Anxiety and Panic. How Does It Feel? The $64,000 Question

So maybe you want to know: What is anxiety like? The $64,000 question. Shrinks, doctors, therapists, they all ask it:

How do you feel?

Recipe for Anxiety

• Take a build-up of tension

• Pile high with worry, and plenty of stress

• Add a dash of low self-esteem and/or depression

• A handful of racing, fearful thoughts - niggling, diving, driving the mind to a peak

Result: an anxiety attack. The mind swirls into muddy streams, where it crashes and you're sure, just sure, you can't breathe. And wait, when did the world turn 90 degrees?

In those moments, those all out terrifying 'what planet am I on' moments, panic gets into your system somehow. Something's lost, different, disturbing in a most unusual way.

By then I'm too busy worrying about the deja vu to focus on whatever it was that set things off. Hey, I'm probably going crazy anyway because what else could this whirlwind be?

You're not crazy. That whirlwind is all that goes unvoiced, and freedom is finding ways to let it be. Express your stress and pent-up energy in as many ways as you can, and you can beat anxiety.

Anxiety attack first-aid

After you've found a whole bunch of things to do with that energy - that's the first-aid part - then you can wonder how you ended up feeling so anxious in the first place.

Do the practical stuff. It helps. Relieves stress.
Then take the cognitive leaps (CBT).

There are just too many factors to name them when you're standing on the brink. I've tried it, and it wasn't the best idea. Like Jeopardy, only I hadn't signed up for the game and I'm trying to answer questions that evaporate in my ears as quickly as they came.

Unstitch my making. Yes, yes anxiety does exactly that. Then I have to put myself together again.

You can't see the lines where I've sewed up the gaps?

After my first panic attack, it was as though a chasm opened between where I stood, and where the world really was. My footing uncertain, strange new thoughts popped up, vying for a part and a name.

If I took a step to the left, and a jump to the right, would I end up somewhere safer than my mind?

Anxiety relief: Finding a voice

I started to worry that people could tell. That it showed, this nightmarish experience. Only, they couldn't tell, and they didn't know, and I lacked the language, not to mention the courage, to tell a single living soul.

Are you OK? That question is the bane of my existence. It's a dilemma: It shouldn't be. But it is - once terror, fear, stress, trauma, hopelessness, the odd bout of helplessness and a general uneasiness set in. The silent tremors which won't let you forget, no matter that they don't rate on the Richter scale. That's just a technicality.

You know how everyone seems to know where they were when 9/11 happened, or Princess Di died, or JFK was killed? Panic attacks are like that. You remember.

Which is why there aren't always words. And why it's so hard for friends, family, even therapists to always "get it". The intellectual understanding, it's a start though.

What helps? Living through it. Finding ways to tuck panic in a box, and be okay with that long enough to face a fear or two. No, not head on. You want to start out slow.

On anxiety management tools

There are all sorts of tips and tricks, anxiety coping skills for panic, PTSD, OCD, generalized or social anxiety issues. You learn.

It's the 'little' things, with anxiety. You have to know your fears, your anxiety triggers. You have to know them well enough to look them in the eye and say 'Boo!'.