Have you ever had a panic attack, anxiety attack, or both.
Tell your personal experience, when, where, and why?
How did you overcome it. What did you do?
Best reply by wisdom/worn:
I always get them when I am in a crowded store or dr.’s office & have to wait & my nerves start to get on edge & always there’s some kid screaming & it gets worse &worse until I think I’m going completely nuts & have to get out of there like right now !
If I feel like I just can’t calm down once I get out in the car I take a half of tranquilizer & that does the trick.
Read the original question here
Have you ever had a panic/anxiety attack. How often do you experience them?
Yes I have had many panic attacks. I truely dont rember when i first had one. At the begginning my way of coping was avoiding anything that gave me an anxiety/panic attack. Later I came to realize I needed professional help. Saw a doctor and am now on medications.
Yes. I get them a lot. The worst was when I had every symptom of a heart attack (both parents had attacks by 52) When I got to the hospital I got an EKG & an IV with who knows what. Then they got rude, like I was faking & wasting their time. So I complained to the hospital board, refused to pay the bill & won.
I have alot when im trying to go to sleep its because i start thinking about stuff that gets me worried i just take A deep Breath and tell my self to relax and not to worry hope that helps your are Not alone everybody has one once in there life just take a deep breath
yes i get panic attacks and anxiety attacks
i experience them when i am in a crowd, a small room, or anything that will make me claustriphobic
i also get them when i am really stressed out, especially when people are pressuring me to do something that wont happen.
i once got one in a bathroom (yeah its a strange story)
i was in a bathroom washing my hands
and out of no where i noticed how small the bathroom was
and i just started freaking out
and it was horrible
my friend had to get me out of it
and sit me down
and get me something to drink.
after she left to get me a drink i fainted.
i never have been able to overcome panic/anxiety attacks
and i probably never will
because they come out of no where sometimes.
I used to get them when I flew. Interestingly enough, they didn’t begin until after I got married and progressively got much worse as my long-term (more than 10 years) marrige went on.
They would make me feel like I had trouble breathing, heart raced, some nausea too. There were times I felt like rushing out the hatch before the plane left! All of this was strange considering I used to love to fly.
Well, the last vacation my husband and I took I was totally fed up with him. It was a 6 hour flight and the entire time I was cool, calm and read a book! Funny, I realized that my anxiety was directly tied into my lousy marriage. So were other things like my dwindling confidence and confusion all caused by his emotional abuse.
If you have an anxiety, look at your life. See what happened before the anxiety started, anything stand out? It may surprise you.
Frequently, especially when I am worried or overwhelmed. Lots of things help, but I first have to remind myself that it is a panic attack and not to get overwhelmed. To avoid them, exercise helps a lot. Meditation works to build your faith. Having a doctor with whom you can talk is important. I also take 0.5 mg. of clonazepam. Good luck! They can be controlled, it just takes a lot of work and faith.
yes i suffered with both for years. i didn’t know what was wrong with me! i hid this for many years until my girlfriend convinced me to see a doctor!!!! and just knowing that your not alone with this helps SO much. he put me on medicine for about 3 years and now its been over 1yr since I’ve taken anything!!!! or had an attack!!! sorry i didn’t tell you about them first. i got them 3 or 4 times a day, heart races hands and feet sweat scary thoughts, helplessness . i hope this helps and alot of people have them, i think stress set mine off . go see a doctor and talk to someone.
yes…in college… i couldnt breathe really and of course, i cried a lot…. i just prayed and went to bed.
Ive only had one in my life so far but it was really bad.I’m the one that is always in control ,never gets flustered or upset……but my husband and I were on vacation and traveling thru Kentucky on our way west ,I was driving when we came to a very very tall narrow bridge,you had to go up a sharp small hill to be able to get on the bridge. As I topped the hill and could see the bridge and how narrow it was for my Chevy Tahoe I got this awful frightening feeling I felt as tho I couldn’t breath ,I could feel my fingers tighten on the steering wheel,my heart was beating fast ,then half way across this narrow high bridge a large semi was coming across the bridge from the other direction, we passed each other with only inches to spare ,as soon as I cleared the bridge I pulled over on the side of the road and I was shaking and crying and breathing hard as if I had just ran a foot race. My husband held me in his arms and talked me “down”from this emotional roller coaster. As we talked I realized that I had just had my first and so far last panic attack. You see I have always loved to drive, I drive in cart races so I had no fear of the possibility of an accident it was something else . I hope I never have that feeling again .Strong reliable me was shaken to my core .
