So, fun times, here, deep into middle age, I have had my first few panic attacks. Yay.
I was trying to explain to a friend how it is, that it’s a physical experience screaming that there is danger to be avoided. “It’s like pain,” I said, “but it’s not pain. But pain is a physical experience that’s impossible to ignore, even if you know nothing bad is happening to you, like that box in Dune…you know nothing is really harming you but your task is to ride out the overwhelming sensation that something IS harming you…” pauses, remembers that bit in the Bene Gesserit litany against fear “fear is the mind-killer…” “I think Frank Herbert must have had panic attacks!”
Then I remember and suddenly feel much more empathy towards poor Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Predjudice with her palpitations and agitations and nerves. I suspect Jane Austen did NOT ever have a panic attack but had seen them from the outside, thus the portrayal of someone weak, fluttery and causing an uproar over nothing.
Do you have other examples?
