Well folks, my struggle with HA is going well.
Today I strained my neck...while yawning (yes it's stupid). Right after that and with the pain stinging me, I went for a smoke (first one of the day). So while I was trying to massage my neck, my bp started to go down, I started to feel dizzy, a bit numb on the extremities...
So a minute later my old friend came to me with a soft voice saying "maybe you damaged something in your spine, or maybe on the nerves. Who knows what is going to happen to you? Maybe a wheelchair for life over something so stupid as a yawn..."
Almost immediately I felt my bp going up and breathing becoming difficult, thanks to all the shared experiences and articles here on the forum I knew what it was: panic attack coming up to ruin my day.
Instead of giving in to it, I remembered an article I read here about it and followed the instructions:
-Breathe in, count to ten and breathe out
-Access the situation and make sure that all systems work (heart pumps blood, I can move and stand, I can breathe)
-Go and talk to someone
So I stated with the breathing while accessing the situation, next I went to my gf (she was at home at the time) and just told her calmly "baby, I'm having a bit of a panic attack, can you help me count my breathing time?" and she just said "Sure, let's go outside. What happened?"
I told her the story while breathing in and out, and in a few moments I was fine. The neck still hurts, but the panic is gone and no HA to be seen on my mind.
After processing the incident on my mind, I found two points that come to me as positive: first when I told her the story, I admited without even thinking that this was the stupidest panic attack ever, and then the way the whole thing was dealt with, the calm and reasoning that took over the panic and allowed me to overcome the event quickly and without ruining my day.
This adds up with a whole lot of fighting and winning on the last week. Sometimes I feel anxious and now I know that anxiety may trigger those nasty ectopic beats, so without I even noticing it, bad images of panic, suffering and fear start forming on my mind and almost as they show up, I brush them away replacing them with logic thinking and positive images (again, following the tips from another great article here on the site).
This has prevented some unpleasant funky beats on my heart and fear on my mind. It also has helped to lower my anxious states.
My advice to all of you with HA out there is: read the articles! If we read them, think about that the say and struggle to follow the tips they have, HA can be overcomed. It's hard, we fail a lot and it takes time, but with the attempts we develop the necessary mental fortitude to win this. Take stock of your victories and value them (it brings out a lot of positive thinking) and understand your defeats (helps to find out were to strike next).
My HA is not gone yet, that much I know. But after joining this forum and following the advices and shared experiences, I was able to start controlling it and to fight to overcome it. I was also able to distill it to its basic components: anxiety (lots of it) and negative thinking, so now I'm fighting those too. The results are starting to show up, I've had whole weeks of inner peace and tranquility, something I didn't had in years. I'm being able to trully enjoy life again and not just going trought the motions to force myself into a "normal" life.
This is all within our reach, I believe I can win this and that we all can. The site and forum are vital to this process, and I will never be able to thank enough to everyone involved.
I just hope my experience up to this point can be useful to someone else, like the experiences of others were to me, I learned a lot and understood a lot. Yet the struggle goes on, now to vanquish anxiety and bury HA for good!
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anxiety is what I like to call a 'sneaky wee cu#t' - it will throw different smypthons at u to try and keep u in its grip