Yes, I get them before any kind of event involving people I don’t know. My husband persuades me to go.
I started getting panic attacks once I found out my uncle died–but it was the circumstances that triggered it.
he was driving on the freeway and had a heart attack and pulled over on the side on the road. No one stopped for over 20 minutes and when he was taken to the hospital, he was pronounced brain dead. He eventually passed away a few days later.
I started getting panic attacks about a year after that–spirred by mostly car-related siutations (no one finding me, feeling stuck and feeling no one will help me, just like my uncle’s situation). Sometimes I get them when I’m stuck in traffic and I can’t get out of my car, other times its when its raining and the sky is almost the same color as the highway (grey) (not sure why). But most of the time its when I feel “stuck”.
I’m an avid flyer and I have started to get panic attacks on long flights. But I have to quickly divert my attention to get my mind of it.
When I get my panic attacks, my Dr said to do *anything* to get your mind off the feelings (fear you will die, hot, sweaty, feel like you are in a dream, etc). In the car, I turn on the radio (talk radio) and it seems to help. Or, I call my boyfriend (who is very understanding) and he talks to me about silly things that make me laugh.
I still get the car-related attacks, and it really is mind over matter. They are getting fewer in number and shorter, but they are not gone. I’m not sure if I will ever get over them completely, but I sure hope so.
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I get horrible anxiety attacks when I have to deal with my son’s dad who filed a horrible lawsuit against me.
They first started when he decided to get married to a very troubled person who he had just met and who has children older than my son. The oldest was charged with drug possession at school and they left my son in her care. They went on vacation and left the children ages 6 and 8 with this 14 or 15 year old. Since she was bringing children into the marriage, he wanted to bring my son into the marriage, even though I raised him single-handedly except that he did some visitation. My son was given a gold wedding ring. They had the older boy pay a lot of attention to my son to make him want to live with them and he didn’t like coming home. They filed a lawsuit seeking joint custody but moved to California. The day I won the lawsuit, the older boy was no longer required to talk to my son and he didn’t.
My son’s dad had never paid child support and so I faced a tough economic time when he filed the lawsuit. He lied throughout the various hearings and in the various filings and I was concerned that he’d get away with it, but I was able to document the perjury and find fraudulently transferred assets. He tried his best to avoid paying the award. He filed to have child support cut by 40%, but it was only cut by 10%. I am court ordered to consult with him on various matters and I find that I have difficulty opening up his e-mails.
On these occasions, there is some surge in some chemical that shoots throughout my body. I can feel it and I know that I will not sleep for a few days and then it will take me the rest of the week to be able to sleep well. I have to take the rest of the day off. It is very uncomfortable. I have two children to care for, so I can’t take anxiety medication because it makes me sleepy.
I think I’ll try the exercise idea mentioned above.
I used to get anxiety attacks. It started in college, sometimes when my stress level was higher, but other times just out of the blue. They would seem to come out of nowhere. One minute I would be sitting there doing something like studying or watching TV, the next minute… WHAM — it would hit me like a ton of bricks.
I would start hyperventilating, sweating, and my heart would be racing! I was so frightened! What was happening to me? Was I dying? Having a heart attack? Going crazy? I felt this overwhelming sense of doom – like something horrible was just about to happen. I was so frightened that I would often try to do something to focus my mind on other activities. I would clean the room, or call somebody, or pray, or often: get drunk.
At first these attacks were isolated incidents – infrequent enough to be troubling, but not life altering. Around this time I developed little quirks in my personality. Things that were very subtle at first, and that I never even thought were related to anxiety.
