When Anxiety Attacks: The Impact of Panic on Society and You
Strung out, wound up, where am I again?
Stay present. Get grounded. Wracking my brain for self help anxiety techniques.
Don't go away. Please don't leave me this way. Sweaty palms, and here I am. Floating like that plastic bag in American Beauty, only it isn't nearly so noble when you're the bag.
Panic attacks
Panic leaves me feeling out of control. So much so that I don't want to face the world again. I'm hiding, hidden, deep within the tides that spin and spit me out instead.
The fear stops churning me up, eventually, and I find myself on the shores of a brand new day. Will it be just the same? Or, is it possible, can what they say be true? There's another way.
Acid in my stomach, biting my lip. Chewing on thoughts decades old, and just born.
Self help for anxiety attacks
Every stressed-out thought, each restless moment -that's a seed. Here and now, it's a seed. A Zen kind of seed, planted in the mind by physical, mental, and verbal actions, intentions. How deep will it go; How well is each seed planted? You have to know.
Thankfully, not all our thoughts take hold, though I water a lot of weeds. Beating anxiety is about becoming aware of those, slowly. That helps you find anxiety relief.
Where is the path to peace? Oh. That's right, no, left, turn at the edge of sorrow. Pass panic. Pull back. You know how to play this game. Stand still, sit with this moment. Just for now. Today. Don't water that seed.
Of course it's hard to stay with that: Don't look up, the sky is falling.
I piece it all together to get up out of bed, and I show up. I show up, which isn't the easiest thing when you're unwell. It isn't the easiest thing when you are well.
Tomorrow is another round of kissing frogs: Wait and see, with knuckles white. Never give up. Never give up, no matter what happens.
Mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada.
In any given year...
- 6 million American adults have panic disorder
- 2.2 million American adults have obsessive compulsive disorder
- 6.8 million American adults have generalized anxiety disorder
- 15 million American adults have social anxiety disorder (take this online social phobia test)
- Agoraphobia affects 1.8 American adults
- and 19.2 million American adults will experience a specific phobia.*
Never give up.
There are too many sailors out to sea.
Follow Me on Twitter
*Statistics taken from the NIMH
APA Reference
White, K.
(2010, September 30). When Anxiety Attacks: The Impact of Panic on Society and You, HealthyPlace. Retrieved
on 2024, December 21 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/treatinganxiety/2010/09/when-anxiety-attacks-the-impact-of-panic-on-society-and-you
Author: Kate White
I wish someone would have taken notice of my predilection for anxiety when I was a child. I fought with it terribly; not wanting to go to school, my mother and/or father leaving us with a sitter, thunderstorms, long car travels. There weren't names for such things as that in 1964, especially not as far as children were concerned. If I acted on my anxieties, I was told to "get control of yourself", "stop it", "you're just being silly about this whole thing". I felt like a silly, stupid little girl and I started forcing myself to keep my feelings inside, suffering alone. I would get diarrhea, vomit, shake uncontrollably and sometimes shed quiet tears which I quickly wiped away acting like I had something in my eye. As I grew older, I became a professional "anxiety hider", I was miserable.
when I was about 18, my anxieties became less in intensity, fewer and far between and I almost thought they were gone. At age 27, after I had my first child, out of the blue, I had the most incredible panic attack ever. I ran out of my back door and just kept running for blocks until I remembered my infant in the house alone. My panic resurged as I ran back home kowing for certain something terrible had happened to her while I was running away. My anxiety waxed and waned over the next several years. My depression, however, really took hold and I started to receive treatment. The anxiety came back again, bad, like it used to be. Long story short, I am 58 years old, I only leave my house to see my psychiatrist and only if my husband takes me. Every other errand, task, even going out to the driveway to get the paper, my husband does. I stopped driving about 6 years ago and I ceased almost all contact with friends, I stopped going to church. When I need to get a haircut, my stylist schedules me early in the morning before the other stylists and their clients arrive and I will only go IF my husband takes me. I am a prisoner inside myself. I can't tell you how many special family events I have missed and how badly I ache for not being able to have given myself those precious memories.
Anyone reading this, if you or God help you, YOUR child begins to have symptoms of anxiety or tells you they have fears or if you develop fears you've never had before, get yourself to a mental health provider IMMEDIATELY! Like...TODAY! Save yourself ot your child a lifetime of misery and regrets. Please!
Hi,
Healthline recently finished an infographic that shows that many people suffer symptoms of depression without seeking care, and that undiagnosed depression costs the U.S. millions of dollars each year. You can find the infographic at: http://www.healthline.com/health/depression/statistics-infographic
We encourage you to embed this graphic on your site & share with your followers, friends, & network.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Warm Regards,
Tracy
hey Maria,
this went to Spam first *rolls eyes* but it has been found and rescued now.
great point and i shall put that on my to-do list for posts: explain about the mechanics. both the amygdala and the hippocampus play very important physiological roles in anxiety.
also helped me when i learned about all that =D thanks!
It would be nice - kiddo - if you'd explain a bit about amygdala and the part its playing in anxiety and even more so, in panic attacks.
No matter how overwhelming a panic attack might be, if one's armed with knowledge about the process he or she undergoes at a given moment, it could help.
It helped me, to understand why is coming, the panic attack, and helped me to cope with those brief, albeit unbearable moments, when I was losing control.