My first panic attack
by freedomfighter 29 Replies latest jw experiences
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seenitall
Zoloft has been a wonder for me. Thought I was having heart attacks, sweats, tingling and thoughts of running off the road driving. It is a joy to be calm and not stressed out now. Side affects are excessive sweating and some trouble sleeping, some ringing in the ears, but the racing mental obsessions are long gone. Breathing is the key, but when you have an attack it is the last thing you can focus on. Tried Lexapro but it makes you sluggish and put on weight. It was expensive, no generics.
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cult classic
"Sitting in a room, crowded with people, listening to someone droning over the microphone was pure hell! I tell you hell!"
ROFLMAO ms ducky
I've always had panic attacks. Since I was a little girl. The fear instilled in me from birth was a huge part of my problem. Only as an adult did I learn I was suffering from panic issues. It is a bitch. No doubt about it.
misery - I have a friend who told me that she feels the same way on her medication.
peacedog/undercover - yep, back in the day in a psych class I learned about night terrors and told a few family members and friends that I thought that whole "something was holding me down and I couldn't breath" experience was not demons but terrors. They didn't believe me.
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MsDucky
Re: Night Terrors (proper terminology) Well, I think this is what you're talking about.
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html
What is sleep paralysis?
Sleep paralysis consists of a period of inability to perform voluntary movements either at sleep onset (called hypnogogic or predormital form) or upon awakening (called hypnopompic or postdormtal form).
Sleep paralysis may also be referred to as isolated sleep paralysis, familial sleep paralysis, hynogogic or hypnopompic paralysis, predormital or postdormital paralysis
What are the symptoms?
- A complaint of inability to move the trunk or limbs at sleep onset or upon awakening
- Presence of brief episodes of partial or complete skeletal muscle paralysis
- Episodes can be associated with hypnagogic hallucinations or dream-like mentation (act or use of the brain)
(this is just a snippet)
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chrisjoel
I had a mild panic attack the other day when i went out for an hour to walk. The forecast said cloudy and rain. IT Was scorching heat that felt like 37 celcius with the humidity. So i had my water bottle and all of a sudden the humidity and heat was so much i started breathing heavily. My heart started racing like crazy. I was Boiling! Overheating. I sat down in the shade and breathed until my heart rate dropped. I made my way to someones home and asked the owner if they could refill my water bottle and add some salt n sugar for electroyltes..they were kind and obliged....i walked home very slowly. This doesnt happen often but when it does it feels like ur going to die.
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exwhyzee
One visiting elder had a public talk on "Dealing with Anxiety and Depression". After 5 min's it became obvious to me that he had no idea what he was talking about. It made me so angry - i looked at my wife and looked at him - then walked out.
I know exactly what you mean about the lame recommendations they offer from the societies literature to help this condition. It's so obvious that they haven't a clue. One Elder told me to read and reread the book of Job...that would make me feel better.
In the end the only thing that could get me through the meetings was having a small container of beer in the car that I could go out and take a swig of. I'm no drinker by any means so a very small amount of alcohol was all it took to qwell the panic and the stomach flip flops. I took sedatives that the doctor gave me but I found that when the drug started wearing off, the sympoms of that were the same or worse than the original panic attacks and soon I wanted to take the sedative just to get rid of those symptoms. I could see the danger of getting addicted. Once I stopped going to meetings 2 years ago, the panic and anxiety stopped completely. It is no longer a problem. I think the body is sending you a message when you have these attacks, that something needs to be addressed in your life. Taking drugs that mask the symptoms may be prolonging the problem. Just my conclusion after spending 5+ years batteling this hellish condition. Now I realize that I'd had a lifetime of fear and dread drummed into my head and my body and mind had had enough.
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MsDucky
Exwhyzee, a lot of people self-medicate PD with alcohol. ???
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exwhyzee
Exwhyzee, a lot of people self-medicate PD with alcohol. ???
Yes...the suffering is so great that one can easily see why this is the case. I sought the help of many doctors and tried many medications and treatments. One doctor told me that most people who have been suffering to the degree that I had, would have been either a drug addict or alcoholic and have been in and out of jobs and marriages etc. by this stage. The trouble was that many of the medications he offered, took hours or weeks to work, if they did at all. I often needed something that would work right now. For me, because I rarely drank alcohol, a small amount of Beer and Wine was all it took. I knew enough about the dangers of doing this and was very strict about how often I would go this route. Fortunately once I stopped going to the meetings, the whole thing cleared up, overnight. From what I have learned and experienced, panic and anxiety often occurs when the mind tries to match the thoughts and beliefs of the concsious mind to those of the subconcsious mind. The more they don't match and the more the individual stubbornly resists the minds attempt to right itself, the more the individual will experience physical symptoms such as panic or anxiety.
For me, I realized that I was on some level forcing myself to go along with something that no longer made sense to me. Because I had been raised with these beliefs and because of the concequences involved with discarding most of them (loss of friends/family,death at Armegeddon etc) I subbornly held on. Once I gave up the struggle, the panic and anxiety I suffered with for years...literally dissappeared without a trace. Something I had begun to think woudl never happen.
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clarity
HHmmmm...that's funny, never thought about this before ..... both of my sessions with panic attacks were .......
# 1 - when I first started studying with jw's.
# 2 - the first time I tried to leave.
Most gawd awful feelings, felt like I was falling into space, could not go into a mall -felt like I was lost, couldn't cross bridges', couldn't bear being/feeling trapped, couldn't bear watching TV especially bad news and felt like I was being smothered!!! Anyone having them has my utmost empathy .... after many gruesome mths, finally the only way they would stop was when I stopped trying to run from them. I confronted them and literally said outloud ... come on you bu**#+'s do your worst. And just like any bully they turned tail. Any little squeegee feeling in the pit of my stomach - you know the one - got the same treatment. Looking at when they began is a revelation!! clarity
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cskyjw.sun
miseryloveselder:
keep the medicine readily available perhaps this is your actual solution