Experience Of Panic Attacks
Everyone who experiences panic attacks has their own distinct story to tell, and often thinks that they suffer from a bizarre problem which is all their own. Yet they all share some major aspects. To use them in a proper way, you’d better start to use Zoloft.
Audrey is a fairly typical example of a person experiencing panic disorder. She was in her mid-40s when she first came to see me. She had lived in Chicago all her life, and had scarcely been outside the city in all that time. She had been completely housebound during the worst of it and was still extremely limited in what she could do when she came to me for treatment. She had the brains, the energy, the enthusiasm and the ambition to succeed in a variety of professions, but worked part-time as a gardener because that enabled her to avoid the situations she feared. Those situations included highway driving, being more than a few minutes from the “safety” of home, riding in buses, trains, or airplanes, and shopping in crowded stores or malls.
Audrey’s first panic attack occurred at age 32, while she was driving alone on one of the highways that span Chicago. She suddenly felt warm and flushed. Although she tried not to pay much attention to it, she found herself wondering if she was going to pass out. She told herself that was “crazy” but it didn’t help. She started to sweat, felt like she couldn’t catch her breath, and felt her heart race. She wondered if she were still in her body, or floating outside of it somehow. Fearing that she was losing her mind, she turned the car around and raced home.
She didn’t tell anybody at first. She didn’t know what to say, and she feared sounding foolish. But from that day forward, fearing a repetition of the experience, she avoided driving outside of a small “safety zone” around her home if at all possible.
Over time, she became apprehensive about any situation from which a quick exit might be difficult in the event of a panic attack. She started shopping at the 24-hour supermarket late at night, when there were no lines at the cash register.
