What is panic attack?

The ambulance arrives at the A 8c E Department and a young woman is helped through the hospital doors. She is pale and shaking, and breathing erratically... a suspected heart attack. Hospital staff gently encourage her to calm down as they spend the next couple of hours putting her through a number of tests. Jane is terrified; such feelings as she has just experi¬enced have never affected her before and she is convinced there is something terribly wrong - pains in her chest, ringing in her ears, faintness and dizziness and difficulty in getting her breath. These could be symptoms of a number of serious disorders.

'You can go home now, Jane,' the doctor tells her eventually. 'You have just experienced a severe anxiety attack. Nothing else wrong, just visit your GP in the next couple of days and he will prescribe something to settle your nerves.'

Jane sits and waits for her husband to collect her and take her home. Her mind is spinning, and although she is partially comforted by the doctors assurance that there is nothing seriously wrong, surely the frightening feelings she experi¬enced can't be as harmless as the doctor said? She has always been so healthy and now in her mid-twenties she is happily married with a toddler and a young baby. She feels there was no reason for her to have gone through such an overwhelming experience and is mortified at the thought of having made such a fool of herself in public.

By the time Mike collects her, Jane is almost back to her normal self. 'What came over you?' he asks. 'I was told you fainted in the street. You’ve never fainted in your life!

'I felt faint,’ Jane admits. 'But I didn't actually pass out. I was so frightened, my legs turned to jelly and I just sat down on the pavement. That's when someone sent for an ambulance - they thought I was having a heart attack. Surely anxiety couldn't have had such a devastating effect? Why did it happen? What if it happens again?

Next day Jane visits her GP. 'Lots of people may have an anxiety or panic attack,' she is told as she is prescribed a week's supply of tranquillisers, given a pep talk and told to relax and stop worrying.

The family is reassuring, reminding her that she has recently got over a bad cold which hung around for a couple of weeks. 'You're just a bit run down,' her mother tells her. How comforting. A few days resting at home with her mother and sister helping with the children, and Jane feels she will be back to normal.

A week later Jane has almost forgotten her frightening experience in the High Street. She leaves the children with her mother while she and Mike visit the supermarket and do the weekend shopping. What a relief, she thinks ... no unpleasant symptoms, everything is back to normal. She goes with her mother to buy clothes for the children. Nothing untoward happens and Jane feels confident enough to make the next trip to the supermarket on her own.
The supermarket is warm and bright; the usual crowd of weekend shoppers bustle about. Suddenly the lights seem to flicker, Jane's eyes are playing tricks and the noise of the people around her is overwhelming. It's happening again, she thinks, as she tries to fight the rising fear which is becoming difficult to control. Oblivious of the other shoppers she abandons her shopping trolley and escapes through the nearest checkout to get to the car park, where to her relief the frightening feelings subside almost immediately.

The way to stop these feelings recurring must be to avoid the supermarket altogether for the time being. Jane feels that the constant worrying is beginning to affect her in other ways and she feels on edge and jittery all the time. Shopping locally seems to be the answer, and all goes well at first until one day as she is walking along the street the dreaded feelings start building up once again. She feels unsafe and afraid - but what is she afraid of? Not of the shops nor the street, but of the feeling of fear itself.

Time to return to the GP. This time Jane breaks down and cries in the surgery as she tells him she is afraid she is going out of her mind.

A course of antidepressant drugs will help, the doctor tells her, but he will refer her to a psychologist for therapy — unfortunately there is a long waiting list and it could be several months before she can get the help she needs to overcome her panic attacks. In the meantime she should contact one of the self-help groups and learn to manage her recovery.

Perhaps you can identify with Jane and need to know what is the next step to managing your fears. You may not be suffering from panic attacks but have other deep-seated problems such as chronic anxiety; you may suffer from one or many phobias or some other nervous problem that you are desperate to overcome.

Where do you start? First of all you have to learn to face your fears and not be frightened by them. Fear of the fear is the shadow that hangs over you, and once you have mastered that fear you can then tackle the other problems. It wont be easy, but remember: if you had a broken leg you would have to face weeks of physiotherapy, often painful, before you could walk properly again.

Many anxious people cannot bear to read descriptions of symptoms, but you do not 'catch' feelings you read about, even if your imagination makes you feel uncomfortable. Keep reading and you will be surprised at your relief at knowing you are not alone or different from everyone else.



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