![]() ![]() Ironically, learning more about the mechanism of a panic attack and what's actually happening in the body was what finally helped me get a handle on them. I even went to the hospital in the middle of the night, convinced these heart palpitations meant something, only to feel embarrassed and ashamed when the nurses told me it was another panic attack. I continued experiencing panic attacks-always at times that felt arbitrary and 'safe,' like laying in bed at night, watching TV, sitting in a lecture hall-off and on for the next year. I racked my brain for any possible cause of the symptoms-was it something I ate, the new asthma medication I just started, or was I actually having a heart attack at 19? I was halfway through a 16-hour drive when my hands started tingling, my neck went numb, and my vision blurred. That's because they didn't feel like anxiety-they felt like a heart attack, a life-threatening allergic reaction, basically just imminent death. "My first panic attack happened during an especially stressful time in my life-and I still didn't attribute the symptoms to anxiety. Casey, 28: "It felt like a heart attack, a life-threatening allergic reaction, or imminent death." All that I can do, I’ve learned, is to wait it out, and it will eventually wind down on its own."ĩ. It’s scary to be unable to stop it or calm it down or convince your body that you are not in imminent danger. The other scariest part is that even once I realize it’s an anxiety attack, I can’t stop it. I think the scariest part is two things: One, when I’m in the middle of it and I don’t realize it’s anxiety-I just am in it and confused and well, panicked. I have been through this before and it’s not too much for me.” It actually does help. The other thought is just, “Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong.” And then, “Oh god, I can’t stop, why isn’t it stopping? Why can’t I breathe, what’s going on?” My therapist has taught me to say to myself, “This is not too much for me. I become convinced that someone’s going to jump out or corner me and attack me or rape me. They can come on for days at a time, but the actual anxiety-the acute phase-can last a few hours. They start to come on with invasive thoughts (for me, the fear that someone is going to rape me is a big anxiety thought that signals that I’m feeling anxious), and then continue to build if I don’t de-escalate them. "I clearly remember having anxiety attacks every three weeks in graduate school when I was 21-so I’ve been having them at least half my life. Heather, 43: “Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong.” I consider myself really lucky to have had a friend who was willing to run to where I was in a moment I needed him, and I feel for anyone who goes through something like that without similar support."Ĥ. I just remember kind of collapsing into his arms. I don't remember how long my first attack lasted, but I was lucky enough to have a friend call over another friend who was having his own mental health issues at the time. Your brain really makes your body pay for it. The exhaustion the next day is also uncanny. The physical symptoms are unlike anything else I’ve felt: a tightness in my chest so pronounced it actually feels like choking, dizziness like I've been hanging upside down for hours, tingling legs and numb hands. I wasn't exactly sure what I even worried was about to happen, only that it was extreme. I forget the actual cause (in my experience the “cause” doesn't really matter much or correspond exactly to the reality of the situation), but I remember thinking very distinctly that my life was ending, and that I would have to leave college and require some sort of emergency care. "The first panic attack I can remember happened in college, and they've been uncommon since then, luckily. Sam, 30: “I remember thinking very distinctly that my life was ending.” During my walk, the pain didn't go away, and it was joined by a deep and sincere fear that I was at risk of keeling over and dying in the gutter alongside the stale pizza crusts and garbage of my fair city of New York, looking up at the Empire State Building.ģ. I tried to calm myself down and drank some water and decided to go for a walk around my office in midtown Manhattan. ![]() This led me to panicked Googling and the conviction or fear that I was having a heart attack. ![]() Nothing in particular triggered it-I was stressed about work in general and hadn't eaten until late in the day, around 3 p.m.Īfter I returned from my late lunch, I felt sharp pain in my chest and down my right arm. I knew I had generalized anxiety, but it had never caused any psychosomatic symptoms in me until that point. "I had an anxiety attack in the summer of 2016 in the middle of the afternoon when I was at work at my journalism job. Carl, 30: “I sincerely feared that I was at risk of keeling over and dying in the gutter.” ![]()
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