#1 ·
Hey everyone, hope you're all doing well.🙂
Since this is my first time opening up about this here, please bear with me while I try to get straight to the point.
It all started about a year ago when I hit my first panic attack. I’d rather not relive the details, but everything just spiraled after that. The attacks started happening more often, and I became terrified that something was fundamentally broken inside me. It came with the whole classic package: racing heart, shortness of breath, chest pressure, and eventually, a downward slide into health anxiety and agoraphobia.
The root of it? My upbringing. Growing up, my family life was pretty chaotic—constant fighting, yelling, and people constantly pointing fingers at kids for every little mistake. I'm 23 now, and I finally managed to break away from that toxic cycle, thanks to my girlfriend, who I'm living with now.
During that rough patch, I went through a battery of tests to make sure I wasn't dying, and everything actually came back normal. Here is what I had done:
EKG😢done quite a few times since I ended up in the ER more than once.
Standard stuff: Blood pressure, pulse, and general physicals.
Pulmonary function tests, breathing studies, and a chest X-ray.
Brain MRI, plus scans of my cervical and thoracic spine.
Even some X-rays after I had to swallow liquid chalk or something similar.
Where I stand now:
I haven't had a full-blown panic attack in a while—I've managed to isolate them. But the lingering issues are my breathing and how I react to stress. Breathing is still a struggle; I feel suffocated in hot rooms or places with strong scents. As for stress, whenever I get into a heated argument or a negative discussion, it feels like my entire body just hits a wall. It’s like my system slows down and I lose all my strength to deal with it. It honestly feels like my body is running at 75% capacity. Since I'm naturally a worrier, I'm constantly obsessing over whether it's a heart issue because of all this mental and physical strain, though most people I talk to say these are just irrational fears driven by anxiety.
So, that’s the gist of it. If anyone has dealt with something similar or can offer some advice on how to find my footing again, I would truly appreciate it.
Since this is my first time opening up about this here, please bear with me while I try to get straight to the point.
It all started about a year ago when I hit my first panic attack. I’d rather not relive the details, but everything just spiraled after that. The attacks started happening more often, and I became terrified that something was fundamentally broken inside me. It came with the whole classic package: racing heart, shortness of breath, chest pressure, and eventually, a downward slide into health anxiety and agoraphobia.
The root of it? My upbringing. Growing up, my family life was pretty chaotic—constant fighting, yelling, and people constantly pointing fingers at kids for every little mistake. I'm 23 now, and I finally managed to break away from that toxic cycle, thanks to my girlfriend, who I'm living with now.
During that rough patch, I went through a battery of tests to make sure I wasn't dying, and everything actually came back normal. Here is what I had done:
EKG😢done quite a few times since I ended up in the ER more than once.
Standard stuff: Blood pressure, pulse, and general physicals.
Pulmonary function tests, breathing studies, and a chest X-ray.
Brain MRI, plus scans of my cervical and thoracic spine.
Even some X-rays after I had to swallow liquid chalk or something similar.
Where I stand now:
I haven't had a full-blown panic attack in a while—I've managed to isolate them. But the lingering issues are my breathing and how I react to stress. Breathing is still a struggle; I feel suffocated in hot rooms or places with strong scents. As for stress, whenever I get into a heated argument or a negative discussion, it feels like my entire body just hits a wall. It’s like my system slows down and I lose all my strength to deal with it. It honestly feels like my body is running at 75% capacity. Since I'm naturally a worrier, I'm constantly obsessing over whether it's a heart issue because of all this mental and physical strain, though most people I talk to say these are just irrational fears driven by anxiety.
So, that’s the gist of it. If anyone has dealt with something similar or can offer some advice on how to find my footing again, I would truly appreciate it.