be regretting that I don't like my life."
This video is part of a web series called Finding True Refuge, created by Tara Brach, founder of the Insight Meditation Community in Washington, DC.
