If you think you might be experiencing panic attacks but are not sure what the heck it is that you're going through, you'll know for sure once you've read this article! If you know someone who has panic attacks, then you will love this article, because it will aid you in understanding precisely what this person is going through!
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what a panic attack feels like:
- Just before a panic attack, one starts to feel light-headed, overheated, and sweaty.
- Within a few seconds, paranoia sets in, and somehow...you feel as though everyone in the room is watching you even when they are not.
- You feel a very strong need to gulp a whole lot...for whatever reason...and your mouth is totally dry...you continue to frantically swallow air while you are getting increasingly more anxious.
- You feel helpless and insanely panicky...as if you are coming out of your own skin.
- You feel paralyzed by fear...frozen...almost unable to speak. You can't get yourself to leave your seat or wherever you are situated, because you are too afraid.
- The time (even though only a few minutes have passed) feels like a thousand years...the minutes seem like hours.
- Sweat literally drips down underneath your arm pits, and your hands are soaked with sweat.
- Feels like you are going to have a seizure or go into some sort of convulsions...and if anyone talks to you DURING the attack, you think to yourself, "Are you out of your mind? Don't you see that I'm having an anxiety attack???!!!!" (but that person just keeps right on talking, because they truly don't realize you're having the attack).
- And then you get even more paranoid, because you think that this person who's trying to talk to you, is actually noticing your panic attack and judging you. Again, they usually don't notice at all.
- You get more and more faint...and you wonder if you're going to pass out...you wish to God you could run out a door...run away from your seat...but you can't...because you're too damn frozen from fear.
- While you're still swallowing air, trying to avoid having some sort of convulsion, and dripping sweat...the room seems to be narrowing into a small line. Noise gets muffled...people's voices become nothingness...and you feel out of your own body.
- Your hands (and sometimes your head) shake...or at least...it seems that they're shaking (After I've had a panic attack, people have told me that they didn't notice any shaking at all).
- You finally break free...somehow you unglued yourself from that seemingly impossible "frozen fear" state you were in...and you run to the bathroom to splash cold water on your face, under your arm pits, down your shirt, etc... etc... anything to stop this horrible feeling.
- You catch your breath too. And, of course, wherever you were having the panic attack, you feel utterly anxious about going back to that very place, because you feel traumatized about having had the panic attack at that very place.
That, my friends, is what a panic attack feels like!
Alexandra Mannock, MA, CAGS practiced as a rofessionally licensed psychotherapist for over a decade, and she recently released a hot new e-book entitled "Anxiety Zapper: The Easiest Guide To Having Complete Power Over Your Anxiety".
She also offers a FREE five-day "Cure Anxiety" E-course! Find out about it at: http://www.anxietyzapper.com
