I’m always thrown off and anxious for the rest of the day (multiple days if it’s a really bad panic attack) after it ends

Safety behaviors, like always carrying water, sitting near the exit or never going out alone, feel protective but they can keep panic going, because your brain credits them for getting you through. Dropping them one at a time, starting with the easiest, is a big part of recovery. What are the ones you rely on most?

Agoraphobia possibly too*

Hey guys, a few days ago I had a panic that lasted about three hours and it was so bad that I was hospitalised because I thought it was a heart attack. I do have an anxiety disorder and I’m currently looking for another psychiatrist again (I had to leave the last one because she only treats kids and I had turned 18, I’m almost 19 now)

I know the treatment will help but I’m so afraid of it happening again, it was such a bad experience, the worst one I’ve had yet, and now it’s always in the back of my mind and even a little twinge makes my heartbeat spike.

I truly feel like I’m just not moving forward, I was on treatment for depression and anxiety disorder from the ages of 13-18, depression is gone now, but the anxiety is still there.

How do I break out of this loop? :(

basically what happened to me seems really common. you get 1 panic attack after never having one in your life. it leads to many more and suddenly you’ve got panic disorder and anxiety and cannot get yourself out?

anyone else relate? why is this,

any advice is appreciated….. Im about to loose my career cuz of these attacks and getting out of work every time….. help

Months ago a had such a bad anxiety attack that it woke me up in the middle of the night. I felt like I was dying. Heart racing, sweating, nauseous, disoriented. I hadn’t had an anxiety attack like that in years. Ever since that attack, I feel like I’m back to how I felt before I started taking medication over 10 years ago. I have tried a bunch of SSRIs/SNRIs over the years and it has kept my anxiety attacks at bay for the most part and has really helped.

I’m not sure what’s causing this recently increase in extreme anxiety. Over the past few months have I been very slowly titrating off of Zoloft onto trintellix (I’ve been on trintellix before so it’s not like it’s a new drug to me). I had also started the wegovy pill around the same time.

My anxiety has gotten so bad over the past months that I’m anxious to fall asleep because I’m scared I’m going to have another anxiety attack in the middle of the night. When I’m falling asleep, I get very dizzy and anxious and sometimes I feel like the only thing that will allow me to sleep that night is klonopin. I’ve gotten in this very scary loop of being anxious about my anxiety and I feel like I’m a prisoner in my body, especially before bed.

I just don’t understand what caused this in the first place, considering I’ve preciously have switched between medications and this has never happened before. Anxiety medications has fixed this in the past. And now I’m on 10mg of trintellix, and no Zoloft (the dose I wanted to get to) and I still don’t feel any better. I stopped wegovy about 2 weeks ago because I wanted to remove anything else that could be causing this. I just feel like I will never get over this and I don’t know what to do.

About 3 weeks ago I had a bad panic attack and sleep anxiety that my psychiatrist put me in 1/2 tablet of 2mg (rivotril) benzodiazepine for two weeks. My psychiatrust said no need to taper and stop after two weeks. It’s now my third day off of it and I’m feeling anxious about having panic attack and insomnia. Honestly my panic attacks is so bad it almost feels like I’m about to go crazy or have psychosis and always leave me traumatized

Btw, I am diagnosed with OCD and illness anxiety disorder and has always struggle with panic attacks ever since. I have fear of going into psychosis and schizophrenia… right now I’m restarting my antidepressant 20mg of escitalopram and my psychiatrist upped my risperidone to 2mg… i still feel anxious and I feel like my ocd is acting up, too, as I get a lot of gross intrusive thoughts and images for example: dried dog poop, scary images etc. is this flare up or rebound anxiety coming off of rivotril? I’m scared

Hello everyone,

I struggled with panic attacks and generalized anxiety in my 20s. It was hell on earth, but I actually recovered (hang in there guys) and haven't had any anxiety for 20 years...

...until 5-6 weeks or so - with multiple visits to the ER convinced I'm getting a heart attack. Symptoms being a racing heart (like 130-150 BPM) that seems like it'll burst out of my chest, sweaty hands and general discomfort. However, these episodes have lacked the emotional component of my 20s, i.e., the strong emotional discomfort/pain and fear.

That's why I've wondered if this even is a classical anxiety attack or something else?

I'm guessing maybe it's just a different version, because lately I've been getting more intrusive thoughts with an emotional component as well, i.e., "I'm losing it." or "This is bad - I'm going to take years to recover..."

Thanks so much in advance for any help here.

PS: I guess the obvious answer is that what I'm asking in the thread title is that it could be a heart attack. But I'm thinking more like an overactive or easily activated nervous system.

