I’ve have employment problems for the last couple years, and for much of that time I’d wake up every morning with a panic attack. I still wake up feeling tremendous anxiety, but I’m not sure it can be called an attack any more.
No medications I’ve tried helped.
Isn’t that called the Primal Scream? Meaning the one right before you die? I wish I had a cite…I remember reading this somewhere.
I appreciate all the anecdotes…And my SIL has read them as well. Right now she is enjoying a cup of tea on the back porch with my wife. I think the relaxing has made her much more capable of dealing with the problems. At least she appears much more relaxed…
I have PTSD, and have had many panic attacks. Thankfully, not so many anymore. They really suck.
The first one I had was out of the blue, walking around in Vancouver, and I was convinced that I was in mortal danger. Thought I was going to die/be murdered at any moment. My husband thought I was crazy, I wasn’t sure he was wrong.
The medication that really helps me, besides my antidepressant, is clonazepam. But that’s for when I’m really stressed out and I know that I’m likely to be having panic attacks. After a while, if you’re really paying attention to how your body feels and what kinds of situations the panic attacks happen in, you can predict when they’re more likely to happen.
The only thing to do while you’re having one, that I know of, is to get somewhere as quiet a possible, sit down, breathe deeply and slowly (this helps with the adrenaline response) and remind yourself that it will be over soon. It’s a message from your body telling you that you’re really unhappy or stressed out over something, and if you breathe it will stop. And then it does.
I wish your sister in law the best, and if she’d like to talk, my email is in my profile.
I had a few the winter before last. I’m hoping that avoiding the trigger (which is driving in the snow) is enough to keep them away- I didn’t have any last winter, and I didn’t go out in any storms…unfortunately, temperatures aside, this past winter was one of the mildest I can remember. We got about 1/4th the snow than we did the year before. I think it’d be too much to hope that it was going to continue to be as un-snowy. 
But, surely, I’m still alive? :eek:
Ahh. I understand now. This explains the nose hair, marriage, house on the dry lake bed, surrounded by sheep and smelly turkeys, various other disreputable animals…
I’VE DIED AND GONE TO HELL!!!
I’ve had a couple. One was when I was on a trip in Belgium and had been sleepless on a train and it hit and I was sure I was having a heart attack or had a previously unknown disease or had been dosed or something–I had no explanation otherwise for the sudden sweats and heart thumping anxiety, etc, so I started making things up in my head. Very unpleasant.
And Blackclaw! Me me! (raises hand)-- I have had that exact reaction-- a bad flu, emergency room for fluids, a shot for the nausea (“here this will make you a little drowsy. . .”) and off the walls freaking bonkers. I think it was called Droperidol. I called the ER from home babbling and they were like “Oh. . . I’ve heard of this. . .could you come back?”
My ex-girlfriend had panic attacks fairly regularly. The worst thing was they were usually in the middle of the night, and she would have a ton of trouble getting back to sleep after they were over. She would start breathing heavily or crying, and often would start kicking her legs fairly violently. She said when it happened she would freeze up so she couldn’t speak or move, and just had to ride it out until it was over.
Ah, yes. I know that one well. Looking back now with experience, I can see that the Depression and Anxiety attacks that I and my daughter have to deal with also effected my mother and my grandmother. But it was their refusal to admit it that made me try and deny it in myself and my daughter for so long.
Lexapro has literally saved my life and given my daughter’s back to her.
It’s a TON of fun to get them at work. I have a hard time prioritizing and saying to myself “i’ll work down the line, and it’s ok.” So if I get a lot of customers all at the same time, I feel competely pressured to wait on all of them at once, and since that’s impossible, I start to feel hemmed in, and I freak out… panicking about how I’m going to help all of these people, and sure they’re all really really pissed at me for taking so long with the other people, and my hands start to shake and I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing, which makes me work even less efficiently, and I’m conscious of this fact which makes me even MORE nervous, and then I’m terrified that all the people will see that I’m freaking out and then they’ll hate me even more than they already do for being so slow, and that makes me MORE nervous, and my head gets dizzy and I break out in sweats and I have trouble breathing. Once I had twelve customers walk in at once all needing to use the same copy machine, and none of my coworkers came over to help me; when they were finally gone I had to sit on the floor in the bathroom with the lights off for ten minutes just to turn back into a human being.
