Your first panic attack....

[Lawton86]

Hey all!

Their is probably a thread on this somwhere! but hey ho! we all know the first panic attack is the worst because we have no idea whats going on, its like a ton of brick just slaps you across the face.

Heres My Story:

Nearly 4 weeks ago after a heavy ( and i mean heavy) night out with my mates, we woke up. Went to mcdonalds and i felt soooo rough so just got a drink, thought i felt sooo bad from the hangover. We got into town and my mates got out the car and i said to them i dont think i can come i really dont feel too good, so one of my mates stayed with me while the other 2 went into town for 20 mins. All of a sudden My face went sooo tingly like a buzz saw had hit it, i lost all energy and my hands and feet went numb......i opened the door and got outside the car tried to look up but everything was a blur. by this point my heart was racing.....i really thought i was going to die. My two other mates came back to car and took me straight to the closest friends house where i managed to get upstairs and into his bed, i laid their shaking and sweating and absolutly petrified that i was a gonna. my mates called an ambulance who came and told me i was having a panic attack and it would be all better in 4-6 hours time.

4 weeks on still have really bad anxiety, still suffering from constant de-realization (the worst sympton in my opinion) and still feel really un-easy and still having panic attacks. If only this did last 4-6 hours!

The first panic attack is the worst!

Share storys if you wish....

[Nicola_lou]

Hi I'm Nicola, my first panic attack was new years day I been drinking all night till the morning right through partying. I went bard and my friends didn't know what to do apart from reasure me that id be ok, they brought me and my boyfriend home, I couldn't see and I was shaking I had deprealization but had no idea what it was. I was getting more and more stressed throughout the day and by 7pm I couldn't breath tidy I thought I can't get enough air in, I tried to keep it from my boyfriend for a while cause he would panic and id def stop breathing. By 8 I couldn't breath it was like I forgot how to, so ambulance came my oxygen droppeds to 40 and he rushed me to hospital. No one explained what was happening to me, even the next day I had no explanation, they was on stand by cause mmy heart rate was way to high they thought it would give in.
Only when I came home a week after I had chest pain and my gp said its anxiety I read up about it and since then I've been getting loads of info and am overcoming it. Thank god I've realised my source of the stress you need to look at your life, if it was the drinking session we both had it would be over now. So I'm sorting out my life and feeling better, not completed out the woods and still have bad days but not has bad.

[mysonmarcus]

Hi Lawton

Please take note of Nicola's story, she points correctly at a life experience as the 'cause' of the 'symptom' of panic attacks. It will be grief, loss of a person, control or similar or of overwhelming duty or similar, or guilt etc. Look for a persistent worry as the cause................ internal stressors result , as do unresovled issues.

Very best wishes to you.

Mark

[Allye]

Well here we go then:

My first panic attack was at work. Due to the incompetence of a large international company I was left doing the work of three senior executive positions due to their HR's inability to recruit properly.

On top of this we had to move departmental location the same day and had to pack our own desks and departments into crates (which left me and a secretary to pack a whole department including those who had left) - due to budget cuts!

So I had been in the office since 7 am, had nothing to eat but endless cups of coffee to drink. At 3 pm I had to take minutes at a board meeting, still with nothing to eat, having been rushing round all day trying to deal with clients one minute, other managers and also pack crates.

At exactly 3:20 pm out of the blue I suddenly "fell into a goldfish bowl". Noone round the table looked real. My eyes would not focus and my ears were ringing so much that I could not hear what people were saying. I could not breath, had chest pains and was sweating. My hand was shaking so much I could not hold the pen and the whole room appeared to move.

I excused myself, spent 20 minutes in the loo with the first aider who thought it was low blood sugar and gave me tea and biscuits. Suddenly I felt fine just as fast it came on it left.

However that evening I met my son to go late night shopping, got into the shopping centre and suddenly it happened again. My son had to call my partner to collect me.

I just put them down to a funny turn - however these funny turns kept happening, first at the supermarket, then at the hairdressers - the list went on. I went to the doctors a number of times who kept testing my thyroid!!!

It was not until about 4 months later the same thing happened at work and my work colleague volunteered to take me home but actually took me to the hospital who, after lots of tests finally diagnosed PAs.

Since then I have had CBT (privately), been on Citalopram briefly (2 months) and been up and at the moment, down again.

Take care
Allye

[mysonmarcus]

Hi Allye

The process you describe that drove you into an anxiety disorder is missed by so many people, you rightly can point at the cause which is work overload compounded and worsended by your own strong sense of 'duty'.

Focus on the word 'duty'............ you 'need(ed)' to go to the supermarket, hairdressers and carry out other obligations when your nerves were sensitive to the process and the places.

