Hello, all. I'm new here - I was referred here by a crisis hotline that I occasionally call to help talk me down from panic attacks (unsure what the difference - if any - is between that and an anxiety attack). I'm 38 years old and anxiety has been a constant in my life for nearly a decade now.

At first, anxiety was a very occasional thing that only seemed to occur when I would drive long distances and/or to somewhere unfamiliar. As it grew, it became something that could occur when driving any distance at all, familiar or not. Knowing I can pull over is often comforting, but being somewhere far away from people is not. Feeling alone greatly intensifies the fear that something terrible will happen to me.

At its worst, panic attacks can and will occur in completely "safe" areas - my home and office. Fear starts to overcome me, my body tenses up, and then I start to feel as if I'm suffocating. Actions which are normally involuntary (i.e. breathing) seem as if they will not occur unless I force them to and it starts to feel like I'm not getting enough air and that I have no way to escape how I'm feeling. I have on occasion ended up curled up in a ball on the ground screaming and crying out of this fear.

Talking seems to be one of the better ways to cope simply because if I don't, I will continue to physically tense up and escalate. When things aren't as bad, something simpler like playing a game to distract myself will often work. But as the thread title suggests, I appear to have a sort of annual cycle where around the same time every year my symptoms get much worse. I'll experience one bad panic attack out of the blue, after which the trigger is almost pavlovian - I'll have a panic attack because I'm used to having one every day.

This cycle has made treatment difficult, since I would often seek out help when things got their worst, but then as things died down I would no longer have much to discuss with a therapist. I am currently taking Zoloft as a preventative medication (for about nine months now) and was recently prescribed Hydroxozine on an "as-needed" basis. Presently, that has come out to about once a day.

I apologize for the lengthy post and thank anyone who actually reads the whole thing. Just knowing that there are other people out there who experience the same thing that happens to me makes me feel less alone, and I hope that over time I am able to manage this problem. I feel that it makes me unable to live my life; I recently missed a friend's birthday gathering due to it, and even at my best I am no longer able to travel very far at all. I miss the beach and I miss the freedom I felt when I was younger before this became a problem for me.