Life Leveling

Today, as the title suggests, I want to share how I overcame Panic Attacks and how you can too. This comes from someone who had a sudden and difficult battle with them, but eventually came out victorious.

For those who like to jump around while reading, I’ll have headings for each topic. I would of course recommend reading chronologically, as I try to only type what I believe to be valuable, so you may miss out.

We’ll start by delving into the definition of Panic Attacks, just to make sure we’re on the same page, then move on to telling my fairly brief, but prominent battle with them, and then finally, come up with some easily digestible steps for overcoming it.

Lastly, I just want to preface by saying, if you’re currently dealing with Panic Attacks, don’t worry, this is a totally possible thing to get under control and there is absolutely zero shame in dealing with it. Let’s dive in and take Panic Attacks by the balls for good.

Defining “Panic Attacks”

“A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dying.” –Mayo Clinic

As you can tell from the description above, Panic Attacks suck. The article goes on to describe how the average person will have one to two Panic Attacks in their life, these Panic Attacks will be temporary and rare occurrences.

In the case that you are having frequent unexpected Panic Attacks, you may be diagnosed with a Panic Attack disorder. In this case, there are often not any triggers. This is via the Cleveland Clinic.

When talking about Panic Attacks, it’s important that we differentiate from a similar condition called “Anxiety Attacks”. Anxiety attacks are usually caused by some sort of stressor, meaning they have an identifiable trigger.

Whereas in Panic Attacks, there may not be an identifiable trigger. Another difference is in intensity and length, Panic Attacks are typically shorter lasting, but more intense, while Anxiety Attacks may be longer lasting with varying degrees of intensity.

My Personal Struggles

This is where I want to start by admitting something, I had always thought that what I had went through were Panic Attacks. Now that I have learned the differences between Panic Attacks and Anxiety Attacks, I would be more inclined to believe that I was dealing with the latter.

As I delve into my story, you can come to your own conclusions on which I was dealing with or if I was dealing with both. While I sought counseling and eventually went to my family doctor, I never was formally diagnosed with anything, we’ll get into that more later.

I do recall through counseling, that the term Panic Attack was being used and I wasn’t aware of anxiety attacks, hence my slight confusion seen in the article. Of course, I don’t claim to be an expert, but I do try very hard to ground my work in research.

I’ll try to keep things brief for my story, focusing on the important details. As I’ve said in previous articles, I was and still to a lesser extent am, a very anxious person. This anxiety acted more as an annoyance to me than anything else, but things took a quick and drastic turn when I had my first anxiety attack during a grade eleven math test.

Just like everyone else, math tests made me nervous, but it was never anything I couldn’t handle. But this day, I was hit with all the awful feelings of an anxiety attack at once, I felt dizzy, my heart was pounding, I thought I was going to pass-out or die.

This lead to a pretty awkward, but wholesome, interaction with my teacher. I asked to speak to him outside of the class to explain what was going on. This lead to him trying to comfort me and an eventual quick walk around the halls to chill.

Not necessarily an important detail, but still a funny one, is that when I returned, my teacher had started playing calming music on a speaker. This made me go bright red in the face, as to me, it was extremely obvious that I was the reason for this.

This ended up being the beginning of one of the hardest times in my life, the attacks only got worse and more frequent. It went from happening during high stress moments, to me becoming claustrophobic when in spaces I couldn’t escape from.

This made car rides attack inducing and worse of all, it made me being in classrooms attack inducing. This went on for awhile, till eventually I would have a couple more awkward interactions to get things resolved.

One day during the first period of school, I was once again dealing with attacks. This was very disturbing to me, as I was in my really chill computer class that was made up of chill people and a handful of friends, even the teacher was chill.

I tried to fight through the attack, but I ended up giving in, I told my teacher I wasn’t feeling good and that I was going home. For whatever reason, I wanted to do things properly, so I went to sign out at the office.

This lead to me having to call my mom to no avail, since I couldn’t contact a guardian to sign off on my release, I couldn’t leave. In hindsight, I should have just left, since it was high-school, and I would have just got a call home saying I was absent from the rest of the days classes.

I ended up staying in the office for a few hours, as I was too stressed to go back to class and was eventually told that I would be seeing the school counsellor when she was available. It was pretty awkward for me waiting in the office, so when lunch time came around and I knew my next class was gym (which I really enjoyed), I decided I would try to go on with my day.

Lunch and gym went well despite being still pretty worked up about how the day has gone, my last class was Philosophy, which I ended up being pulled out from by the counsellor. This interaction was really needed, it was the first time I had ever opened up to anybody about my anxiety.

She did a great job in comforting me, as she said she used to deal with panic attacks when she was younger. She gave me some strategies and with that, the beginning of my recovery began.

She wanted me to go to my family doctor to hopefully be referred to someone with specific qualifications. Unfortunately, my doctor made my mom feel as though what I was dealing with was normal and nothing ended up coming from it.

I think this is a good spot to end the story, like I said, I wanted to keep it brief, as I easily could have gone on long tangents about my experience with my doctor and some other stuff. Let’s delve into my ideal attack plan against Panic and anxiety attacks.

My Simple Steps to Beating Anxiety and Panic Attacks

1) Navigate The Waves: My school counsellor was the one who taught me this concept, this step alone was enough for me to fully conquer my anxiety attacks. These attacks come like waves, the best thing you can do is not fear it, but ride it.

The wave will eventually end, even if it feels like it won’t, or you think you’re going to die, you won’t. This thought alone made me no longer fear attacks, because I knew I could get through it.

There are many strategies to calm down, breathing techniques, focusing on something else, or even taking a break from the situation making you anxious. Again, as long as it’s healthy and works, who cares what others think about you, do what you got to do.

2) Build a Support Network: Navigating anything alone can be scary, but please trust me, the feeling of having someone, anyone, on your side makes a worlds of a difference. There are free resources, in-person or online, you just have to look.

Speak to friends, family, teachers, whoever it maybe or best of yet, counsellors or any other professionals. As I’ve established in my previous works, there are always going to be a million small hacks that people recommend.

I’m more interested in attacking the root problem, as in my experience, this is the most effective “root”. Don’t be afraid to try different things, as long as it’s safe, as different things work differently for different people.

Conclusion:

Whether it’s Panic Attacks or anxiety attacks, they are sheep in wolves costumes. They are very much overcomable and I know for a fact, that you can conquer them. I hope this can be a helpful resource to someone, even if it’s just one person.

If you want to support me blog, sharing and leaving comments about your personal experience would mean the world to me. Thank you and take care 🙂