NowhereWoman wrote:
Is it possible your going-crazy feeling is a panic attack? I've gotten them in the past, and at times felt as if I were "disconnected from myself". According to my then-doctor, that's actually a hallmark symptom (or one of them) of a panic attack. And yes, "going crazy" is definitely another. Do you have a Pdoc? Or just a PCP...could you ask about this?
Apparently that's not true, that's an anxiety attack, not a panic attack. I thought that the extreme anxiety coming on really intensely was a panic attack, but my psychiatrist says that a panic attack is physical symptoms more than mental ones, like how people think they're having heart attacks when they're having panic attacks, because they have chest pain and trouble breathing. I'm not totally sure how to differentiate, because of course anxiety raises heart rate and blood pressure and stuff anyways, so there are always some physical symptoms anyways. And for that matter, in someone with cardiac problems, a jump in heart rate and blood pressure could cause a heart attack. But she doesn't think that an actual panic attack should feel like it's an emotional thing.. it'd feel physical. But she's very into the whole integrated mental and physical stuff.
Of course, based on that, I told her I didn't have actual panic attacks.. But I've been taking an EMT class, and it involves a lot of role play practice.. which of course is the whole make-pretend thing that aspies are so bad at, so I tend to get really really nervous during that stuff, and apparently I looked so bad that my teacher thought I was actually sick. Panic is generally considered a load of crap in the EMS world, so when an experienced paramedic looks at someone having less-than-a-panic-attack and thinks there's a serious problem... it's probably actually more.
Heh.. hope that that helped in some way.. or at least made some slight amount of sense..