Yesterday I had a panic attack. It lasted about 9 hours, off and on. That's a pretty significant stretch for me. My longest last about a day and half. At the short end, it's usually under an hour.
I don't feel super comfortable talking about this, but I know I'm not alone in the experience. As Ram Dass said, "We're all just walking each other home", so maybe by sharing I can help others feel comfortable opening up. This profoundly healing work is best done within a safe, loving, and compassionate community.
That said, I don't typically reach out for support during the actual experience. It's difficult to verbally communicate through the crying and unclear thinking. Instead, I tend to reach out anonymously toward my favorite teachers (online and print) and into my own heart. Afterward, I can process it with real people if I need to.
My experience always starts with a trigger. This trigger could simply be my mind ruminating on the past, something someone said/did, or surprising noises/movements. I don't typically know I'm panicking at first, then before long I'm uncontrollably crying with a deep sense of emotional pain. Physically, my heart rate increases, temperature rises and I feel tightness in my stomach, heart and throat.
This has been happening since I was a child, but has been most impactful when triggered at work. Suddenly I'm crying and cannot stop. I go into the bathroom to wait it out, but the harder I try to stop it, the more power the pain seems to have. It's embarrassing and has made me feel like such a weirdo, and not in the cool way!
Yesterday it started in the morning. I won't go into the triggers, but know I was alone and safe in my apartment. The feeling at first is that normal thinking starts to spiral in. Tighter and more rapid thoughts fill my awareness and I start to feel out of control. As perceived self-control leaves, panic steps in (the heart racing and all that) and I always start crying. Within seconds my face is hot and red, tears are blurring my vision and sinuses are full.
By now I have some coping skills. I no longer try to stop it. As I said, that tends to make it worse and it never works anyway. Instead, I acknowledge that I'm having a breakdown. I take the day off and allow my body to move through it as I gently guide my mind and spirit toward healing activities. This time I listened to a
talk on healing trauma, watched some
videos on gratitude, attended an
online meditation group, read some relevant articles and spent a lot of time meditating on my specific circumstance. By about 6 pm I felt better, kind of numb and exhausted, but calm and peaceful.
I've been working to heal my mental health issues for a long time and am starting to see it all from a wider vantage point. It's like a treasure map, worn and illegible in places, but filled with delightful possibilities of unknown treasures to be found.
Thank you for walking me home.
