I have two selves: Me before panic attacks, and me after. Anyone who has been through this knows what I’m talking about. You’re going along fine in your life (well, mostly, except for your daily worrying, which you have pretty much under control) and then boom, you’re spinning through space, and you can’t find the ground. Up to this point in your life, you’re not sure what the ground is (or was), all you know is it used to be there, and now it’s gone.
There is nothing scarier in this world.
For me, it was also baffling. I had always, since I was a child, struggled with general anxiety, but I had always felt like I had the wherewithal to keep myself somewhat grounded. It made absolutely no sense to me that, at twenty-two years old, I could be in a car on my way to Reno with my husband, and begin to feel myself spinning unexplainably out of control.
I know now that this was a panic attack, and that panic attacks don’t always have a logical cause. In my case, as I spent the next few years self-reflecting, reading, learning, and getting help, I came to understand that my first panic attack likely sprang from my parents announcing, a few months prior, that they were divorcing, ending a marriage which I had thought was the most genuine, perfect relationship in existence. But at the time that I was spinning, all I knew, was that I was terrified.
Unfortunately, when a person experiences something so debilitating and frightening, the natural reaction is for fear to take over; the mind, out of protection, races to prevent the fear spiral from happening again, which is, of course, the very trigger that causes it to repeat.
My survival story is long and, at times, frightening. But it is also a story of discovery, of hope. Of constructing, one block at a time, an unshakable foundation, which I never would have built, had I not experienced the trauma of losing, what I had thought to be, the ground beneath my feet.
The steps, and the survival skills I learned, are shared in these blog posts. If you are drowning, I hope you will find at least one post that serves as your first hold on a lifeline back to sanity.