I have come across discussions here of whether anxiety or panic attacks can cause fainting. Here is my own experience, from long ago. It shows how what we think and imagine can have an effect on our bodies.
As a child and adolescent, I had strong tendencies to both squeamishness and health anxiety. I was particularly afraid of the idea of fainting. There were certain experiences, I knew, that might trigger and reveal my weakness. I put up defences against them. I managed to give up studying biology before I had to do dissections. I avoided certain films, like The Exorcist, that were regarded as horrific: if people in the cinema were fainting, I would make sure this never happened to me. This strategy worked until one evening in my late teens.
I was sitting in an armchair at home, reading a magazine. I casually picked up the Radio Times and started reading. I came to an article about heart attacks. There were interviews, descriptions, and diagrams. References to pains in the chest bulked large. Before I got to the end of the article, I fainted.
However, at the time, I didn’t actually know what was happening to me. It was just that as I read my own sensations started to overwhelm me. I seemed to be experiencing what I was reading about. I felt a horrible pressure in my own chest, I broke into a sweat. Sleepiness, a nasty sickly kind of sleepiness came over me, as if I’d been drugged. I couldn’t fight it; I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was frightened. I wondered if I was having a heart attack. I felt my eyes closing, against my will. I remember nothing more.
My eyes opened. I was still in my chair. Sweaty, weak, confused, still a bit frightened. The fear subsided: whatever had happened, it seemed to be over. I didn’t know I had lost consciousness; I thought that perhaps I had just closed my eyes for a second, like you do when you’re tired. But my mother was looking intently at me. She told me I had fainted.
I was embarrassed, but also I was ashamed of myself, even more when I had to explain to my mother why I’d fainted: it seemed such a silly reason. If I had known more about anxiety and the power of the vagus nerve, that might have helped. It was a very intense experience, and in a way I am glad to have had it; but I am also glad my anxiety has never had such an effect again, and I sympathize with anyone who has had a similar experience.
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