So, You Have Anxiety. Tell Me About Your Panic Attacks ...

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As the title states. If you have Anxiety, tell us all what you experience during a panic attack.

I will detail mine later in the post. I think it's good to read other peoples experience during a panic attack. It is for me. I'm not having a panic attack right now, lol - although I did about an hour ago. If I detail mine now, it'd probably start another, so I'll save my experience.

Explain your worst :p

I don't think I get panic attacks. I am lucky. I do have anxiety though.

There is no explanation or description. It just is, but too much.

Heart rate goes way up, sweating, shortness of breath, tightness in my chest, nonstop pacing, can't control it. I dunno if that really does it justice.

My last panic attack was in the 11th grade when I was sixteen. They were situational, induced only by the prospect of taking oral French exams. I don't know why, but the thought of being graded while attempting to make myself understood in a foreign language was terrifying. I'm very lucky to have since left that situation, so I doubt I'll have any more. They primarily manifested themselves as hyperventilation, which saturated my blood with oxygen, causing my limbs to cramp and seize up, heart racing, shaking, feeling like I was going to throw up, fairly standard. I'm not eager to experience them again though.

I have borderline GAD, which doesn't quite qualify for diagnosis, but whose symptoms "should be monitored" according to my diagnostic report. Sadly I can't afford therapy, so I'll have to monitor them myself until I can.

Oh boy. I hope describing a panic attack doesn't bring one on (been feeling anxious today), but here goes....

What has mostly set mine off is something to do with health concerns. If I get a pain in my chest on stomach or head, I'll start worrying about whether I have something bad wrong with me, and then it begins: Heart begins to speed up and pounding harder, I start trembling and sweating, my legs get weak. my chest gets tight and my breathing gets faster. Also -- and this part is kind of weird -- I get this feeling in the middle of chest (behind my breastbone) of something moving or crawling around. It doesn't hurt, but it's scary. Some of the time, I start crying from fear that I'm about to die. Occasionally I'll have dizziness. Other times I feel really disconnected -- like I'm watching my life from behind a glass window. I'm there, but yet I'm not. I know when it's ending when I can take a deep breath because my chest isn't tight anymore. My attacks have lasted anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of days (that's not just one attack, but many in a row.)

I have had so many (been having them regularly since 2004) that I have developed a rating system for them. If I'm at zero, I'm perfectly calm -- a rare event indeed. A ten is when I have to go to the ER. Everything else is in-between. I have been to the ER many times because I couldn't tell for sure if I was just having an attack, or if something was truly wrong. I hyperventilated so bad once that I started retching and trying to vomit. At the ER, they injected me with a HUGE dose of Ativan, which knocked me out. I've been through two rounds of heart tests, with results that my heart was just fine. I've also had an upper GI series, which found that I had some digestive problems, but nothing dangerous.

Partly due to experience and party to medication, I haven't had a bad one (above 7 on my scale) in over a year. Most have been in the 3-4 range. I trying to get to the point where I don't need meds anymore.

Panic attack=flooded with anxiety and become disorientated. Suddenly a familiar street will be momentarily unrecognisable, I can't direct any focus outward and take in information. A sense of overwhelming disorientation that leaves me unable to properly concentrate and focus for the rest of the day. I lose things, I get lost, I feel flooded with old feelings of terror, body on overdrive alert, and feel exhausted and suicidal afterwards.

My panic attacks are weird.

I have three types of them:

First involves death. I imagine myself taking the subway, and all of a sudden I stumble and end up on the tracks. The subway is coming. I try to get out, but I get killed.
If it is not like this, it involves my mom or sister or grandma in a similar situation. It is not always the subway. It can be a car crash, and they are trapped in a burning vehicle.

Second involves being lost. This one involves me being stranded in another country, or another town, and being unable to return. Or someone in my family is stranded in another land and
cannot return.

Third, this one involves me doing something socially stupid, and peopel either laugh, shake their heads, or simply kick me out of whatever location I am in. It is based on reality. I have done
a lot of stupid s**t in social occassions.

I have never ended up in a hospítal because of any of these things, but they have made me pace, or start breathing real fast, or even shake my arms and legs.

first like something is wrong - "uh oh somethings not right here"
i start feeling lightheaded and kind of numb in my fingers and toes
then i start getting like stabbing pains of fear like jolts
and all that keeps getting worse and worse while my heart is beating faster and faster
felling dread and doom and like i'm suffocating - like i'm drowning

Dizziness, light-headed, hysteria, intense anxiousness, strong sensation of anxiety, hypermania is I guess the only term I would describe it as...


edited for brevity***
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The worst panic attack I had was a few years ago when I started a job and had to do the medicals (including blood check). Once I got into the blood taking room (after whole night with no sleep because of anxiety - thinking about blood taking make me highly afraid. My arm tickles - very uncomfortable feeling - just by thinking about it) I started to shake, my heart started to beat like crazy, my hands curled to to fists and I started to cry and yell "I don't want, I don't want!". It caused another doctor to come and say something I don't even remember but apparently she was thinking I am no more than 8 year old before she seen me (I was 23).
Fortunately after a while I was eventually able to make myself "a stone" (instead of shaking I made myself totally motionless - while still having the attack) and I got highly visiable veins so they could take the blood fast and easy. It wasn't even painful but I still hate the shots. It's like a mental torture for me.

My other panic attacks aren't that bad (at least I can control how I act, no yelling like a child). I just feel like there is a huge balloon inside my chest, by body is cold and my legs get weak. And my legs shake AFTER the normal panic attack is gone.

panic attacks are different to anxiety,as anxiety doesnt automaticaly mean someone has them regardless of severity.

the anxiety of mine is very severe and causes severe challenging behavior,was sectioned for SCB caused by anxiety for four months in a intelectual disability hospital last year.
am on a lot of medication for it however have never had a panic attack as far as understand of them.

I guess I don't have "panic attacks" too often.

My "anxiety attacks" are fairly simple....

Dry mouth/cotton mouth....can't speak unless I'm constantly sipping water.
Unable to function intellectually (e.g., do things with ease that I normally could do...have to mentally fight to do anything).
A part of me wants to just jump up and run out of the room.

My "panic attacks" seem to revolve around things I can't wrap my head around.

That some day (sooner than yesterday) I'm going to die. What comes next? What comes after that? How big is the solar system? How big is the Milky Way? How big is the universe? When will the universe end? What comes next?

Processing these things overwhelm me and they can throw me into these fits of outright panic.

Panic attacks:
feel like something is wrong
then chest tightens and all muscles tighten and very paniful
then stomach very upset
head feels like cotton wool
feel nauseous and faint
heart racing
I shake internally and externally
keep having same thoughts, either about the symptoms themselves or about the thing that caused the panic attack
I want someone with me for support, tho this rarely happens

I get panic attacks sometimes but mine can be hard to notice as I do not really show any physical signs: but during these panic attacks I can't read,write or even speak without lots of stuttering, luckily these are fairly rare occasions for me