Panic Attacks!

 For the longest time I didn't understand how people can have panic attacks, until I started having them myself. They are brutal and scary! 

I had my first panic attack in early 2018 and have been having them more and more ever since. It started with just one and I didn't even know what it was. I felt shaky, I was sweating, I felt nauseous and it felt like I was going to die. I had it while I was alone at home and I was terrified that my kids would come home from school to find their mom dead in bed. 

Of course I didn't actually die, I just felt like I was going to. 

Then nearly a year later I had another one. Then another and another. Throughout 2019 they seemed to be picking up and throughout 2020 I was having them on a near weekly basis and now, now they feel like they are a daily occurrence and just about anything can trigger one.  

I rub my eye and it feels just a bit more squishy than normal, panic attack.
I swallow a bit of food or drink and it feels off, panic attack.
My floating rib feels like it moves, panic attack. 

Right now as I am writing this, I took a deep breath and felt a sharp pain in my side and you guessed it, full blown panic attack. 

Almost all of my panic attacks are health or body related. Some are easy to stop, I go look in a mirror to show myself that there is not anything actually wrong with me and it ends. Some on the other hand seem impossible to stop and I have to ride them out. I can look in the mirror, tell myself there is nothing wrong, have my husband check to make sure nothing is wrong and I still feel like I'm about to die. I feel light headed, my heart starts to race, I sweat, I feel nauseous, sometimes I puke, I cry, I get shaky and sometimes I faint, not from the panic attack itself, but from hyperventilating. I repeat over and over to myself that nothing is wrong, I am fine, I am healthy, nothing is wrong.  

My panic attacks have gotten so bad that my husband rolls his eyes and tells me to "stop doing that" which doesn't sound all that helpful but he is actually trying to see just how bad it is, if I can laugh or talk through it then it isn't a bad one, if I'm shaking and crying then he sits with me and rubs my back or holds my hand while he tells me that everything will be fine and assures me that if things are bad enough he will make sure I get to the hospital and I will not die. 

My kids are sympathetic. My daughter has been extremely helpful in finishing up dinner or getting other basic chores done around the house when I am having issues. I have not sat with her during one of my bad ones because she suffers from her own panic attacks and seeing me at my worst can trigger one in her. My son helps around the house too and asks "you good fam?" then he attempts to make me laugh and lighten the mood to help. He has sat with me while I had a full blown panic attack a few times now and he has seen first hand just how bad they can be. He tries to joke with me and talk me through the worst of it but he is ready to get his dad if things get too out of hand. 

Even the family dog has picked up on things, I don't even need to call her if I'm having an attack, she instinctively knows and comes to lay her head on my lap so I can stroke her fun and hug her until I feel calm again, and then she stays by my side for quite a while afterwards, and she does the same for my daughter. She isn't a trained support animal but she has been an amazing help for both me and my daughter. 

What I don't understand is why, in my early 30's, am I just now developing a panic disorder. Is it just a lifetimes of stress built up that is finally coming out in an odd way or is it something else? Stress has always been a factor in my life, and until now I thought I had a good handle on it. Or maybe it is the lifestyle I live. I drink more coffee than any human should, I only eat once a day and the portions are smaller and smaller, I sleep at the strangest hours with zero time consistency and I smoke a lot, over a pack a day. 

I have completely avoided going to the doctor, partly because of the pandemic, I don't want to be taking up a spot that someone in more need than I could use, and because when I talk about what is triggering my attacks out loud even I think that I am crazy, the last thing I want is for my doctor to tell me that I'm losing it. 

I know that if I go talk to my doctor I could actually get a diagnosis and it would put the question of why is this happening to rest and I could even end up with meds or a treatment plan. Hell, going to talk to the doc and getting diagnosed and treated could even end the attacks altogether, but truth be told, I am terrified. I am afraid that I really am going crazy and that these attacks, along with my brain zaps, are all just in my head and some fucked up form of schizophrenia. 

I'm not going to have a choice much longer, with the panic attacks becoming more frequent and worse, they are starting to seriously interfere with my life, and my ability to work. I'll be set up, ready to work, then something stupid will trigger an attack and next thing you know I am a ball of mess, laid up on the couch, praying to the Gods to stop the insanity and I can't work, or even cook for my family. The brain zaps I can work around, I can feel them coming and I know how long after one it takes before I can get up and do things again, but the panic attacks come out of nowhere and sometimes they only last a minute and I can get right back to doing whatever I was doing, and sometimes the sick feeling I get with them lasts for hours, or one triggers another and then another until I eventually have spent the entire day a shaking mess on the couch. 

I can't be the only one sick and tired of my panic attacks, my family has got to be getting fed up with them too. It would be different if I had them my whole life, but my husband and kids know that this is new, it's not the me they are used to. My family is used to the me that thrives in chaos and has an answer for everything. The me that can't be stopped. The me that sits with everyone else while they go through their own crap, offering advice or a shoulder to cry one. Not the me now, the one that needs a shoulder to cry one or that cancels outings or spends hours at a time curled up in a ball because my body did something normal but my mind can't handle it.