I am writing this in the hope that it might ring true with even just one person who is a similar situation as I was when I felt down and trapped in fear because of panic attacks.
I was 31 when I had my first panic attack. I was sitting in the locker room at work talking to a co-worker when I started to feel very uncomfortable. My body started to feel a strange buzzing sensation, and my whole body began to tense up. At first I thought it might have been an allergic reaction to something, and then I began to fear it was something more serious like a heart attack. I ended up lying down on the bench in a state of near paralysis. As no one, especially me knew what was wrong I ended up going to hospital in an ambulance. After a few tests were done I was reassured that I wasn’t having a heart attack but a panic attack. I felt really embarrassed about it and still remember the look I got from one nurse who looked at me as if I was a mental case or something!
That was the first of many anxiety or panic attacks I was to experience over the next few years. I did not know what a ‘panic attack’ was until my doctor explained it to me. At first I thought he was talking rubbish and that I had something more seriously wrong with me. He did not give a lot of information about it but said I had developed an anxiety disorder. He prescribed some tablets to calm me down which I took for some months and they definitely made me feel less anxious. When I ran out of them I started to feel edgy until I got my next prescription. In the end I stopped taking them, as I feared I would become addicted or have bad side effects.
Sometimes at night I would wake with anxiety and every morning as I got up, I would check to see how anxious I felt in my stomach- the one thing always on my mind was “am I going to have a panic attack today”. Along with this I began to have thoughts that scared me as if I might go crazy and do something totally out of character in public or with the people close to me.
I was so stressed I started to lose confidence in my own ability to control my own life. It influenced many decisions I made for the next three years. Holidays, nights out, work trips all were influenced by this nagging fear of anxiety. Driving also started to become difficult as I feared being stuck in traffic or at red lights and if I had a panic attack I wouldn’t be able to operate the car. I felt helpless.
This however is a letter of hope. I am writing this to let others who might be experiencing something similar that I found a way out of my anxiety. I found the Panic Away program on the internet and was initially wary of buying it, as I had not heard of it before. Because it had a money-back guarantee I decided to take a chance and downloaded the e-book. As I read it I felt Mr. Barry was speaking directly to me. He knew exactly what I was going through and outlined a way to move out of the anxiety with a technique he calls the One Move.
This approach has made a world of difference. I applied the technique each morning (when I usually experienced worst anxiety) and immediately noticed a difference. Something was changing – it is hard to describe, like a light going on – It felt like I was not running away from the fear any more.
Some weeks passed without significant anxiety and then little by little I dared to do things I was avoiding – driving on my own, flying on my own, lots of stuff on my own where before I needed someone with me. One year later here I am writing this story feeling 100% better. I now do not fear anxiety coming back because I have moved beyond it.
That is what the techniques in Panic Away have taught me.
Although my time spent trying to cope with anxiety was very difficult, I learnt more about myself than ever before. I also learnt that I have all the resources within me to deal with this; I just needed someone to guide me, and that was Joe Barry.