Take time to clear your list of obligations and wait for the 'natural' urge to want (not need) to do something. Little can be forced in this condition.

When you feel an 'urge' this is your green light, anxiety although still present at this time will be in the form of dizziness/spaciness maybe but certainly of heightened self awareness.......nerves are moving to a new and lower intensity plateau........do your best not to get in their way .

my very best wishes

Mark

[Nicola_lou]

Mark your very wise, your not by any chance a therapist. Or have you just had a lot of experience. Your answers are very good. You should write in the top tips.

[melody]

Hi,

I had been depressed for many months, over a year before my first panic attack struck. I was in pain every day due to work injury from doing too many people's jobs for too long & another big deadline of my own. After the injury I was still expected to keep up my original work agreement, even though doctors certificates and my body said otherwise. I faced hostility at work every day from managers & staff as people thought I was a money grabber, instead of that I kept working too hard under orders and reinjuring myself and getting myself bedridden. It took me three more episodes of it before I realised my employers and the doctors they forced me to go to were lying to me. My condition was much worse by then.

I was almost collapsed already with intense pain it's impossible to describe. I was called up the front & ordered to do more impossible tasks. I said I couldn't. I said I can barely even walk. She told me to stop whining, I had to & I wasn't allowed any help. That manager hated me from the start. She'd been nasty from the start.

I was stuck between my strong work ethics & people pleasing my life had always consisted of, and the fact I just couldn't do any of the extra work, no matter how hard I tried to look at it. It was physically impossible for me. I couldn't face the manager again. She wouldn't believe me & I'd be yelled at in front of eveyone again. I needed to sit. My pain was becoming more & more unbearable as I panicked.

I don't know if my back collapsed from under me, or if the panic attack happened first. I was a sobbing, suffocating mess on the floor when I was found.

I was made to sit there for an hour discussing how I had to get treatment for my mental illness. I was like "what mental illness. I'm in horrible pain". They said "it doesn't show up much in the scans". We have to force you to go to a psychologist so you can go back to full heavy duties etc etc you have to stop being a whimp & get back to work. Our doctors say you've recovered already. I felt very targetted and lost. I was so angry they wouldn't let me have time to recover before they forced me into a meeting 5 against one to discuss why I wasn't working well enough after I'd been through this terrible thing. I had never heard of a panic attack. All I knew was that my body had collapsed out from under me in a hot flash of pain through my entire body. My body was screaming out for rest & they wouldn't let me out the locked door.

Panic attacks for me aren't the symptoms at all. They are like nothing. Panic attacks are anything that makes me feel trapped with people that don't care if they hurt me, so long as they take care of their own interests. Panic attacks are the rage & helplessness I feel that no one cared about me in that place when I was sufferring so much. They just gave me more & more hate the longer it went on. It is feeling like it could happen again at any time because my injury was permanent and I am in terrible pain all the time, that no one can see & most people don't believe. Panic attacks are just the physical representation of the pain that takes such a long time to heal from.

Ha, ha. I made myself cry. Better out than in!

I keep letting my sadness out. I keep finding more and more things I've been holding in for years for whatever reasons. I firmly believe that it will get better for all of us! It has to. All it is is an overload of emotions. Emotions come & go through everyone every day. I know we will all look back on this time one day and go, that was a hard time of my life & I'm so glad it's over.

[mysonmarcus]

Hi Nicola

Thanks for your comment, no I am not a therapist, I am a fellow sufferer who is about 10 days into recovery after a relape due to a change of lifestyle change.

Previously I ready pretty much everything written about the disorder, studied in from within myself and also from without........and now I am kind of 'observing' myself to see how well I will recover without medication, what the process is and how long takes,........information I want to make public for others to use if they need to.

I keep a mental diary, I know how hard I work (or dont) and how disciplined I am from day today to think and do the things I mention in these posts................. I have a very strong desire to make a difference in some way and I care an awful lot!

Something that gives me a close insight may suprise you and it is that I was a dog trainer, focussing in the psychological aspect of conditioning for many years, .............now you may wonder what I mean???????????? Dogs, of course cannot talk or reason, they are almost entirely 'moved' by instinct and internal urge, panic attacks are controlled by that part of the brain in humans, dogs have a very strong fight or flight instinct as do we. Thanks once again.

Melody........that was a moving story and I humbly believe one that has a happy ending anxiety wise. If you feel so strongly about the cause and are correct the answer lies in forgiveness, you are bitter, and felt like a victim.....the circumstances cant change, the emotions going forward surely can, the angle you are taking is to further debrief yourself about the hurt you felt, and this one pointed churing will keep nerves sensitive, forgive people, because if you do the comments running through your mind will subside ................ and in a reasonable time the panics (your versions of them) will to. I think you have a very bright future

My very best wishes to you

Mark