iPanic

My hubbyface & I.

I watch a lot of reality shows. I mean, a lot.. But my favorite by far is "True Life." It's the only thing airing on MTV that I watch and it's been around for about 10 years. They pick a very wide range of subjects. I've watched everything from "I'm a drug addict" to "I'm eloping." They even aired one not too long ago called "I panic" about 3 young adults battling panic attacks & anxiety disorders.

I have panic disorder. The show showed some extreme cases. Two of the girls couldn't drive, ever.. not even around their own neighborhoods. One couldn't leave her house and had to cancel her wedding because of it. And there was a guy who lived on Staten Island and couldn't leave because he hyperventilated even looking at bridges.. I went through two or three different medications before finding one that has really helped me. I haven't had a panic attack since June. And even then it was the first I had in months.

My experiences were pretty limited to crowds.. More specifically at work when I was a customer service rep. I worked in a call center with hundreds of other people and sometimes the fact that I could hear them all talking at once would make me nervous and eventually cause me to panic. The first severe one that I had was when my parents took my sister & out for our birthday. (She's 2 years older than me but our birthdays are 9 days apart.)

We went out to eat at The Olive Garden. At the time I think my hair was neon orange, I had all of my piercings in (eyebrow, lip, ears at 2g, etc.) So I was used to being stared at. But for some reason it hit me really wrong that day. I was at the table waiting on our food and some guy was staring at me and his table of four were whispering, everyone in the damn restaurant was whispering it seemed like. I flipped out and left the table, locked myself in a bathroom stall to cry. A cramped stall was probably the last place I should have gone but it was the only place that was empty.

My husband and I met when we were both working at the call center. My panic disorder got worse over time and eventually got to the point where I was anxious if I knew he wasn't at work or if I wasn't sitting with my friends around me. I remember sitting out in the hall one day, outside the bathroom, and calling him bawling, he could barely understand me and I had no idea why I could catch my breath or stop crying.

I've dealt with panic attacks in my mom. It seems like it would have been easier knowing that nothing was actually going to happen to me. And knowing how to usually calm someone down who was experiencing the same feelings I was then. It didn't. It actually upset me more because all I could think was "Why can't I stop this?"

When I realized how badly it was effecting me at work I started seeing a doctor. It was to the point that I was leaving in the middle of the day because I couldn't calm down. My husband (boyfriend/fiance at the time) would sometimes have to leave work to take me home, or my parent's would have to drop whatever they were doing to come get me because I couldn't drive when I was like that.

But this didn't happen to me every day. It didn't happen every time I went to work or every time I was in a crowd. Just sometimes.