Panic attacks... help!
Yesterday I had another panic attack. Second one in 6 months.
I was just sitting in bed, exhausted after a red-eye flight and an interminable journey home. I wanted so badly just to lie down and sleep. I'd had a vaguely blocked nose most of the past week, and was coughing to clear my throat.
Then I just had this sudden conviction I couldn't clear my lungs enough. It was nothing, just a vague niggle at the back of my throat and the top of my lungs, but I tried coughing a bit harder and louder and then it happened again. I recognised it immediately. I had to get up, right away, and walk fast round the floor as the blood flooded to my face, I was getting hot, I could feel the dizziness and the horror and the fear and there was NOTHING I COULD DO TO STOP IT. I think I might have moaned for a second, I was waving my arms like I could make it go away.
The last time it happened it was just like that, out of the blue, no warning, as I was sitting opposite Dave on a train from the way back from the Isle of Wight, months ago. I coughed harder and harder, then I suddenly had the conviction I couldn't get enough air into my lungs and that I was going to die. I put my head in Dave's lap, hyperventilating and gasping and crying out for an inhaler, something, anything. The terror is beyond description. Then, a kind man sitting across from us gave me his inhaler. Eventually, slowly (though it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes) I felt myself calm, easy, easy. I came back to myself, but the heat and the dizziness and the sweats and the shaking didn't die down for a good while after that.
That's how I recognised the signs last night. I'd been so shaken, I'd looked up the symptoms and seen they had all the classic hallmarks of a panic attack.
So I jumped up and down a lot, pumping my arms, to convince myself that yes I could breathe, my lungs work just fine, there was nothing wrong with me, it was all in my mind. After a bit I went downstairs and poured myself a good stiff shot of gin, and downed it. Just the sensation of the liquid burning down my throat was reassuring, so I poured another, and took it back upstairs. Lay back down on the bed with my hand on my solar plexus, breathing deeply, feeling myself breathe, in out, in out. If you're breathing deeply and regularly you physically can't panic, I know that. Finished the shot. Tried to finish my book, but every time I lost concentration, I could feel the panic trying to creep up again. So I lay for a while longer with my hand over my middle, breathing, breathing.
Eventually I managed to fall asleep.
So.
Once was bad enough. Now it's happened again, what to do? I was mildly asthmatic as a little girl, that's why I KNOW it's not asthma. The inhaler served entirely as a placebo, I'm certain. WHY is this happening? Should I go to a doctor? What's happening to me? :(
I was just sitting in bed, exhausted after a red-eye flight and an interminable journey home. I wanted so badly just to lie down and sleep. I'd had a vaguely blocked nose most of the past week, and was coughing to clear my throat.
Then I just had this sudden conviction I couldn't clear my lungs enough. It was nothing, just a vague niggle at the back of my throat and the top of my lungs, but I tried coughing a bit harder and louder and then it happened again. I recognised it immediately. I had to get up, right away, and walk fast round the floor as the blood flooded to my face, I was getting hot, I could feel the dizziness and the horror and the fear and there was NOTHING I COULD DO TO STOP IT. I think I might have moaned for a second, I was waving my arms like I could make it go away.
The last time it happened it was just like that, out of the blue, no warning, as I was sitting opposite Dave on a train from the way back from the Isle of Wight, months ago. I coughed harder and harder, then I suddenly had the conviction I couldn't get enough air into my lungs and that I was going to die. I put my head in Dave's lap, hyperventilating and gasping and crying out for an inhaler, something, anything. The terror is beyond description. Then, a kind man sitting across from us gave me his inhaler. Eventually, slowly (though it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes) I felt myself calm, easy, easy. I came back to myself, but the heat and the dizziness and the sweats and the shaking didn't die down for a good while after that.
That's how I recognised the signs last night. I'd been so shaken, I'd looked up the symptoms and seen they had all the classic hallmarks of a panic attack.
So I jumped up and down a lot, pumping my arms, to convince myself that yes I could breathe, my lungs work just fine, there was nothing wrong with me, it was all in my mind. After a bit I went downstairs and poured myself a good stiff shot of gin, and downed it. Just the sensation of the liquid burning down my throat was reassuring, so I poured another, and took it back upstairs. Lay back down on the bed with my hand on my solar plexus, breathing deeply, feeling myself breathe, in out, in out. If you're breathing deeply and regularly you physically can't panic, I know that. Finished the shot. Tried to finish my book, but every time I lost concentration, I could feel the panic trying to creep up again. So I lay for a while longer with my hand over my middle, breathing, breathing.
Eventually I managed to fall asleep.
So.
Once was bad enough. Now it's happened again, what to do? I was mildly asthmatic as a little girl, that's why I KNOW it's not asthma. The inhaler served entirely as a placebo, I'm certain. WHY is this happening? Should I go to a doctor? What's happening to me? :(