by Sue Caulfield
Text:
If you have ever had a panic attack, the symptoms are familiar; the weight on your chest, the buzzing energy running through your body, a racing heart and the feeling that your lungs cannot inhale. You are broken.
“Are you OK?”
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, this is the 1st question that someone asks.
“What is wrong?”
And this is the second.
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you know the “correct” answer to the the first, (Sure I will, just not right now), and you are still figuring out the answer to the second…
…because sometimes nothing is “wrong.”
If you have ever had a panic attack, you may have experienced what I like to call a “great” moment of panic. Instead of the trigger being negative, it is actually a positive one.
If you have ever had a panic attack, you may have reflected on all of the other attacks afterward, trying to find the thread that connects all of these moments.
If you’ve ever had a panic attack, it may have been a “great” one recently, like me. Mine happened at 5 a.m. after my new and very patient fiancé proposed. I buzzed with energy, happy glorious bliss, until the next morning. My body and brain exploded into terribly, awfully, “great” panic.
If you have ever had a panic attack, you know these “great” moments of panic are just as tough to explain as the crappy ones. There is a daily fear that something “too good” or “too bad” will set off a bomb inside you. So, you do the best you can. I wish there was a better solution, but you try and breathe. Try and cope. Embrace it, talk about it, and move on.
Originally posted at the Student Affairs Collective on May 8, 2015.