I have been anxious my entire life. In kindergarten, my fingerpainting skills were poor; my lines were wiggly because my hands were so trembly.
In Grade 5, I was repeatedly convulsed by nervous stomach aches. A barium enema turned up nothing except for a resolution to keep any future nervous stomach aches to myself, thanks awfully, and a life-long aversion to St-Hubert chicken, which we stopped for as a treat on the way home from the hospital.
Then, in my last year of high school, panic kicked in, leaving me pale, shaky and breathless in the mornings before exams. (My super-cool doctor at the time, when told of my symptoms, calmly asked if I had been doing coke.)
In my late 20s, panic attacks crashed over me like violent waves, leaving me too scared to leave my apartment, so I simply didn't for several months. I quit my restaurant job and sat in my tiny apartment, watching TV and hating myself.
Eventually, I found a psychiatrist and dragged myself, twitching, cramping and panting, up to his office twice a week. I don't know whether it was the simple act of leaving my house, the dreary therapy (punctuated by his habit of nodding off several times a session) or the fact that twentysomethings are just wonderfully resilient creatures, but eventually I got better.
Still, twinges and whiffs of the period plagued me for years. A flash of dizziness or nausea would immediately make me think, "Oh God, is this it? Is it happening again?"
I wasn't afraid of being a shut-in again because, if you can swing it, being one is actually quite lovely. It's the getting out that's the tricky part.
And then, last year, it happened again. The panic came back, leaving me a shut-in for three long months.
Panic is to anxiety what vomiting is to nausea - while anxiety can be a persistent and ongoing sensation, a panic attack is a violent, shorter-lived explosion. The symptoms include terror, a racing heart, dizziness, chest pains, nausea and an overwhelming sense of a loss of control.
Many people will experience a panic attack in their lifetime. Most studies have found that between 1 and 2 per cent of people suffer from panic disorder. The Public Health Agency of Canada says 0.7 per cent of Canadians aged 15 to 64 suffer from panic.
While many people who have panic attacks are able to dust themselves off afterward, others live in perpetual fear it will happen again.
Picture a Fort Knox-grade alarm system manned by a pack of shivering, meth-addicted Chihuahuas. The slightest whisper of danger, and those alarms are going to blare. Maybe you turned your head too quickly and felt a little dizzy, or had a little heartburn after eating a spicy lunch - that symptom that you associate with panic sends a message to your brain that, oh shit, it's happening again. Alarm wire tripped. Panic induced.
It's not uncommon for sufferers of panic disorder to also start experiencing agoraphobia, an intense fear of public places brought on by worrying about being unable to escape to safety during a panic attack.
"You start to avoid situations, foods, whatever you think might have triggered the panic attack," says Eilenna Denisoff, a psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
"People don't recognize that it's their own physical symptoms that trigger the anxiety," Dr. Denisoff says.
Instead, we start finger pointing and scapegoating - and instantly the place you were when it hit is to blame, slashed with a big, bright red X. Had a panic attack in Loblaws? Guess you can't go there again. In an elevator? Better learn to take the stairs. Pretty soon your old, normal life is a dizzying display of red X's. Your world gets smaller and smaller and smaller, and so do you.
I was at work last fall, feeling overwhelmingly dizzy, woozy and unable to draw a deep breath, which rather convinced me that I just might be dying. I had been feeling off for two weeks, since being hit by a 12-hour, inner-ear abnormality.
