Panic at the Register: Retail Anxiety and Public Shame

Panic at the Register: Retail Anxiety and Public Shame explores a quiet but powerful experience shared by millions-those moments at the checkout when the body tenses, the mind races, and a simple transaction feels emotionally overwhelming. This book reveals why public financial spaces can trigger intense fear, shame, and self-consciousness, even when no real danger is present.

Blending emotional insight with nervous-system awareness, this guide explains how past experiences of scarcity, judgment, or visibility become stored in the body and resurface during everyday transactions. Rather than pushing readers to "get over it," the book offers compassionate tools to understand what's happening internally and respond with steadiness instead of self-criticism.

Through gentle grounding practices, practical internal scripts, and a reframing of shame as a learned social response-not a personal failure-readers learn how to move through checkout lines, payment moments, and public interactions with greater calm and self-trust.

This is not a book about fixing yourself. It is about understanding why your body reacts the way it does and learning how to meet those reactions with care. The result is not perfection, but freedom-freedom to exist, to take up space, and to move through the world without fear deciding your worth.