Panic Attacks: Horrible at First, but Then Make Me Grow

Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash

Since today is World Mental Health Day, I think this is the right time to post a story about mental health. However, I’m not a psychologist. I’m just going to share my experience which is related to mental health — this is not a seeking-attention-post — here I am just aiming to make all of us realize that mental health is not a trivial matter. Taking care of our mental health is just as important as taking care of our bodies. Because if our mental health is impaired, our lives can also be disrupted and damaged. The importance of mental health can’t be underestimated.

How Panic Attacks Disturbed My Life

I had panic attacks that lasted for several months. It was really torturing because panic attacks could happen suddenly, without me knowing when it would happen. But most often it happened when I woke up in the morning. My body was shaking, my chest felt tight and felt so hard to breathe, my heart was pounding fast, I felt dizzy and nauseous, and the worst thing was: my body felt numb. It was hard for me to move my hands and feet. My body felt very weak and I felt like my soul is leaving my body. All I could do was sitting on the floor, waited for the panic attacks to end.

How it really disturbed my life: it could even make me feel afraid to sleep (at night) because I knew the panic attack could occur again when I wake up in the morning.

How I Dealt with Panic Attacks

Knowing it was really torturing, I searched through the internet about how to deal with panic attacks. I found several ways to be tried, at least these are the first aid that can be done when the panic attacks occur:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit down.
2. Close your eyes and focus on catching your breath. I tried the 4–7–8 breathing method.
3. Remembering that this is only temporary and will pass.
4. Thinking about happy things.

Those are the first aid that I tried and fortunately worked for me! I felt more relaxed after doing that and could continue my activity.

I realized, I don’t want to be stuck in this situation forever. I should find how to heal myself because my life still has to go on. We all know, to solve every problem, we have to get to the root of the problem. I find that the root of my panic attacks is: a painful past that I haven’t gotten out of my head yet. So I was determined that I had to get it out of my head —related to this, I will write about ‘the art of letting go’ too.

So, what did I do get it out of my head to recover?

1. The first thing that is easiest to do is, to stay away from the thing that can trigger me being hurt again.
2. Talk to people I love; my friends and family.
3. Traveling.
4. Listening to uplifting songs.
5. Doing fun things.
6. Learning new things.
7. Diffusing essential oils to make me relax.
8. Back to my old hobby: writing and reading. (umm however…I never thought I could go back to my old self but I found its fun again hahaha)

I admit that it’s not that easy to recover. It really takes time. During that process in the whole time until I successfully got it out of my head, the panic attacks still occurred sometimes. But it’s okay, that’s the process.

If some of you ever experienced the same thing, don’t worry too much. Believe in yourself that you can overcome it and this is only temporary. All you need to do is, to focus on yourself, to heal yourself. Embrace yourself. Take care of yourself first thing first.

Don’t blame the situation, but accept it. Because, accepting unwanted situations is part of your self growth. If you don’t accept the situation, you will always be stuck in there and you won’t grow.

And also, in addition, feeling sad is normal because we are humans. We are not humans if we don’t feel sad or happy. Allow yourself feeling sad, and try to always validate your emotions like “I’m feeling sad now. It’s okay. I can also be happy after this.” It will lighten your burden.