“אנחנו הדס וסער - הוגים, יוזמים, יוצרים ובונים מרחבים -
מחברים בין אנשים, ערכים וחיים ברי קיימא.”
We are Hadas and Saar -
We integrate, initiate, create, and build -
spaces that connect people, values and sustainable living.
When something inside stops holding
It happened to me in a supermarket -
only later did I understand it was an anxiety attack
.jpg)
"Underneath our fears we can find sadness...
This is the beginning of the path to freedom from them."
Something started — with no warning
I want to tell you about something
that only in hindsight I understood was a panic attack.
Yes, really.
I didn’t know.
Because I had never experienced anything like it before.
There were no sirens.
No explosions.
No flashbacks from the army.
The trigger that didn’t look like a trigger
For me, the trigger turned out to be -
money.
Or more precisely, the lack of it.
We were in Portugal, in a tough cash-flow situation.
Back home there was a war, and the deal to sell the property collapsed.
Let’s just say it…
everything collapsed.
When reality closes in on you
I couldn’t find any ray of light,
no creative idea.
I felt like I was drowning.
As big as the expectations I had built inside myself
(to lead and support my family),
was facing a reality that felt almost Kafkaesque.
Hadas and I were in a very low place.
We know what it means to be deeply down.
We know it well.
But -
life doesn’t stop when you’re down.
It was clear to me I would keep functioning.
Because there’s no choice…
Poorly, imperfectly -
but you keep going.
The moment something broke
I’m more practical than Hadas,
so I usually handle the finances.
That’s why I often went into the supermarket
while Hadas and the kids waited in the car -
also because my Spanish allowed me to communicate a bit.
And then, without noticing -
from the emotional overload
and a general sense of pressure,
something sharp and powerful
made itself present.
At first I thought I was just unfocused.
Then that it was because of the stress around money.
I tried to avoid it.
It didn’t work.
And then -
one of the times -
I went into the supermarket with a list.
I knew I needed to check prices.
But when I tried to read them -
I couldn’t make sense of the numbers.
I really couldn’t get my mind
to decode the digits.
I didn’t understand anything.
I was shocked.
I knew it wasn’t my eyesight.
I tried again.
I couldn’t.
It just disappeared.
Like someone had switched that ability off.
I went into complete confusion.
The body screams - and there are no words
I left the supermarket, shaken,
and told Hadas something bad was happening to me.
She knows me -
she knows I don’t usually complain.
She went in instead,
and I asked the kids to stay in the car…
I needed air.
Not just air for my lungs -
air for my heart,
which was trying to tell me something.
Everything was tangled.
So I couldn’t listen -
I just heard noise.
Loud.
Everything returns to routine - except me
The time right after felt sticky and blurred.
I didn’t really understand what had happened.
I just remembered that when I left the supermarket,
the awful sensation disappeared.
We drove home.
I drove as usual.
Everything looked normal.
But something very not normal
had happened to me.
We couldn’t really talk much -
the kids were always around.
And I kept trying to process it,
or at least understand what it was connected to.
Understanding what happened to me
In the days that followed,
I kept replaying the situation in my head.
As a therapist, I have tools
for processing difficult emotional experiences.
So does Hadas.
By now it’s probably clear to you
that what I experienced was a panic attack.
It took me a few days to realize that.
It felt so foreign
to how I see myself as:
strong.
brave.
a leader.
Beginning to meet it
The first thing I tried to do
was find the trigger.
Money has always been sensitive a issue for me -
when there’s enough worrying going on,
you don’t see the anxiety coming.
So we handed all financial matters over to Hadas,
and I stopped going into supermarkets for a while...
That understanding was hard -
but it also brought relief.
I started to accept it.
Simply because I didn’t leave myself any other option.
Right now, I’m not:
strong.
brave.
a leader.
And I could finally accept that within myself.
When something this strong
insists on being heard -
I listen.
I didn’t plan to stay out of supermarkets forever 🙂
What it asks me to see
Letting go of the trigger
(with Hadas taking over the finances)
helped a lot.
We simply stopped talking about money.
We gave space
for what had surfaced -
to be seen and acknowledged.
Anxiety is not a problem to solve.
It’s a signal.
That we’ve reached a threshold.
That if we don’t pause for a moment,
something deeper in us
won’t be able to keep going.
our heart will abandon the flight mid-air.
Something begins to open
A few weeks passed.
I started to understand
what had happened to me.
But mostly -
I started to listen.
The triggers didn’t disappear.
The feelings can still rise.
But they are keys.
Keys
to doors of growth.
If for me it started with understanding -
for Hadas, it started in the body
.There are moments
when the body asks for something else.
And that met Hadas too -
in a completely different way.
The path that Hadas experienced -
in the next article of the Trilogy.
