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Panic Attacks

© Katherine E. Rabenau

Well, originally, I was going to make article three something about how a nice girl like me ended up imprisoned in her apartment for almost 10 years, barely able even to go downstairs inside the building to do laundry or to get the mail. But since I don’t really know the answer and long meandering dialogues about my sad life are probably not that useful to anyone but me, I thought better of it. Since part of my aim with this column is to help those who don’t struggle with agoraphobia to have a better understanding of what it’s like, I thought it might be useful to try to put some meat on the bones of the phrase “panic attack.”

This isn’t going to be a medical or scientific description of a panic attack. You can check a medical dictionary or most of the links on this site for that information. Maybe in a future article, I will talk about the biology of panic, but right now, I want to share, as much as words allow, what the experience is like. I’m not sure words can convey the intensity of suddenly having your lungs shut down on you for no apparent reason. One minute you are reading or watching television, or maybe going to bed and out of nowhere, you find yourself gasping for air, your chest suddenly tight and stiff. Your lungs have become these useless, solid, rock-like things that won’t expand no matter how hard you try to make them do it. The muscles in your rib cage have also gone rigid and they ache with the pain both of terror and the physical strain of attempting to force air into lungs which have for some reason decided to go on strike. Your legs are like rubber and your hands are shaking. Every muscle in your body is either tensed for fight or flight or shaking and out of control. And of course as adrenaline kicks in, your heart starts pounding, increasing the sense of panic and impending death.

And while this physical battle is going on, there’s an accompanying mental struggle – one part of your psyche trying to persuade the rest of you that you are really fine, that even though you are suffocating you aren’t really dying, that it’s just some nutty thing that happens to you sometimes and that you have always lived through it before. Wondering why you are doing this to yourself, why you are crazy. Wondering how long it will take them to find your body. The literature that I have read says that most attacks like this peak in about 10 minutes and subside in 20 to 30 minutes. I know that mine lasted longer. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was living and dealing with them alone. At any rate, my breathing struggles sometimes lasted for hours at a time. But let’s be honest, even a half hour of feeling like the grim reaper is chuckling at your bedside is as good as an eternity.

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