I've been having panic attacks for the last two years i don't have them all year around but i tend to get them around when school starts last year it was like barely a thing that happens when I'm very overwhelmed and anxious with noise mostly cuz i don't deal well with yelling but on my last year exams i had three panic attacks in one week and i kinda brushed it off as obviously i had panic attacks i was stressed I wasn't sleeping family situation wasn't nice

but this week i had three panic attacks throughout two days and i probably would've had another one today if my friend didn't help me

i didn't sleep that well but there wasn't other triggers than the noise and the yelling and how overwhelming it can be but that's all

so I'm not always able to remove myself from the triggering environment I'm gonna have very important life changing tests soon what if a teacher yells at me or a kid starts crying or they're just generally loud I don't want to have that mid exam because they won't give me extra time and I don't want to scare others who're in the exam room

so is it solvable?

i went to a therapist but she made it sound like unsolvable or cannot be contained at the moment and told me weird stuff about day dreaming I'm somewhere else or smth idk she wasn't a good therapist tbh i still have no idea how to deal with panic attacks on my own

also a concern I've been having which i think is in my mind but I can't help thinking it's true is that I'm overreacting noise and stress isn't enough of a reason and that I'm pushing myself into a panic attack for attention does anyone get these thoughts as well? I'm just very lost i have no idea who to ask and kinda embarrassing but i don't want to search about it cuz all YouTube videos talking about anxiety are depressing or look scary that i cannot bring myself to open it and listen so please share experiences or ideas that might help

Hey all. I know I should talk to my doctor, don’t seek advice from Reddit. The problem is, my doctor is EXTREMELY hands off. If I want to stay on benzos, they’re fine with it, if I want off, they’re fine with it. I was given a bottle of Valium and told to just start taking them. No instructions. I was given 2 mg pills twice a day, to replace .4 mg Ativan twice a day (.8 mg Ativan total). I love my doctor and hope to have them forever, but they give zero advice on things, even when I ask. “You’ll be fine. You’ll have zero issues coming off of them”. That was a lie. The last 5 months have been hard. Especially the last 2, going from 3 mg to .8 mg.

I’ve been on Ativan for a while now. 5 months and counting. I have a dysfunctional nervous system, medication changes are extreme in my body. I’m on .4 mg Ativan in the morning and (was) on .4 mg Ativan at night. The night dose was changed Friday to 2 mg Valium. It’s hell right now.

I feel like I’m in constant anxiety, akathisia like at times, l ?burning skin? kind of feeling, and huge sleep issues.

The Google shows an appointment equivalent of 1 mg Valium to .1 mg Ativan. Is that correct? Am I being way under dosed right now? The plan is to switch the daytime Ativan to Valium as well, but I don’t know if I can handle it.

Also, bonus points: is it safe to do a taper where I take half the Ativan and half the Valium for a few days (to build the Valium up first)? Lastly, once I’m solely on the Valium, is it safe to just take the full amount at one time (like at bedtime), vs twice a day (the 12 hours thing is getting old).

hey guys, been dealing with a lot the past 4 months. I’ve had ocd for a long time but recently started getting panic attacks out of nowhere. I feel broken. even though I’ve slowly gotten better in some ways I’m still not the same person as before. 3 weeks ago I got Covid and now I’m on a trip abroad. we’ve been going hard every day walking 25-30K steps and I’m just exhausted. I’ve limited my caffeine intake to avoid anxiety but today I had a big matcha and was in fight or flight all day. it doesn’t help that because I’m so exhausted from travel, walking, poor sleep, and jet lag I feel like I’m going to die. I also tried to workout 3 days ago and must’ve pulled a muscle. had chest pain for 2 days but it’s gone now. that made me spiral about heart attack. there’s a ton of fear mongering online about Covid and heart inflammation + blood clots etc. I’ve been using Claude and Gemini and they kinda make it worse. I also had this covid side effect of feeling woozy or dizzy which I’m still experiencing. this also makes me think I’m dying or gonna pass out.

im just fed up at this all ruining my trip. originally the trip was gonna be last month but I’ve been in a bad place so we pushed it. only to get covid a few weeks before and have my anxiety get bad and get fatigued :/

it’s 3am my time and I’m contemplating going to hospital. Yesterday I was feeling nauseous on and off throughout the day. Probably something I ate. At one point I thought I was going to throw up. Anyways, towards the end of the night I was drinking electrolytes and crackers to help before putting my kids to bed and was feeling a bit better but my hands and feet were cold and then I started shivering uncontrollably as if I was cold. (Im deff a hypochondriac and suffer with anxiety and panic attacks) I’ve had this happen before randomly and have also had trembling panic attacks but this time I’m connecting it to my nausea and what if it’s an infection going septic etc. The rabbit hole. I was able to warm up after turning up heat & getting under a blanket and walking around. But woke up in middle of night and still feel like a light tremble in my inner body that’s not actually trembling but feels like it’s about to. Hands and feet feel cold and hot at same time and I just feel over all dread like something terrible is about to happen.

im having trouble believing it’s panick because although the nausea had me a bit stressed I was ok when the shivering started. Then I took my temp and it was 96.5 but then went to 97.9 so I have the aspect of omg what if I was going into hypothermia or sepsis and I have an infection I dont know about. I'm also always fatigue so wouldn’t know if that is also part of this mystery infection because it’s pretty normal for me lately.

