Can we all just talk about panic attacks for a second?
By Ellen Kirkpatrick
Reading time: 6 minutes
The funny thing is that when Alice first mentioned I should write something for No Filter I said I wanted to write a piece about panic attacks, and then I kind of got too anxious to write it, which proves the point of this essay so efficiently that I could just stop here.
I reckon I’m not alone in having a fair bit of anxiety and yet for some reason it’s so shameful to talk about. We’re literally too anxious to talk about our anxiety.
My particular brand of anxiety (I say brand because this is all very self-diagnosed and I’m not trying to convince anyone that I know anything about mental illness) comes as bouts of anxiety or panic, especially associated with hypochondria. I’m pretty good now at recognising and decelerating the beginning of a panic attack, but boy, when you’ve never experienced a panic attack before they are not a fun part of your brain to be trapped in.
The one where I thought I was going to have a heart attack
The first panic attack I ever had was when a friend told me over dinner about a mate who’d experienced cardiac arrest while playing football. He had an undiagnosed, pre-existing condition, which terrified me. A heart attack could happen to anyone – even a healthy young man. While we waited for our pizza to be served, I began shivering and shaking uncontrollably, convinced in my mind that my racing heart must be the very same cardiac arrest my friend had described. Logically, I knew it was so damn unlikely I was experiencing a cardiac issue literally minutes after my friend told the story, but it’s hard to rationally debate with a panicking brain.
Before our pizza had even arrived, I had to call my dad to pick me up. I kept a pretty cool head with my friends, just telling them I felt a bit sick; I was too embarrassed to express any more fear – and then got into Dad’s car to go home. On the way my panic attack snowballed into me crying and telling my dad he needed to take me to the hospital because I was about to die. Like, I was literally terrified, yelling at my dad, “I’m dying right now”. I was experiencing a new level of terror I had never encountered, and I was convinced my body was shutting down. Dad recognised it as a panic attack, took me home, gave me a cup of tea and some honey on toast, and I eventually chilled out.
I think once you’ve had one big panic attack – the screaming, crying, “call an ambulance” kind – you’re probably pretty good at recognising them. The surging feel of heat going through your body, your racing heart, the painful feeling in your abdomen, the tingling in your limbs – you realise it’s all just adrenaline, from your brain’s fucked up positive feedback loop of fear.
The one where I drank too much Red Bull
The next time I had a panic attack was when I drank an energy drink for the first time to get through an overnight shift at the retail store where I worked (shoutout to Target), and then had a panic because I could feel my heart racing. But because I’m ridiculously socially awkward, I wasn’t able to bring myself to actually tell any of my coworkers I was having a panic attack. Instead I just hid in a corner of the women’s clothing department, sweating and shivering, and forced myself to sort through clothes for the insanely long two hours that it took my brain to sort itself out. I was too ashamed and afraid to tell anyone how I was feeling, but because I dealt with it alone, it took me longer than it should have to subside.
The one where I thought I had appendicitis (and still do)
Being convinced I have a horrible life-threatening medical condition used to have the tendency of sending me into a terror-induced spiral, and I’m not completely over that. There was that full year or so where I had this weirdly specific fear of my appendix bursting. I would wake in the middle of the night, convinced I was feeling jabbing pains in my stomach, and then lie in terror, my whole mind focused on my abdomen. It happened often enough that rationally, I knew I was fine. But in the middle of the night it’s very difficult to think rationally about fear.
One time, I panicked, and went to my GP, convinced that something was really wrong inside me. I explained my symptoms of stabbing stomach pains. The doctor lay me down and pressed his fingers firmly into my abdomen. “Tell me if it hurts,” he said, as he jabbed his index and middle finger into my flesh. But in fact, now that I was in the safe space of a doctor’s surgery, with the comforting sound of old people coughing, and the smell of disinfectant, I was no longer feeling anxious. I told him it didn’t hurt.
“Well,” he said, “If it was your appendix, it would be agonising for you when I push on it,” he told me. This was a neat solution to feed my anxiety. Now, instead of having something abstract to fear – the terrifying thought of a mysterious organ spontaneously exploding – I had a concrete action plan. If my stomach was hurting, I could just press my fingers in, somewhere between by belly button and my right hip, and if it really hurt, I knew I was in trouble. And if not, it was just the anxiety, and I could go back to imagining other horrifying situations.
Years later, I still occasionally partake in this strange ritual. So if you ever see me subtly poking myself in the stomach, you’ll know that I’m probably freaking out about my appendix, but maybe also feeling a bit gassy. But other than that, for the most part, I’ve left my panic attacks behind. And when I do have them, I’m very good at ignoring them. I’ve come a long way from the teenage girl crying in her dad’s car, thinking she was about to die. I wish I could tell you my magical cure to relieving my anxiety, but I guess it’s just been years of learning to calm myself down. Nowadays, I’m less anxious about telling people that I’m anxious, which means if I do have a panic attack, I don’t have to deal with it alone.
But I’d like to be able to talk more about feeling panicked. It’s a normal, and natural thing to feel scared, anxious, and stressed. And we’d all do well to remember that we’re all going through the same shit, and we’re all scared shitless.
