Panic Attacks
and how they manifest within me
I had this idea of how panic attacks used to be and how the person going through them, would usually express themselves a lot more physically, through shaking or maybe hyperventilating or something similar, so I always thought that I didn’t have those. I used to think that I was completely fine and have never experienced something similar because it would be very different from those representations. Usually in books or movies.
It was much later in life that I realized that panic attacks can feel different for everyone, and what the feelings it may cause in one person can be somehow entirely different to someone else. After I learned that, I wondered if some of my weird feelings could finally be explained. I remember when I was eight and suddenly forgot how to breathe. I didn’t panic, just looked my mother in the eye and:
Mom, I can’t breathe. — I said to her.
What do you mean you can’t breathe? — she answered me laughing.
I forgot how to breath. — I repeated.
She just laughed and left me there, and I remember thinking how I was going to die. I know now that we can’t “forget” how to breathe, the same way we can’t forget how to “beat our hearts”. They are spontaneous muscle contraction, we can’t forget how to do that. But somehow I did. I was eight, and I did, and I honestly thought:
Well, that’s it then. I’m going to die.
No muss, no fuss. There was no panic inside of me. There was no despair. No hyperventilation. Nothing. I sat there in my bedroom and waited, and eventually it passed and I breathed again. If only my mother saw that for what it was. A cry for help. One of many I had during my childhood.
There was this time that my legs stopped working altogether. I fell at the top of the stairs of the house and screamed.
Mom!! My legs aren’t working!! — This time I cried.
We ran to a child’s hospital. I was eleven back then. Had my legs and back X-rayed, but no anomalies were found, nothing that would explain why my legs stopped working. They began working on their own again after a while.
Is she a stressed kid? — The doctor asked.
No doc, she’s a very quiet, very sweet kid. — My mom and dad said.
And that was it. Back home, we went with nothing that explained why that had happened to me.
I know now that my emotions, they scream really loud inside my head. I could be smiling the most peaceful smile but inside my head I can be screaming, shaking, jumping and going absolutely nuts. Like there are bombs exploding colors and sounds and texture, and I’m about to go insane and finally let it all out.
But I feel that I can’t let it out. I can’t show how I’m really feeling. I just can’t physically. It is not possible. I can’t even imagine what that would look like. I just know that for a long time I used to believe that my panic attacks were nothing. That everyone used to think like me, and inside every head there was this terrifying mess of feelings ready to explode. Consuming and making all the world shrink. That everyone thought that they were going to die when they were leaving the house, and that was fine by me.
I am leaving the house and I know that I am going to die today. But that’s fine by me.
Spoiler alert, I didn’t die. Those thoughts were not comm. That was just my anxiety speaking.
Now, after all this time and knowing myself and my mind I can finally identify my own panic attacks and I see how “quiet” and inner they are, how consuming they can be. I learned techniques to handle them better, to protect myself. I can now be kind and protective of my inner child, help them when they forget to breath and pay attention to the signs she’s sending me, and take care of myself in a way I needed but didn’t know how to ask.
Furthermore, I’m writing this text because I know that there’s this stereotype over mental health and how anxiety show itself and I felt like putting out there that there are many ways for it to manifest.