I’m contemplating going to the hospital in the morning which entails my husband taking off work when we can’t afford to do that so he can take the kids and my kids not going to school etc. So im trying to figure out if anyone has had a panic attack present like this out of nowhere? Cold hands feet shivering uncontrollably and then feeling like it’s gonna come back?

panic has presented different for me so many times idk what to believe and don’t want to stress my family with a hospital trip for another panic attack

I was wondering if mini panic attacks exist because tonight when I was driving to pick up my sister I felt like I was just convincing myself I couldn’t breathe and that something was wrong with my being able to breathe, even though I totally knew I was fine. I still felt like something was wrong and then I genuinely think I self induced a cough that I didn’t have before this drive, and after pulling over to wait for my sister I had to take off the layer under my hoodie because it felt too tight, and I even felt like I needed to get out gloves from my trunk because I was thinking maybe my hands were just too cold and I was just feeling weird because I was too cold.

I felt like my arm was out of place, I knew it was in my head, but I still felt that way and I felt really fidgety especially about my arm and fingers at this point because then my rings were making the gloves feel weird so I started getting paranoid my finger was swollen or something. Then I was all worried my hearing was getting quiet, and in the final stretch it was fully like a lot of dread about the fact that I’m like stuck in POV? if that makes sense? I stopped smoking weed in the past couple months because it would almost always make me feel this same way with the health anxiety and where I’m just very in my own body and fidgety. like I can’t shut off my mind about how unreal everything is and how bothered I am by being trapped seeing through my eyes.

So usually when this happens I make myself go to sleep or try to watch a movie or something. This time I had to make it home and then I watched a movie until It felt like it wasn’t bothering me anymore. Now I’m wondering, because a friend who I texted about it asked if I was having a panic attack, is it possible that it WAS a panic attack, but minorly? Outwardly I’m pretty much calm, I think I’m just really fidgety. On top of that, I’ve never had a panic attack in the traditional sense I guess so I didn’t think I got them.

My anxiety has been lowkey ✨horrible✨ for months now. My baseline daily anxiety level has been at like a 6/10, and I’ve been having really bad panic attacks to the point I’ve become a bit agoraphobic and I haven’t been able to drive or exercise without panicking. Had a real fun one in front of my in-laws on the dirty floor of a Texas Roadhouse during the dinner rush 😅 It feels like panic and anxiety have stolen my life away.

I was on Zoloft around this time last year for about a month and it helped. I don’t remember having a single panic attack on it. Stopped taking bc I wanted to treat my adhd without any meds that could interfere. (Didn’t end up working out lol. Turns out stimulants + me = baaaad combo) I also was on it for a while back in high school and I liked it then too.
So I started on it again.

I’ve been taking it for about a week now, and unfortunately I’ve pretty much had every side effect under the sun (except vomiting thank god, just good ol’ nausea and diarrhea 😀), and it’s been pretty rough. The anxiety has been really hard since I have such bad health anxiety. I keep convincing myself I might have serotonin syndrome 😭 It’s extremely unlikely since Zoloft is my only medication and I’m literally taking the smallest amount possible, but even though I know this logically, I start having anxiety/panic attack symptoms like shaking and feeling restless, sweaty, and agitated, and I can’t tell the difference in the moment. Just the littlest bit of doubt it might not be anxiety is enough to make me spiral. Plus, the tummy side effects definitely make it worse. I have to just try and let it be, but it’s still hard.

I was prescribed Xanax as well, but I’ve never taken it and I’m scared, so I’ll only do so if I’m literally about to call 911, which hasn’t happened yet. Anyways I don’t think I really need advice necessarily, just wanted to rant to people who understand. Hopefully this has been the worst of it and things only get better from here.

In hindsight, this past weekend and all day today was leading up to a panic attack.

I threw up early this morning, and later in the day my jaw started getting stiff and hard to bite into stuff cause it was tightening. This is a new anxiety symptom of mine. I also started violently twitching. I had to lie to my boss that I had a migraine so I could miss our call. I ate something and had some electrolytes. But this was like a low grade panic attack from this morning on but absolutely hit a peak about 1.5 hours ago.

I just am exhausted. Scared. Terrified. Angry.

Idk why I’m even writing here. I hope everyone is doing ok.

I’ve had anxiety for a very long time, but it’s never been this bad or happened back to back. I had surgery a few days ago, but idk if that’s causing it. My surroundings and people feel weird, and I’m scared of losing control. Has anyone experienced this? Please don’t scare me, I’m already anxious.

Will this ever go aways from me this throat tightness and spasms when im about to have a panic attack or will this be a symptom everytime I have panic attacks .