I would be extra careful about germs, washing my hands often. It just made sense to me: to avoid getting sick, experts advocated good hygiene. Wash your hands after shaking hands with someone and before touching your face. Don’t touch the doorknob when leaving public restrooms. Clean cuts to avoid bacteria and wear Band-Aids. I was just being careful.
Sometimes I would go through routines – like when I left the house. I would check to make sure the gas was off on the stove… often touching each knob to make sure it was truly in the off position. Then I would make sure the door was locked after me – sometimes I would go back once or twice and try the knob to double check… I realized this was somewhat redundant, but it would make me feel more at ease about leaving and what was the harm?
Years went by and I managed to deal with my panic attacks and live my life. Sometimes they would be more prevalent and sometimes less so. I would go through periods where I wouldn’t have any for six months, then periods where I would have several in a week. The bad ones were really horrible, and would leave me apprehensive about when the next would come.
My friends would notice my little idiosyncrasies and kid me about it sometimes, calling me Monk after the TV detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder. But I managed to keep my panic hidden. Only my wife knew that I would have these attacks, and she had no idea how often, or when they were happening.
Years later I went through some major life changing events: I changed my job, separated from my wife, and moved to a new city all the period of about six months. I was having more panic attacks during this time, but they were still isolated events.
On several occasions I ended up in the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack. All the symptoms seemed to be there: numbness in the arm and hands, sweating, chest pains, rapid heart beat. Each time they would observe me and run tests, but eventually release me and advise me to see my GP.
I would follow-up, but it just meant more tests and the outcome was always the same: the tests would rule out the bad maladies, and the issues would eventually get dropped.
A few years went by and my life settled down a bit. But out of nowhere the panic attacks were getting worse. Far more frequent and severe. Sometimes I would be driving and I would have to get off the highway as I was convinced I was about to lose consciousness. I became increasingly uncomfortable (and almost unable) to get on airplanes as I would have horrible attacks.
I began to limit the things in my life that I felt would bring on attacks. Traveling was one of them. I would also make associations: I read that aspartame could cause attacks, so I avoided it. Any kind of drug or food that might bring on an attack should be avoided, right? But this became a never ending battle, situations and stimulations could trigger my panic attacks, but there became more and more things I had to avoid.
My attention then became even more introspective than usual for me. I figured that if these attacks weren’t caused by some external stimuli, they must be internal. There must be something really wrong with my mind. I was going crazy, I was about to hallucinate, or become psychotic at any moment. I would have these bizarre thoughts that would plague me from out of nowhere. Thoughts like while I was driving: what if I jerked the wheel, intentionally or unintentionally and caused an accident that ended up killing or hurting myself and others.
I didn’t want these things to happen, did I? Why, I wondered, would I have these recurring thoughts unless some part of me wanted to hurt myself and others? I was loosing trust in myself!
One night I again wound up in the emergency room but this time, I didn’t even check in. I didn’t know what to tell them. I felt like I was losing it, but it wasn’t a heart attack or something like that. I just sat in the waiting room and felt miserable for hours. Were people looking at me, were they talking about me? God help me, now I’m paranoid too?
After that night I had days when the panic was so bad, I didn’t know what to do. One, two, five attacks in a single day! And so intense, I didn’t know they could get so bad. I began to feel like I wasn’t myself, even between attacks. It was like when I looked around, nothing seemed real to me. I sometimes thought it was like being underwater. You see things, but they were different, or scary, or weird, and you can’t really explain why.
I became increasingly preoccupied that I was going to commit suicide. The thought scared the hell out of me: I didn’t think I wanted to die, but why did I keep thinking about it? I didn’t trust myself and I felt out of control. I couldn’t control my thoughts or emotions and I was afraid I was about to do something drastic.
I went to my doctor and told him I was having difficulty dealing with stress. I told him about the panic attacks, but amazingly I downplayed how bad they were, and how much they were affecting me. I think I was still hoping he would find something physically wrong with me that might be causing these symptoms. Somehow that was more comforting to me, a serious physical milady, even a brain tumor, than the madness that I was sure was the only alternative.
