Anxiety attacks this bad?

This is my first post here, but I'll give a bit of a background on who I am and what has been going on as of late.

I've been diagnosed with depression for about 1/3 of my life. I'm 25 now. I've been off and on meds but am currently off and struggling. That's another bag of beans that I need to deal with here in the future.

Through the last 7-8 years I've had a lot of trouble with anxiety attacks, mostly brought on by stress in my life. Workload, things such as that will trigger an event. Over times past I have been able to concentrate on what was happening, hearing my heartbeat in my ears, calm my breathing and slowing it down to a very normal inhale/exhale.

My problem lies here. Over the last couple weeks my life has become turned upside down and my panic attacks have come with alarming frequency. I'd been used to 3-4 per week, but now I'm having 5-8 per day and the symptoms have become worse. The shaking of my body makes me unable to drive my car, so when I sense a panic attack coming on I have to pull to the side of the road if I'm unable to curb it immediately. The most alarming thing that has happened, and only over the last 48 hours is an extreme inability to breathe. Gasping for breath has become common for me, but to this degree is scary. I was luckily with someone during my first large panic attack like this, as I could not control my body. I was shaking, couldn't really understand what was going on around me, and was gasping for breath every possible second. This had caused me to become very dizzy to the point of losing conciousness. I had someone there that was rubbing my chest and helping me calm down though. The ideas of what could have possibly happened due to something massive like this is frightening, hence my coming to ask for help in understanding what would cause something such as this.

Hi and welcome to PC.

I too suffer from panic attacks although they have gotten less and less over the past few months.

In the past I have suffered from what I would describe as "massive" attacks which would occur several times a day. I tried to manage these attacks by myself for an extended period of time with no avail. I had to resign myself to the fact that these attacks were coming on more and more and that I needed help to deal with them.

I sought therapy and was put on medication to help ease these attacks. The medication helps a great deal but I firmly believe that even with medication, you must get to the root of the reason for such attacks.

In the meantime, there are diversions of though that may help you get through it. Breathing excersises always help me. In addition, I try to focus on one object (something I can hold in my hand). I will take this object and transfer it from one hand to the other, concetrating soley on this object. I also have other methods that may help you. I will name 5 things I see, 5 things I can hear and 5 things I can touch. This also diverts your mind.

I know what you are going through is not easy. Please know that you are not alone in your suffering. We are here to listen and help in any way that we can.

I wish you luck with this.


Take care,


Jen

Thank you for your kind words. It's nice to know that can be managed, as I have for several years, but there is the possibility of needing to be medicated for the anxiety problems. I have been treated at one piont in time for anxiety and depression and was very unhappy with the results as far as my mood was concerned. I find myself unsure if it was the depression meds or ahe anxiety medication that was causing the huge change in personality.

Seeing myself fall to a point of apathy I ha become scared. It was one of the things that I had suffered from before but had not made such an impact on my life as when it had been exascerbated by the medications or the counciling that I had been receiving.

I'm fortunate, I have only had one major panic attack in the last 24 hours, and that was driving home from a veyr hard weekend. I'm sure that the root of these more intense panic attacks has been the news of my girlfriend and I having to go our own ways. Coming to a conclusion that things would no longer work in the way that we had before and needing to keep each other around for moral support. I find myself having to be the giver of support right now, although she was the one that had ended things. I am fairly sure that the stress put on me by the most intense relationship that I have been in ending so abruptly and then being wanted around as moral support has done a huge amount of damage to my getting better since I had last fallen to a very low point in my life.

I plan on writing about the depression at some point in time here in the next day or two, as it takes a while for me to really flesh out what I am feeling and make sure that I am trying my hardest to not give a skewed view on what my story entails. I have a feeling it will make me relive some of these moments and I fear that for thinking about those moments shallows my breathing and makes my heart beat so fast and hard that I can hear it and feel it in every shred of my being. For help, we must fight through this pain we have before us. The pain, though temporary can destroy someone so quickly that has little or no faith that things will get better. I'm lucky in finding that faith before something terrible happened to me.

hi cwiktorski and welcome. I'm glad you found the forums. Isn't it going to be difficult to be a source of support for your ex girlfriend? Will that be an additional reason for depression and anxiety. Just some things I was thinking of as I read your post. Again, I'm glad you found us.

:heart_spin

i'm so very sorry. let us help support you. xoxox pat

Dear cwiktorski:

I feel the not being able to breath thing alot and a couple things that help me are, one KNOWING that my body will not allow me to stop breathing, even if you pass out, your body will take care of itself and continue breathing normally, 2ND, it helps to breath thru a straw. My Dr. told me it is impossible to hyperventalate or pass out while breathing thru a straw.

I am new here too and hope I can help somebody, as everyone seems to want to help me.

Welcome Cw to PC. I suffer from panic attacks. Started 38 years ago. Not as frequent as they used to be, however, they still dog me intermittantly. Hope we can be of some help to you here.

TGC

Admittedly a lot of my stress comes from this current situation. Having to care for someone that you still love so deeply in a completely different way is a very hard change of pace for me. I've been depressed for quite some time, although over the last 4 months I have been laid off from work, had to find a new place to live and such, but that had been getting better through time of my moods cheering from finding a ne wjob and soon to have a new place to call my humble abode as well.

The shocking news of the end of my relationship with my girlfriend came as a shock two weeks ago, although it feels like an eternity at this point in time. We celebrate our shared birthday on the 18th, and I know things are going to be hard. Seeing her over the weekend and her confirmation that I was not getting another chance to make amends with what I had done were a shock and what had most likely created the intensity of the anxiety attacks. I cannot be certain that those are the causes of them, but signs do point in that direction.

It's been a struggle to pull information from my ex at this juncture, and I now know that I pushed her too hard in trying to solve our problems when she had all but given up already. I have come to the realization that to have a chance to make things right with her again, I need to start from the beginning. We never had a "friendship" if you want to call it that. We jumped straight away into dating, and I fear that has been some of the root problems, along with other things as well, which are room for another topic altogether. My point is this, to help the ones we love, we must sometimes sacrifice bits of ourselves. I am coming to this juncture with a lot of steam and I do fear my own sanity through all of this, but I do know that my love for my ex girlfriend is so strong that I'm willing to put aside any feelings of resentment of the last couple weeks and work with her if she will let me to help her back to her feet and move on again, possibly giving me that second chance that I desire more than anything in the world right now.

That is another story altogether, but definitely an explaination as to part of the stresses in my life currently.

The kind words are greatly appreciated, even though there has been a bit of a delayed response here due to the new member rule of 3 posts per day. Hopefully I will get past the 15 posts and be able to post on a more regular basis on what is going on and how I am attempting to combat all that has affected me.

I'm currently in the need of finding a doctor that works on a sliding scale so that I can get back on meds. I hate the idea of using a chemical to alter my body and personality, but when you are at a low point, you have to give up these things that you think are terrible and hope for the best. I just had such a bad experience on meds last time that it's going to be a very hard step if I can find a doc that will perscribe me anything at all.