Shayla Parker, LCPC

As I see it, everyone has a thing they struggle with. It could be something horrible like chronic hallucinations or inability to make nice with others, something strictly organic like diabetes, or something easy to deal with once you cozy up to it and learn more about it. Panic disorder is decidedly the latter.
I’d not wish panic attacks on anyone, but I’ll take them as my Achilles Heel and consider myself lucky it isn’t something way worse.
Right before I began high school, age 14, something weird started to happen. When I found myself in frustrating or foreign situations, I found that I started to feel… strange. Physically strange. My arms would tingle, my heart would race, breathing got noticeably difficult, and sometimes I’d lose my lunch. Sleep was hard to come by. It lasted a few weeks, and disappeared once I got settled in to the new school.
Years later, age 28 or so, I had another bout that lasted about a week, this time right before moving to a totally new city. It faded once I moved.
On the day I turned 39, here we go again. Oh boy… Well, I dealt with this by adding a few year to my age — I figured I’d skate right past 39 and 40, tell people I was 41 or 42, and soak in the compliments about how well-​preserved I was. But it didn’t work — I continued to have panic attacks pretty regularly. The feeling that you’re about to stop breathing can really ruin your day, and it was a daily event for me — I really thought I was a changed person for the worse.
So I finally sought professional help. Shayla taught me about panic, about how avoidance of that which panics you can make the condition worse, and she did Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). CBT is where the patient applies thinking techniques right there in the office, (with additional practice at home) that cause the brain to re-​learn what is panic-​worthy. It worked. It continues to work, but thankfully it doesn’t rear its ugly head too often any longer.
I thank her from the bottom of my heart for her teaching. Perhaps the most important thing she taught me was that panic attacks are THE most treatable condition. The life metaphors are too numerous to list, but once I dealt with the condition head-​on, I was actually grateful to have experienced it. You heard me — grateful to have gone through the fear and panic.
But anyway, blah blah blah… in summary, don’t bite the bullet or self-​medicate, get counseling from an anxiety expert, learn CBT, I promise you wont regret it, and life will become way easier.