I just want to know how a panic attack feels and whether or not I may have had them or was just being a drama queen
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I have OCD and generalized anxiety (professionally diagnosed) and just last week I had a friend over who also suffers from this and we talked about our experiences with panic attacks.
Her symptoms are mainly physical and almost always appear out of nowhere. She suddenly gets short of breath, her heart beats really fast, and she feels barely able to walk. She said that she actually knows it's just a panic attack, but then there are these thoughts that it might be a heart attack after all and she's going to die.
It's different for me, because I don‘t have these severe physical symptoms (just hot flashes and a very weird feeling of restlessness that‘s hard to describe), and my panic attacks are always an immediate reaction to something that has just happened:
If there is the possibility that I could have made a mistake, fear sets in like a punch to my stomach, and I can't stop thinking about terrible disasters resulting from this mistake. It’s like a song you can‘t get out of your head no matter what you do.
For me it feels like what I imagine a heart attack feels like. Usually I get them at night when I’m almost asleep and can’t quite my thoughts.
Out of the blue my heartbeat runs really high and I can’t breathe.
I have GAD. I used to have panic attacks but now I’m finally on a medication that works for me. This is what my panic attacks used to feel like: my heart would beat so fast and so hard. I couldn’t catch my breath. I could see but not interpret what I was seeing. I couldn’t be around many people because this would happen. I hated work meetings and family gatherings. I hated shopping. The best thing that ever happened to me was finding a psychiatrist who would talk to me and listen to me. She kept searching for the magic meds and found them. She died of cancer but before she passed she hand picked a new doctor for me and made sure the new one understood my journey. That doctor made all the difference in the world for me. She was the only reason I am still alive.
I'm late but hey better late than never! I've only gotten panic attacks a few times but anxiety attacks are unfortunately common for me. With a panic attack I usually overheat, my heart starts going incredibly fast and i can feel it beating, I can't really take in information, and I'll start crying really quickly. With an anxiety attack I usually just sit there, occasionally shivering or crying, completely lost in my own head. Panic attacks feel like running off a cliff and falling suddenly, anxiety attacks feel like a scarily fast downward spiral that you'll never be able to come up from.
yo, late as well, but fr, what do you do when this happens? I'm getting it several times a day (anxiety attack) I used to be a stoic person and my only emotion was laughing fr but now I'm freaking out almost every day and idk what to do. side note tho, my parents are awesome, but in the heat of the moment you just kinda loose yourself and I want all the tips I can get lol
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I'm late but hey better late than never! I've only gotten panic attacks a few times but anxiety attacks are unfortunately common for me. With a panic attack I usually overheat, my heart starts going incredibly fast and i can feel it beating, I can't really take in information, and I'll start crying really quickly. With an anxiety attack I usually just sit there, occasionally shivering or crying, completely lost in my own head. Panic attacks feel like running off a cliff and falling suddenly, anxiety attacks feel like a scarily fast downward spiral that you'll never be able to come up from.
yo, late as well, but fr, what do you do when this happens? I'm getting it several times a day (anxiety attack) I used to be a stoic person and my only emotion was laughing fr but now I'm freaking out almost every day and idk what to do. side note tho, my parents are awesome, but in the heat of the moment you just kinda loose yourself and I want all the tips I can get lol
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