What is a Panic Attack? (Explain in your own words)

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I haven't had a full panic attack in a long time, so I'll pull this from memory as best as I can...

Panic attacks for me always began with some sort of misconstrued sensory input. For examples, being able to sense/feel my pulse/heartbeat, certain smells like strong perfumes mixed with other ones in department stores, flourescent lights flickering, pains in my body that I know years later assume are normal, antihistamines or stimulant medications (ie Benedryl)... pretty much anything that made me 'feel' weird. After many attacks, the fear of having another one became a huge motivator to lead me into the next.

So there was always some sort of trigger, whether I realised it at the time or not, which at that time, I usually didn't. So first I'd get the sensation that I felt weird, or that something just wasn't right... being unsure of what exactly that was, the anxiety would build, my heart would begin to race and it would feel difficult to breathe. Once my heart and lungs felt like they weren't working properly, there were no holds barred. Even though I had gone through it many, many times, it ALWAYS felt like it'd be the last since every panic attack felt like imminent death to me. Apparently it makes a lot of people feel like they're loosing their minds, where I was just convinced that somehow I wasn't going to survive to see the next hour. (I'm also a type 1 diabetic, and smoke far more than I should, so it was easy to believe that maybe I'd smoked myself into a heart attack.) Once things got to panic state there was no consoling me. Not from anyone I knew anyway, and quite a few times when I'd end up going to the hospital and the Dr.'s would say "We feel it's 'just' anxiety." I'd still have a very hard time believing it.... thinking 'what if' they missed something, or what if they're just assuming since heart attacks in females in their 20's are next to unheard of, that they might have overlooked a rare possibility. Most times, after speaking with a Dr. and being checked over, I'd manage to get home and finally be able to fall asleep. Other times I'd beg Keith to watch me fall asleep, so he could watch to see if my breathing stopped. These were very hard times for the both of us, especially with a newborn son. One of the last times this happened the Dr. on duty gave me a shot of demerol. I went to the hospital fearing death, and I left with no care in the world, so it was at this point, that I definitely 'knew' I was suffering from some type of anxiety/panic disorder. I figured since the Demerol made it stop, it certainly could not be a heart attack. This was a very good realization. Since then, I've been able to see panic as panic, and I do my best to ride out weird feelings when I get them.

Last week we went to get out taxes done. One of the lights in the office was flickering and making me feel very uncomfortable, but I was at least able to determine that it was the light making me feel that way, and I was even able to smile contentedly to myself throughout the half hour I had to tolerate it.

So, that's my experience, now I'm going to read everyone else's.

I haven't had a proper panic attack in years (since I went through the phase of having one every morning before school), unless I could the last one while shopping for a laptop with my Dad.

We were in the shop and the anxiety of deciding what I was going to buy, combined with the busy shop and lighting started it off. I space out/disassociate first, become shaky and eventually teary. If it's allowed to continue and I have no means of escape, I'll start hyperventilating and bawl my eyes out. Fortunately I've never made it past the teary phase in public.

For me its is a rush of adrenaline, the inability to sleep, a faster heartbeat and a lump in my throat that makes it hard to breath.

While I have dealt with anxiety for most of my life it wasn't until this past December that I had my first, and thus far only, panic attack.

My experience was shortness of breath (it felt like my airway was closing off) combined with severe chest pain (as 7/10). Becasue I am also in recovery for an eating disorder my first thought was that I was having a heart attack. It wasn't until the pain dissipated 40 minutes after arriving in the ER that I figured out that it had been a panic attack.