Panic attacks after moving to another city

[darlene85]

I moved to another city three weeks ago and I'm having panic attacks since then. They began the second that I left my hometown, during the travel and it's been awful. I thought they stopped but yesterday I've had so strong panic attack outside that I was thinking that I'll ask someone for help on the street and it was embarassing. I called my mother and I instantly calmed down.
I've been depressed and isolated for five years and I have a codependent relationship with my mother so I wanted to move and to live alone again but I am too anxious now.
I am in great fear that it won't stop and that I won't be able to live alone. I've had panic attacks when I lived alone before, but these are different, stronger. I felt like dying and losing control over my body, twice, and I don't like it.

Meds don't help me anymore. I don't have any money for psychotherapy. I don't know what to do.

[ankietyjoe]

I moved to another city three weeks ago and I'm having panic attacks since then. They began the second that I left my hometown, during the travel and it's been awful. I thought they stopped but yesterday I've had so strong panic attack outside that I was thinking that I'll ask someone for help on the street and it was embarassing. I called my mother and I instantly calmed down.
I've been depressed and isolated for five years and I have a codependent relationship with my mother so I wanted to move and to live alone again but I am too anxious now.
I am in great fear that it won't stop and that I won't be able to live alone. I've had panic attacks when I lived alone before, but these are different, stronger. I felt like dying and losing control over my body, twice, and I don't like it.

Meds don't help me anymore. I don't have any money for psychotherapy. I don't know what to do.

Sorry to hear you're struggling.

Moving itself is stressful, and especially if you're moving to a new, unknown existence. Panic attacks are going to be part of that process for you, for now.

However, panic attacks always stop, as your past experience will prove.

It's partially the fear of the unknown, and also the fear of living alone and having to cope alone. But it's something you chose to do, and I imagine for good reason.

In the short term it's probably best to try and focus on living as mindfully as possible. I would also highly recommend using the box breathing technique and learn how to slowly and consciously calm your physical body down. Get outside and walk your new neighbourhood, be outside and get the exercise. Yes, you might feel some anxiety, but it's not really the end of the world is it....(rhetorical)....?

It's more about taking control of your reaction to anxiety rather than the anxiety itself. Anxiety itself is merely a sensation to a reaction to an imaginary stress, and making the anxiety the problem is where we've all fallen down in the past.