Dear Reader

At various times one hears or reads reference to "panic attacks" occurring in individuals with issues ranging from depression to schizophrenia to OCD to ASD.

My teenage experiences involved an almost complete sensory shutdown, I would become aware of a strong desire to escape a situation, (classroom usually) and an inability to physically do so. I would experience a kind of inward collapse, and a black silence accompanied by streams of tears. When forced to engage with the outside world through touch or my name, I would be unable to respond. When the moment passed (typically about 20 minutes) I would leave the room and school and ride my bike into town where my mother had a shop. I would leave my bike there and wander the town for a couple of hours, afterwards having no recollection of where I had been. On one occasion my father who picked me up from school and we sat in the car looking out at the ocean for an hour in silence.

I rarely experience such an shut down like this now and its form is much less severe, although still frightening. The best description I can give is a sensation of becoming encased in something like marshmallow, that restricts hearing and movement and takes away my ability to "think through" the moment.

In the previous few years however I have had a couple of fairly severe episodes that would also appear to be anxiety attacks. These took the form of sudden and severe chest pain, enough to knock me off my feet and take days to recover from. In both cases I was hospitalised under suspected hear attack, but no evidence of cardiac rupture was found. Following further tests involving treadmills, wires, injections of radioactive materials and a variety of ridiculously expensive and fascinating imaging equipment, my heart was pronounced unbroken and innocent.

Conclusion - anxiety attack. Nasty, painful, frightening but not fatal.

Knowledge is power.

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