Anxiety Attack. A personal view

in #life8 years ago (edited)

I have often read that anxiety affects only very intelligent people. I have to admit that the first time I read that I felt kind of cool or relieved.

Statistically, some of the people reading this post are suffering it currently. So, what I want to achieve with this post is just a feeling togetherness and calmness addressed to them. At the same time I want people to understand how it is and how the people feel when they are having the episodes. Not just the precisely moment when the attack hits, I want to describe also the social aspect of it and how it affects your life and your confident somehow. And of course, through my experience I want to help people to get over them the same way I did eight years ago when I dealt with it.


You are not alone


We actually could be talking about the epidemic of this century. 30% of the people have suffered or are suffering it. That means that some of your close friends have been there where you are right now.


Physical symptoms

I remember as a formal hypochondriac (lol) reading a lot in Internet about it the first time I felt something weird was going on.
My personal experience was related to my heartbeat. I was obsessed with my heartbeat. Every day when I went to bed I started listening to it and I started analyzing. That led of course to an increase of it due to nervousness. Of course when I felt the increase I got scared while feeling that it was going up and that has the consequence of a bigger increase on the heartbeat. I remember reaching 170 bpm before having difficulties to breath. You feel dizzy and your vision becomes a little bit fuzzy.

That doesn´t last more than 10-20 seconds. Then your heartbeat decreases and you feel better.


Mental symptoms

I remember I read a lot about this because the first thing you think when you get the attacks is that you are literally going crazy. There are many documentation and research on it but I would say that all of them can summarize in a single one:

Fear of death


Social symptoms


Isolation would be the first word that comes to my mind. You don´t want to meet people. You don’t like to be with a lot of people or in places where there is a lot of people. That is completely normal. The fear of having an attack when there is a lot of people around is huge, that’s why avoid social interaction becomes a daily routine.


First step


Talk about it with someone really close to you, family or a close friend. It took me a while to talk about it but the minute I did I instantly felt better. I had the “luck” that the first person I share it with also had similar episodes in her past so I could totally relate and I had again a feeling of normality.


Second step


This is what worked for me:
Convince yourself you are not going to die anytime soon. You will never have a heart attack caused by your nervousness or caused by your own demons. It is just impossible.
If you feel your heartbeat increases it is completely fine, after one minute it will regulate by itself again.
Focus on that thought: Your body knows what is best for you and it will calm down in some seconds. Take a deep breath twice and countdown in your head from ten to cero.


Third step

Get out of your room and run.

No matter if it is ten minutes per day or one hour, no matter if you run quick or you almost walk. Just get out and get some fresh air or fresh rain in your face. Doing any physical activity will reset your mind every day.

Sort:  

Cool!! Im glad you liked it!

Thanks @gargon.

I experienced something similar to this just yesterday. As my heart raced, I wondered if I was having a heart attack like your article mentioned.

It wasn’t until later I finally calmed down.

Here is what I do sometimes when this happens.

Thanks for being open to share about these struggles and I am looking forward to more from you in the future!

Im really glad that this make you feel calmer or ok. The aim of the post was exactly that. I wanned people to relate to this. It is better to talk about it openly, it give you a feeling of normality to calm down when you feel another attack is coming. Everyone need´s to find the own method to calm down. Anyway, I garantee you that you can get over it, it takes some times but it will disapear with some time, you need to change habits as well

Thank you for sharing this. There's some good advice there. Breath. That's the big one for me when I have an attack. Breathing slowly and mindfully helps, and is easy to say, or think about when you're NOT in the middle of it... And yes, you're not alone.

While not as bad as I thought it would be due to the title, this post is still terrible and seems as if it is written not by someone suffering from anxiety, but from someone who spent 10 minutes googling it. Or perhaps simply knows someone with it, but isn't close to them.

You can have a heart attack from a bad enough panic attack, especially if you have other issues such as high blood pressure.

Exercise will not "reset your mind."

You can not just "get over it."

This post seems rather... Flippant coming from someone who supposedly suffered or suffers from anxiety disorder.

U can get over it, as I did after having panics attacks for over a year.
Exercise will deff reset ur mind, if you dont know that is because you simply dont exersice
If you are a young person, it´s impossible to have a heart attack by a panic attack. If you are an old person and you have a medical condition of course you can die having a panic attack.

which would be a good title for it? Im open for suggestions as I´d like to get better and better in writing!

My guess is that there are more than one kind of anxiety. The kind I had could not be controlled with breating or exercise. Nothing short of an anti-depressant would help me.

I agree, i only described my experience but every mind is different for sure

I can remember vividly the first time I had one, and the feeling of what the f*** is happening to me. As a person that had suffered them for years, I agree that you definetly can get to "control" them at certain points, and exercise sure helps A LOT in that mather!

thanks for the post! i used to have anxiety attacks and breathing is the only thing that can sorta help you calm down...

Yes, I use to have them as well, and for me was more thinking about the time. Thinking that in couple of seconds I was gonna be ok, that calmed me down. I just went to ur blog..what an intruduction post!! Followed and upvoted your cutie dog :)

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