After walking up the stairs early one morning, I heard my lungs begin to wheeze, and as a rattling stirred deep in my chest, my mind screamed, "I'm not getting enough air - I can't breathe!" instantaneously my whole body tightened into resistance with such an intensity that blind panic coursed through me. 

My eyes desperately scanned my outer environment for some means of help, and in that moment, I recognized this inner-state of being on a cellular level; learned helplessness. As I stopped, frozen in the ever-present-past, another layer of implicit belief emerged; “even if there was someone there - they couldn't help me - it'd make it worse.” 

When that was not instantly made wrong by my inner critic, I felt a slight inner-shift as a tender aspect of my inner self emerged, which seemed very vulnerable and all alone. So completely and utterly alone there was no one else to reach out to, no one to see me, to hear me, or to help me. 

I resisted the inner...