In 2021, I was riding an Amtrak train when it derailed at 80 mph. Several of the cars, including the one I was in, fell onto their sides and slid a significant distance along the ground. Three people were killed.
After spending the night in a hotel, they arranged for me and several other passengers to get on another train to get us home. I didn’t think much of it, I just wanted to get home, but the moment the train got up to speed I realized I had made a mistake. I spent the entire journey in a state of extreme stress, on the verge of crying. This train (the Empire Builder) is timed so that you get to sit in the diner car and eat dinner while passing through the most scenic part of the trip, the Rocky Mountains of western Montana and northern Idaho. But I didn’t enjoy any of it. I remember staring at my dinner, desperately trying to hold myself together, wincing every time there was a bang or jolt (and for those who’ve never been on an Amtrak train - there are a lot of those).
I had never experienced an anxiety attack before, and based on this experience I never want to have one again. The train got to my home station at about six in the morning, and I didn’t sleep at all.
Anxiety stopped having nearly so much of a hold on me when I realized that there usually wasn't a "why", that it was just anxiety chasing its own ass and only pretending to have anything to do with the stimuli.
Agreed, it took a decent chunk of therapy for me to figure out that a lot of times I was reversing cause and effect. I’m not anxious about xyz because of whatever rationalization I came up with, it’s literally just my body dumping adrenaline and my brain looking for an explanation for why.
Trying to park at a mall, in Toronto, in early December one year (so Christmas shopping ramping up) ... amusingly for an appointment with a psychologist.
She had to come out at park the car for me.
Drivers in this city... so, so toxic.
It was right before realizing I'm in a burnout. Too much in my private life going on, kids, housing, study, full time jobs.
The last time before that must've been years, but I've been holding it in for as long as I could, I now realize.
Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn't hear a thing and I couldn't breathe.
That was the worst one I've ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I've learned how to calm myself down in therapy.
Started on Friday... still coming in waves. I had a breakdown a few weeks ago... just pushed myself too hard for too long...it was probably building up for at least a year. Went to the VA (veterans affairs, for those not in the US, the VA is the sole source of health care for many veterans in the US), and they started making adjustments to my anxiety and depression medications which eventually precipitated into a ER visit. A few days later, they got me hooked up with the mental health clinic where I talked to a provider about going on short-term disability while we're messing with my medication doses until I feel normal again. He says something along the lines "sounds like a good plan, sned me the paperwork."
Queue up to Friday, I get a call from the insurance company saying they got the paperwork from the provider, and it recommends I go back to work. Now I'm out of PTO, disability is denied, and I'm trying to decide whether I lose my job or go back to work on while tettering between "extreme anxiety" and "drug-induced haze" from all the new prescriptions.
I've never gotten it from weed but my friend has. It was pretty wild. I had no idea what to do, or even that it was a panic attack.
At first I just tried calmly talking about my own first experiences with weed, but it quickly became obvious it was serious so I told him we should go get some water, mainly just to get him away from our group of friends and somewhere quiet. But afterwards what he told me really helped was just having something to focus on and a goal to accomplish (the water).
Having someone like you there is a huge help. I have found that doing some physical activity can help by putting my consciousness in my body rather than my mind. I've never tried this, but I've heard that chewing on peppercorns can help. Xanax will also definitely help!
It’s usually something setting off memories of childhood abuse and tossing me into fight/flight/freeze mode. The “why” isn’t really the trigger itself so much as my brain having issues with hypervigilance.
Just a generally overwhelming day. Got slammed at the end of my shift, had to work over handling customers on top of the absolute mess my coworkers had left me, traffic was an absolute hellhole turning a 15-minute commute into 45, and when I got in, the air conditioner, at some point, had a malfunction so on a nearly 90 degree fahrenheit day, my house was almost boiling on the inside.
Was kinda the last straw, and I was rushing to get my pills.
Few days ago over an imaginary situation lasting 8 hours. I did write it all down, and I still have it saved, but it's pretty weird.
I wrote this down shortly after and it's just been residing in a note-taking app. Perhaps you could consider it NSFW since it discusses death in not the best manner.
I'll just plop it here into a spoiler if you want to read it:
:::spoiler Fucked up text
So, we had a discussion on 1st aid also involving CPR. Apparently mouth-to-mouth is also required where I live.
I tried to imagine such a situation, and over the course of around 8 hours spiralled into worse and worse thoughts as I kept overthinking every aspect of it more and more.
I'll try to just lay them into separate points:
I don't know how I'd deal with this in reality. Of course I wouldn't have 8 hours to overthink everything.
Of course, this is just imagination with lots of overthinking, but I often spiral into thoughts like this. It feels like I am internally fighting myself about what's right and what isn't. Twice I got into such thoughts so much I couldn't physically stand until I calmed down at least a bit.
:::
Sup.
I am an awful person.
I had one at work. Nothing bad was happening at work and there was no trigger that I could pin point. It just came over me like a wave and all of a sudden nothing felt real. It was like I was watching myself in a movie. Was also trying to hold in vomit. One of the worst ones I've had.
When I was a kid I got these weird flaps of what felt like dead skin inside my mouth on both of my cheeks, and when I tore them off my entire mouth and my lips got inflamed. I couldn't eat and had to be hospitalized for like 2 weeks. They told me they had no idea what it was but it might be Steven Johnson's syndrome. It kept coming back periodically, too, but each time it'd be way less severe and now I don't get it at all.
Was that anything like your experience? Just out of curiosity.
Yikes yeah that does kind of sound like it. I'm sorry you had to experience that. It's a shitty disease.
I developed a pretty bad ulcer on the inside of my cheek. It was super inflamed and my upper teeth rubbed it whenever they moved, causing quite a bit of discomfort. In retrospect it was probably just a bad apthuous ulcer (canker sore) but it didn't have the typical look of one, nor do I typically get them.
The kicker was that I was taking a course of Meloxicam, which is an anti inflammatory medication which is very much linked to SJS, so I panicked.
I work in critical care and have seen a lot of bad SJS/TEN (toxic epidermal necrolysis) cases and my mind immediately jumped to those. I've seen every inch of skin fall off of people.
Medical people are the worst hypochondriacs lol.
I got high and watched one of those "Breakdown" videos on YouTube where they have an "expert" come on and review movie scenes and such.
It was an ex-Marine talking about boot camp scenes in movies, and they got to Jarhead and talking about Gyllenhaal being transferred to the squad who just got back from a tour and they held him down to brand him.
I had a panic attack and swore from that moment that I would never join the military industrial complex. I know that's a very specific situation and all, but it still elicited such an explicit response in me.
Right now. Mostly just cause my brain felt like flying off the rails. Can't afford my meds right now, and yet we need $25k for our wedding still in 4 months, and we can't seem to dig ourselves out of the financial hole I dug us into after leaving my last job for my mental health and be incomeless for 3 months. Fun stuff for sure.