I had my first panic attack a year and a half ago, and like many, I immediately thought I was dying. I remember it was as if the room suddenly began closing in on me, I found it hard to get any air, and my heart was pounding in my chest. I sat down on the couch and focused on breathing, just sure I would pass out and lose consciousness any second. But fifteen minutes later, my heart had slowed down, my breathing returned to normal, and I sat there shaken up, wondering what had just happened to me.

This is my story, or at least a summary of what I have gone thru.

 I have always suffered from anxiety, and the need to always make sure things are taken care of and looked after. I know now that this stems from very deep responsibilites from when I was younger. My dad drank while I was growing up, and my mom worked very hard to take care of my brother and I. My brother, who is younger, was born with a cleft lip and palate, and numerous learning and developmental disabilities. At a very early age, I took care of him while my mom was working nights, and my dad was drinking. I was very protective of him, and I felt it was my job to do this. Of course it was never my job per say, but I never complained about it, it was just how it was. Looking back now, I feel sad for the little girl that I was, and the large responsibilites on her shoulders. 

Looking back from here - I can see a real path to health.

It is a tough task indeed to define the “first time”.  Looking back now I can spot traces of it throughout my entire life, hints, subtle whiffs of smoke.  I find in me now though a need to call something the beginning.  The beginning of what though?  Surely my very birth into the world was the beginning.  I guess its not the first discernable symptom I want now,for I could endlessly retrace my steps, scrutinizing every benign childhood worry and anxiety for signs, and most likely I’d find many, for, as I’ve said,it is my natural state.  It has always been a very real part of me. No, it’s not really the initial surfacing of symptoms I want now.  It’s something else indeed.  What I want now is the first time it gripped me beyond my control, the first time it took hold of me and sent me scrambling in all directions, the first time it was out of control.  This is where I will draw a line in the sand.  This is the point where the manageable became unmanageable, where the normal ebb and flow suddenly spiked in one direction…off the charts. This is where I passed from the realm of standard behavior into the realm of irregular for it’s in the first real “freak out” that we know we are very different than the mass of those around us.  Yes, this loss of control must mark its entrance.

            And where was I when this happened? Well, I was in college.  I shared an apartment with two other young men and I was very much concerned with being a twenty one year old male, and little else.  As it would happen, I found myself experiencing a moderately bad chest cold.  Don’t get me wrong, it was nothing particularly horrible and most assuredly something I’d experienced before, with the standard set of symptoms.  I had a stuffed up nose, felt a little feverish, and had a general sense of heaviness in the chest.  It was all just the sort of thing a few days rest, some extra water, and some vitamin C would rapidly take care of.  After all, I was a very healthy young adult; I would be fine. But there occurred something more at this point, something new – at least new in this sort of intensity. Really, there were several distinct things that occurred.

(posted by ceejay September 2006; updated in Comments February 2011) 

Most of my life I was pretty quiet and good. I was a cooperative kid, and generally got along well with people. Sometimes I would get freaked out by confrontation and arguing, but I always thought I was doing okay.

For most of my 30+ year career I have been a workaholic. I enjoyed my work and was very good at it. But for the last few years I have been working less, and have been much less interested in working. It is like I am trying to swim through "Jell-O" just to get up in the morning and sit at my desk. I think it started with my depression, and now the anxiety pretty well limits my output and interest.