I am obviously in the wrong line of work.
I had one regular customer at my last job who’d once caught me at the tail end of one of the Horror Sessions, and when I came out of my cooldown she asked if I was alright, and said she understood panicking with that many people around… she was very cool about it, and understanding; said she knew other people who had the same problem. I was always glad when she came in. In fact, when I was having a Bad Moment, seeing her come in and knowing that SHE, at least, wouldn’t be upset at having to wait while I worked through the crowd helped me calm down.
Thankfully, the place was rarely so busy AND so understaffed that I’d get more than five people at a time. Five people is about my limit.
If I could make myself understand that people don’t mind waiting in a line I think I would have less panicky trouble, because that’s what starts it off - the idea that everyone will be mad at me for not helping them fast enough because of the line. Of course, then I come home and go online and see people bitching about wait times in other places and that blows THAT comfort theory all to hell.
Oh yeah. If I’m at a stop sign (not a light, a sign), and I’m taking a left, and the person behind me is taking a right, and the road is too narrow for them to squeeze past me so I am holding them up while I wait for my left, I get really freaked out being certain that the person in the other car is really pissed at me for making them wait. Same idea.
I’ve had a few, starting in high school. Mild claustrophobia, job stress and relationship stress are usually my triggers.
My Ardred is great at getting me calmed down.
My doc prescribed Xanax, and I bought the pills. Whenever I feel an attack impending, I think “You’re going to have to take a pill”. It calms me right down, because I’ve convinced myself that having to medicate my body because I can’t control it isn’t acceptable and that MAKES me calm down.
I know it doesn’t work for everyone (and I’m in no way trying to insult people who do use medication) but it works for me, so I’m sticking to it.
Well, the one I had today when my 6 year old lost my 87 year old grandmother’s apartment keys while we had a bags full of melting groceries and it was about 1000 degrees outside and humid, was not pretty to look at. I think the only thing that kept me from losing control was the fact that I had my grandmother and son to think about. Needless to say I’ve recovered and we found the keys and Charlie will not be going to get the mail any more. As bad as this one was, I didn’t faint nor did I throw up, which is fairly typical for a full blown panic attack.
Some of my attacks are triggered by situations. Others come on suddenly, while I seem to be relaxing and happy and BAM: Panic Attack, cold sweat, rapid heart beat, shortness of breath, feeling faint and nausea. Sometimes I can’t see directly in front of me (as in I only have peripheral vision).
I hate them, they’re so horrible. They’re scary to me, scary to my little boy, my husband and those around me. The only good, or at least positive thing is that my dad has been very open to me about his panic attacks since being diagnosed about 15 yrs ago. He is such a source of strength and support to me.
The difficult thing about this is that lots of times my husband doesn’t recognize that I’m having an anxiety/panic attack and just thinks I’m being bitch, impatient or overreacting to a situation. Sometimes he does very well, today he wan’t much help.
Just now, if that’s all right, I am only here posting in order to “subscribe to thread”, so I do not lose track of it, and now I am off to read through it carefully!
I have seen quite a few since I work in the ER of our hospital, and we take them very seriously because these attacks, if severe enough, can affect the electrolytes of the body, and can put a hell of a strain on the heart and lungs, in the form of tachycardia and shortness of breath.
I recently met a wonderful person who has an anxiety disorder, and I care about her very much. If you know someone who is prone to attacks of this type, please be supportive and be there for them. You may never have (or have had) this happen to you, but for them it is very very real and very frightening, trust me.
Thanks
Q