Persons with an anxiety disorder that is persistent and includes constant panic attacks share some most amazing characteristics. We exhibit higher intelligence than average humans, enormous creative ability, and among other things, heightened awareness on many levels. We are also usually very much nicer than the general population.

Our minds race, thoughts overlap, we subconsciously put together thoughts, colors, patterns, and ideas in an elevated intellectual process. This is going on inside of our brains at all times. This is general anxiety disorder, or “free-floating anxiety”. We all know what it’s like to be in this constant state of free-floating anxiety for a time. It generally sucks the energy from most of your body and distributes it to places that are the most uncomfortable.

Our muscles tense, ready to take off running or climbing, hearing is sharpened to listen for danger signals, eyes widen to take in as much information as possible, adrenaline is pumping through our veins. A host of uncomfortable physical reactions are triggered. With General Anxiety we seem to stay in that state eternally.

We can ask ourselves a very interesting question at this point. If our brains are in a state of heightened awareness for extended periods of time, have we possibly strengthened our senses directly? Have we even made our ability to sense things more apt? Are we possibly so mentally strong that we can sense the extraordinary? Sense the unseen, the unknown, perhaps even the future or past?

Please don’t think that I am misinterpreting mental strength and ability for stability. Surely, we do process information faster, we are more efficient, our problem solving skills incomparable, but don’t forget about all that nervousness and tension and always being on the brink of a full blown panic attack. That’s not all that stable when it comes down to the wire and has nothing to do, I believe, with panic and a psychic sense.

Although psychic ability hasn’t been scientifically proven despite intense effort over the past 150 years, those of us that have experienced premonitions, “feelings in the pit of their stomachs”, or other instances of knowing what you shouldn’t, don’t need any more proof than the knowing that it has happened to us.

We can rest on our own experiences, knowing that it is a truth, at least for ourselves.

Our mind, our consciousness, is the basis of who we are. Our personality traits are imbedded in our brains, but our higher-level abilities are nowhere to be found in that mass of tissue. Scientists are unable to show us the physical place where our intuition lies. Where that feeling of dread that something horrible just happened to someone close to us originates. How we can be connected to another human being so much so that we know what they are going to say before they open their mouths? Where is that region of the brain, that gland, that nerve center? I believe it is invisible, I believe it doesn’t actually exist in a solid form. What I believe is happening is that we are have increased our mental abilities to the point where we are able to decrypt certain types of energy that would otherwise be ignored. Perhaps we’ve hacked our own brains after much repetitive and persistent wear and finally unlocked some higher level code that was only ever meant to be accessed by those using a larger portion of their brains.

It’s enough to make your mind race frantically. We access it, yes: but we don’t understand all of what we’re accessing. Sort of like when you buy a new VCR and there aren’t any instructions in the box, you call tech support, get faxed a copy of the instructions, but they’re in Chinese. Or even better, when you call tech-support when your computer crashes and you hang up afterwards, knowing a lot more information, but it’s still mostly all mumbo-jumbo.

You’ve got the information, you’re knee deep in it – but what do you do with it?

It comes out as little surges of “knowing”. As in “ah…yes, this word I understand, it has to do with a familiar thing, my sister (for example), I understand that energy, it is my (sisters) energy and I understand that it is a negative energy.”

I’m not going to even attempt to say that I have an idea where that energy is coming from and why it would be available in our brains. To go into the topic of higher dimensions and collective consciousness, I’d just be getting myself in trouble and everyone would stop reading this essay. This isn’t about the esoteric, just the unknown. Well, okay, I admit, those are one and the same, but I am trying desperately to keep any New Age reference out of this collection of thoughts.

Okay, so the question remains as to why we as panic sufferers often have that taboo little thing called a sixth sense. If it is due to the unrelenting use of, and our sensitivity to, our traditional senses – leading to the ability to access less scientifically traditional senses, then that makes perfect sense. (No pun intended!)

Why anxious people, though? Why us?

Delving further into the theory, could it be because we are always thinking abstractly? Constantly thinking; most often in countless threads layered on top of one another, our minds are never quiet, they are never calm. We are introverted; we can hear ourselves think. Is it a possibility that our constant practice of heightened awareness and mental attunement has strengthened our abilities to perceive what others can not? In a physical sense, we are constantly on guard, always alert, always ready to run, we are extremely sensitive to the slightest shifts in many types of energy. The slightest sounds, ambient changes, temperature, smell, taste…we notice, always. Anything outside of the realm of our “norm” is noted and we react to it. Could this include scientifically unrecognized senses? I believe that it indeed does just that.

Tell me why we have multi-tiered thinking capabilities beyond that of the norm for humans. Why are our IQ’s often times higher, our creative, reasoning, mathematical and logic abilities all higher than that good old ‘norm’? Is it a birth defect, a genetic curse? Are we special in some unidentifiable way?

I think we, as panic disorder sufferers, are just that. Special. Perhaps we are advanced examples of our species. Could we be genetically superior in an unseen way, but physically our brains have not caught up to our advanced consciousness? If so, then what is the key to unlocking the correct sequence of incidences that must happen for our minds to be comfortable in our own brains?

If it were only as easy as physically genetically superior humans, those lean and muscular, high metabolic rate powerhouses. At least they have the luxury of displaying something physical to the rest of the world, where as we have nothing to show for all of our mental powerhousing except elevated anxiety.