My doctor prescribed Xanax, in a low dosage. It was amazing to me! I found that just taking one quarter to one half milligram could make me feel normal. My doctor said anxiety was cumulative, and that being under stress for protracted periods of time could cause panic attacks.
The attacks continued to get worse, and the Xanax didn’t help as much, one night I needed five (.25 mg) pills to calm down. I was actually crying (from fear and frustration) as I gobbled down the pills chasing them with beer.
But my prescription ran out, and my doctor was hesitant about re-prescribing it to me. It could become addicting, he warned me. Great, I thought, one more thing for me to worry about… I don’t want to become addicted
He prescribed Paxil instead. I was very worried about taking some psychoactive drug – how much would it mess with my mind. But I was also desperate. I started taking a low dose.
I also sought out an anxiety specialist. It was there I was introduced to cognitive-behavioral therapy. I started reading on my own as well, and though several channels, I learned a lot.
I learned that my obsessive thinking and behavior and my panic were related. I learned that just because I was having these thoughts and fears didn’t mean that I was going to act on them. I learned that by hiding from my thoughts, I was actually encouraging them.
For example, I was worried about committing suicide, so every time I thought about it, my mind would recoil in horror. On no, I thought, I’m not thinking about this again! I don’t want to think about this, I want to think about something else. By associating such a jolt to thoughts like that, I would ensure that I would think about them again and again.
But I learned that these were all symptoms that could occur to severely sensitized people and that didn’t mean I was psychotic or deranged. It was the worry that worried me.
I realized all through my ordeal it was worry that was the common factor.
It was helpful to learn that my symptoms weren’t so unique, and there were plenty of other people that had gone through what I was going through.
The one thing I learned that amazed me, that blew my mind, is that this condition can get better. You can completely recover from anxiety. You don’t need drugs, you don’t need psychoanalysis, you don’t need anything but to make a few distinctions. It’s not easy, you have to work at it, you have to practice, but anyone can do it.
The one idea that escaped me for a while is that in order to overcome the fear, and crippling emotional distress caused my anxiety is that you have to accept it. You have to OWN it. For me that meant I had to allow my anxiety attacks to happen unencumbered – no medicine, no distractions, and no lifelines. I had to face the feelings head on.
This was much easier said than done. I had to accept the paradox of feeling something in order not to feel it… I had to believe it would work, and I had to prove it to myself. I had to not run from my thoughts whenever I had them, to not react in horror when I thought about something that disturbed me. And I had to do it again and again.
But I did it! I got good at it. I became an expert at standing my ground. I would put myself into situations that frightened me and used to cause unbelievable panic. I used to be uncomfortable just looking down into an atrium a few stories high. What if I jumped, or fell? I would have to back off to lower my anxiety.
But now that I changed my perspective I would make myself realize that it was not the situations, but my own emotions that frightened me. One of the things I did was to walk across the Mackinac Bridge – one of the longest, highest suspension bridges in the world. I thus confronted my fears of height, of no escape, of jumping, and of falling all at once. I took a submarine ride to confront a bunch of other fears.
It was only by embracing my fears and emotions that I overcame them…
Here it is over a year later and I haven’t has a single panic attack. If I ever get one again… so what!?! When you become unafraid of the attacks, when they truly cannot touch you, you won’t have them anymore. Sure, I have times when my anxiety or stress levels are higher, but I accept these times – I don’t run away.
It was only by my anxiety becoming overwhelming that I found the need, then the strength to overcome it.
There is a lot of great information and advice out there – and some dumb stuff too. I found an invaluable audio program that I got from Audible (www.audible.com) called “Pass through Panic,” by Dr. Claire Weekes. I also subsequently read several of her books that were excellent.
Read, listen, learn, and practice. There is hope out there for everyone!
Check out these anxiety stress self help relaxation resources CD movie too.
http://jasonalster.googlepages.com/home
http://jasonalster.googlepages.com/creativityandrelaxedconcentration
http://test-anxiety.blogspot.com/2006/05/resources-for-test-anxiety.html