1: Panic attacks

A cheery way to start the newsletter, don't you think?

A few days ago, I nearly had a panic attack. It was my fault - I am terrified of the sea, yet I was taking a surfing lesson, my hair scraped back by salty water and rippling water bobbing my board up and down. In front of me were five foot waves crashing into white, behind was water that stretched until it met the sky. I felt the bubbles of air appearing in my throat and thought, ‘here we go again.’

Only, this time, unlike all the panic attacks that have come before, I found my way to normal breathing again. To me, that feat was no different from a superhero pushing back a boulder that should have crushed their wrists. This power is new. It is undoubtedly developed from working the oesophagus and amygdala overtime with too-frequent panic attacks, the muscles strengthened with every rep of heaving for breath.

Panic attacks have been the only constant in my body of late - 2022 was a year entirely defined by them. They happened in February, outside a tacky bar in Covent Garden; in March, stood with my toes touching the yellow line on Platform 8 of Clapham Junction station; in June, clutching the walls in the stairwell of my office as a friend stroked my back.

I’ve tried to think about what could have caused my brain to continuously put my body into such a state of alertness. In an attempt to explain these attacks, I’ve made lists of bad things that happened to me or in the world, but the timeline doesn’t fall into a sensible event-trigger-attack fashion. That is confusing, because it means the Bad Things that happened just folded themselves around the pre-existing anxiety, like the cover of a book. They gave the worry some structure, but they weren’t the reason it existed.

These were not the first panic attacks I’d ever had. They began in the beige upstairs hallway of my mum’s house. I don’t know how old I was - maybe 10 or 11, old enough to be eating strawberry Hubba Bubba bubble gum that slid down my throat as I gasped for breath, but young enough to think that chewing an oozing ball of plastic was nice. I had been told off for doing or saying something I shouldn’t, stormed up the stairs crying. But then the wails started getting caught in my chest, like I couldn’t finish the scream. I was sucking air but none could reach my lungs.

I don’t remember much more from that first time, but I guess it eventually stopped and I didn’t ask anyone for an explanation about what that feeling was. The sensation remained unnamed for over 15 years, until that day in June when my friend said, ‘Chloe, you are having a panic attack’. At the time it felt like confrontation but since it feels like relief.

‘Panic attacks feel like you’re dying.’ That’s how other people who have them often describe the sensation. It’s a movie trope that the man who griped his heart at bad news and was stretchered off didn’t have a heart attack after all - he just panicked. 

Personally, I have never felt the need to call 999. It’s not necessarily because I don’t think it could be the end, but instead because it feels so ridiculous to think that there could be a cure. That a doctor could put an oxygen mask on me or hang a drip to me and the feeling would be over seems absurd. There can surely be no way out, nothing that will ever make the kaleidoscopes in my periphery disappear or help me gain control of my lungs again.

When I was telling my panic-free friend about one of my panic attacks, she asked me about what the worst part of them are. I landed on the fact that there’s an inability to self-soothe. Perhaps that says a lot — that I’d be ok with being starved of oxygen or feeling like my heart might stop if I was in control of it. The fact that panic attacks involve losing face is the cruelest twist in the spiral of mental health; that you have no power over what you look like or say as your brain shrinks inside your skull makes them even more anxiety inducing. Incidentally, this is the same reason I hate the sea - an unregulated current, the unknown force of the tide, the knowledge that no matter how strong or smart you are, you can’t control it.

It is ironic, then, that panic attacks are physiologically a form of control. They are your body taking charge of survival. The short, fast breaths are it demanding more oxygen; the heart beats faster to get blood to your muscles; we go shaky as our blood sugar spikes to give us the energy to run. Of course, these mechanisms fail - we are useless when panicking - but they prove that the body can overpower the conscious. It’s actually almost endearing how far the body will go to protect us, overruling the parts that logically know we don’t need to run from a harsh text message or big crowd.

This time, the current of panic couldn’t rip through my body. I calmed myself, paddled back to the shore, shook it out my system and then waded back in, simply to prove I could. Unfortunately, this isn’t a movie and it didn’t end with me surfing a point break straight into the beach. Instead, I got whacked in the ribs by a stray board someone lost in a crashing wave, then called it a day. Because this isn’t a movie, I am also not a superhero, and that power won’t last. One day, the tide will turn and I will not have control of my windpipes again.

Until then, I am relishing feelings. When you are on the edge of panic, anything can be miscalculated as terror. You feel your chest warming from happiness or the pitter-patter of anticipation and, before you know it, you’re gripping your chest to stop yourself from purging air. The goal becomes to avoid any big sensation, so you opt for dullness. Then one day you realise you laugh without hyperventilating, feel a bit off without spiralling into a worry that leaves you with your head between your knees or even start to panic, strapped to a surfboard, without being overtaken by an attack.

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I really hope this isn’t relatable for you (is that a really bad way to start a newsletter?). If it is, I’m sorry, but I’d love to know: how do you deal with panic attacks?