Let's face it, only people who have experienced a panic attack can truly understand how unsettling (to say the least) it is and how badly it can affect an individual.
Although my first attack took place when I was only six years old (amazingly I can vividly remember it), I never really knew what that horrible feeling was until I read about it in a magazine when I was eighteen.
Until then I had a couple of attacks a year, but was fine otherwise.
Whenever I tried to ask friends if they ever experienced anything like it, they looked at me with such a confused look, I would change the conversation and kept thinking I was a freak and nobody could understand me.
In my case, it wasn't so much the physical effects of an attack which scared me, but more the emotional side, which I couldn't really explain better than this: a sense of gloom and doom, all of a sudden I felt completely detached from the world, as if I was looking from outside, everything that mattered to me lost meaning during an attack.
I felt despair, fear, panic.
It was such a flight or fight ride, that by the end of an attack I would be completely wiped out, total exhaustion followed by the fear of having another attack, so I would feel unsettled for days.
When I was twenty-one these isolated attacks became a regular event therfore a disorder and I knew pretty soon I needed help.
But recovery is a slow process and whilst I started seeing a counsellor at university, I completely stopped going out in the evening, I just couldn't face it, because most of my attacks had happened in the evening or night and I felt so unsafe outside.
And I was worried about having an attack whilst with my friends, since they didn't know about it, I was too ashamed, I thought they would think I was mad.
I now know how common this is and knowing that makes such a difference.
Telling my friends made it possible for me to go out without worrying about the possibility of having one.
I can now say I am cured, i.
e.
I very rarely have an attack (I actually can't even remember last time I had one), I recognise the onset of one and know how to deal with it to minimise the effects, to sum it up anxiety no longer controls my life.
So what did I do to recover from an anxiety disorder and what worked for me? I started with counselling, but digging up the past only brought up more memories and more issues, so I now think that it only prolonged the road to recovery.
I then read lots of books, including one on cognitive therapy which made a lot of sense and I learnt that it's the way you think about panic attacks that will make a difference in the way you experience them, that you don't need to know how and why they started to happen.
You just need to know what happens in your body when an attack takes place and by rationalising it and telling yourself to be calm and to let that horrible feeling flow through you instead of fighting it, you can overcome them faster.
That helped me hugely.
I also learnt to breathe better, deeper and slower, which I still do.
I endeavoured to relax and take some me time every day.
I wasn't good at meditating, my mind was too fast for that! But even just attempting was helpful, being alone and quite in a room, with relaxing music and scents and lights was very helpful.
I then took up Reiki, again, I couldn't say that would have cured me alone, but it helped me because that's what I needed back then, a spiritual side to my life that made me feel calmer.
And in my opinion, whatever works for the individual is worth doing.
The last thing I did was hypnotherapy.
I feel it really did the trick together with the cognitive therapy books I read.
But I am not saying it would definitely help anyone.
If somebody doesn't believe it could work and resists going down in a state of deep relaxation, then it won't work.
So what I am trying to say is that everyone is different and there is no magic cure for panic attacks, but often one has to try more than one before finding the right one.
Some are more expensive and lengthy than others and often the cheaper and easier ones can be just as effective.
So take a look around and see what you feel like trying, follow your gut feeling and don't be disappointed if you feel you might be wasting some time and money, in a way or another, it will all contribute to your recovery (I definitely learnt something from everything I tried) and in the end it will all be worth it.
Good luck and good mental health!