When you have a broken arm, you get frustrated because no one understands how difficult it is for you to do things with your arm in a cast. When you're recovering from getting your wisdom teeth out, you get frustrated when people don't get how much it hurts to eat anything solid. When you get migraines, you get frustrated because other people don't know how badly it hurts.
When you have panic attacks, you get frustrated because no one understands that it's not an inability to handle stress and it's not just you overreacting but a legitimate medical problem. You get frustrated because people think telling you to "calm down" is an actual, viable solution to the problem you've likely been having for quite a while. You get frustrated because as scary as panic attacks are, there's nothing scarier than having to face them alone. You get frustrated because people think that just because you're an outgoing, happy person, it means that you can't suffer from problems like this.
When you have any type of anxiety or panic disorder, it can be the most frustrating thing in the entire world when people don't get how truly real it is. People who don't understand simply dismiss it as you being stressed out all the time and not knowing how to deal with it. What they don't understand is that this is something you can't control, something you can't turn off, something you can't stop. The only thing worse than people not understanding is when you're in the middle of an escalating attack and they just roll their eyes and tell you to "calm down."
So for anyone who is lucky enough to never have had to deal with the horrible ordeal that is a panic or anxiety attack, here is, in the best way I am capable of describing it, what it feels like to have a panic attack.
They can start from literally anything, or from nothing at all. There isn't always a specific trigger, which makes it that much scarier. I could be anywhere at all. In my room with friends, at the grocery store, in the middle of a lecture hall. For me, it always starts when I've been crying over something. I could be crying because I'm scared, mad, upset, really anything. I'll start to cry harder and harder and then I know it's happening because all of a sudden, my vision will blur and lose focus on the edges and I lose all sense of where I am. The only thing that matters is finding a place where I can collapse. If it holds out long enough, I can usually make it to the floor of a bathroom stall or behind a closed door but it usually ends up being on the floor in the middle of a room because I can't see right and my legs go weak underneath me. It's like all the strength just evaporates from my body and I'm completely helpless. Then, my heart starts this heavy racing and thumping, to the point where it feels like it might beat right out of my chest if I don't get it under control. I can't feel the floor under me and I'm trying desperately to find something, anything around me to grasp onto so that I don't completely lose it but I can't see or hear anyone around me. All I can focus on is how short my breath is getting and no matter how hard I try I can't take a deep breath and I'm losing all of the air around me and my heart is thumping so hard it hurts and I can't see straight and then I just feel cold. I lose all sense of time, and I will have no idea how long I've been laying on the ground. I'll lay or sit there for anywhere from 10-30 minutes trying to get my breathing under control, but to people around me it just looks like someone laying on the floor, white as a sheet, gasping for air and crying. After I get my breathing somewhat back to normal, I'll be weak for hours, covered in a cold sweat, and I'll be so pale it's scary. I always have to rest for a significant amount of time and then drink some coffee or tea and eat something before I can regain color and start to function again.
So for anyone who is, once again, lucky enough to not know what these feel like, know this: These attacks are terrifying, inconvenient and at their absolute worst, debilitating. They're painful and humiliating and they make you feel like you're the weakest person alive. So please, try to be a little more understanding if someone in your life has to deal with these because I can promise you that knowing they have your support will help more than you will ever know.
