Last weekend marked the 5th year anniversary of
my first ever panic attack. I can’t
speak for anyone else, but I know that I was never able to forget the date of
my first attack because it felt like life was never the same again after it. It was interesting to reflect on how much my
life has changed in those 5 years and on how anxiety is still a part of my life
but not in the same way it was back then.
After that first ever panic attack which happened on a
central London bus on a scorching hot June afternoon, I went to bed dazed and
confused and wondering what the hell had just happened to me. It was the first of many attacks that would
plague me with scary symptoms over the coming weeks, but at the time I didn’t really
know what it was all about.
I was convinced that I was ill in some way, and I went
through about a million possible diagnoses from pregnancy, dehydration, stomach
bug and migraine. At the time of the
first panic attack I experienced I was massively overwhelmed with life, and
although I wouldn’t admit it to myself: I was stressed out! The relationship I had
been in for 10 years had been going through bad patches for the last year and a
half, but I was desperately trying to save it, and meanwhile my job had been
cut from permanent to contract in the recession, and I was attempting to prove myself
worthy of a full time job again.
It felt like I was on a hamster wheel going round and round
trying to keep everybody happy, and just hoping that I could fix everything
that was going so badly wrong. I look
back on all of it now and I think it is no wonder that I started to get panic
attacks on a regular basis. I was
looking after everybody but myself back then.
Although I consider my very anxious and panicky days behind
me, I still get the odd major panic attack and those old agoraphobic thoughts
tend to speak to me at those times as well.
I would say the thing that has changed in those 5 years since my first
attack is how I deal with the fear of panic.
During the first year that I experienced panic attacks I couldn’t
handle the thought of being out in public and away from safety if I had an
attack, and at the first sign of one coming on I would literally leg it from
wherever I was to go and hide away somewhere.
That was how I became agoraphobic in the end.
Gradually over time I have learnt to sit with the fear and
that the fear of the attacks is worse than the attacks themselves. Sometimes when I feel myself getting scared
that I am on the verge of a panic attack I just say to myself “go on panic,
panic all you want” and that kind of takes the fear out of it for me because I
am not trying to fight it off.
The main reason that I no longer frequently suffer from
panic attacks and agoraphobia is that I have learnt how to treat myself
better. I have let go of the toxic work
and personal relationships that were holding me hostage, and I don’t try to
please and keep people happy anymore. As
a result of that I don’t feel overwhelmed or over pressured by life.
If there is one thing I would have done differently in my
anxiety journey, it would have been to have listened to my body at the time of
that first panic attack. I might have
saved myself from a full on nervous breakdown if I had done. I am pleased with how I have dealt with it
all over the last 5 years though and I am proud to say that I now use my fight
response more than my flight!
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