Anxiety and Panic Attacks, How I Beat Them!

The quiet bedroom is lit by the soft, green glow of the digital alarm clock. Occasionally the light flickers as the digits change slowly counting the night away. It's two fifty am and already the sweating has started. With each flicker of light the heart rate and breathing increases in tempo, already they are as if I'm running up hill. By the time the clock reaches three, my heart's pounding like an out of sync three cylinder engine. Now the pain begins and the fear grips like a steel claw around my heart.

I sit upright and try to control the panic and fear; mopping the sweat from my face, I force myself to the edge of the bed. Convinced once again that this is my last moment and that my heart is about to beat for the last time. I head for the bathroom and slurp water from the tap like a child. I feel a little better now I'm upright, but the pressure inside and the fear are still there. Staring into the mirror I feel for my pulse as if I want to know the very instant it's going to stop. This is the fifth night in a row it's happened and I'm convinced that the end is nigh.

I was self-employed over worked, overweight, and far too busy to sit and eat a proper meal it was always chips on the run. I was too busy to go for a walk or take exercise, and anyway surely the amount of work I got through in the day was exercise enough.

On a night my wife and I discussed work whilst pushing down another meal and trying to grab a few minutes in front of the TV. The following weekend things came to the boil. I had shooting pains down my left arm I knew from other people’s encounters with heart attacks that that was a major symptom, I'd been feeling faint and dizzy all day. I walked the dog around the block trying to ward of the fear. The pain decreased slightly. Now as I sat back in the chair it began again. My heart was beating as if it was about to burst I could hear the blood pumping in my ears. My wife occasionally glanced over at me, she could see my discomfort.

"Let's send for the Doctor," She got no argument from me. Within a short while, the locum Doctor arrived. He took my blood pressure and all the usual things. I was waiting for him to pronounce me dead.

" I don't think it's your heart. But you must go see your GP tomorrow, I think it's indigestion."

I decided that the man knew nothing about it and convinced myself that I was still going to die that night from a heart attack. When three o'clock arrived and I'd gone through my nightly panic, I dressed and went down to wait for the final attack and the ambulance to cart me off. Now twenty years on, it sounds stupid, but at the time it was very real and I was frightened. I sat the whole night taking my pulse, not until around seven did I fall asleep on the couch. The next day I was shattered when I went to the GP's. I tried to explain the fear the pain, it was difficult my emotions swelled up and I was sobbing like a child. It took some while to calm down, but I felt better.

An ECG was arranged and I went off to hospital some days later. In between the nightly attacks still hit me and slowly I was feeling worse as the lack of sleep took its toll. When I finally went to hospital, I was totally wiped out. I sat in the waiting room feeling very ill. The panic attacks were happening any time of day now. I would start to breathe awkwardly and then start feeling dizzy.

You want to catch the nurse's eye and you want her to smile reassuringly at you, but she just bustles past far too busy with her sheets of paper and talking to the other nurses. Eventually it is your name they are calling and you follow the nurse down the corridor. After being wired up and giving a sample of blood my blood pressure was again measured, then it was back out into the waiting room and wait in line to see the doctor. It really didn't matter at this point what they said the problem was I knew I was still having a heart attack. I remember as I sat down feeling slightly light headed and thinking 'well if it happens here I'm in with a chance'. The young doctor wound me up straight away, with his sloppy manner and obvious dislike for everyone. He glanced at me read the folder before him, then without looking up stated ' Simple obesity that's your problem' I felt like explaining that there was nothing simple about being fat, I'd fought it since I was ten years old. 'Your heart's in relatively good shape for someone so overweight’ he said it almost grudgingly. " there's a slight murmur but nothing to worry about"

I was angry as hell when I came out of there. He'd referred me to another department for them to check out the indigestion, but that was all. Apart from telling me to lose weight or I really would have a heart attack. They'd been telling me that for all my life; one way or another, and I began to wonder if that's where my fear came from.

Things were not improving, the night attacks were every bit as bad and I was beginning to fear going to bed. My GP gave me sleeping tablets and tablets to calm me down, tablets to take through the day, and tablets to take at night. I began to rattle with the tablets.

A holiday seemed like a good idea, but as soon as we got to Tenerife I was just as bad as I'd been at home. I had checked up where the nearest hospital was as soon as I arrived, and made sure my wife new just how to contact all the necessary people when I had my heart attack. I managed to totally spoil the holiday with my constant worries and fears, the nights were even worse than at home, and if I had any sort of alcoholic drink I really felt dreadful.

I was on a different sleeping tablet and it took me until lunchtime to feel as if I was even slightly human. They were not stopping the night attacks and seemed only to take effect at five in the morning. It was now over six months since they had begun, and at thirty-five I was feeling seventy. My emotions were sky high and I'd burst into tears at the slightest thing. Back from the holiday, and there was the usual heap of mail waiting. We waded through it. Eventually I saw the specialist regarding the constant indigestion that was adding to the misery. His only conclusion was I should lose weight, and he expected it to get worse before better, but for the time being there was nothing he could do other than suggest that I keep taking the tablets. Twelve months on and I was still in the same position. I'd cut out fatty foods and tried my best again to lose weight, but I was just so tired the whole time I really didn't have the will power to try anything much. I sold off part of the business at a ridiculously low price simply to get rid of some of the work and cut down a bit.

Once the trauma of that was over things eased slightly, although the sale had been difficult to say the least. My next big mistake was trying another holiday. We went to Tunisia in March and the weather was very changeable. Some days it was absolutely freezing, Europe was buried in snow at the time. My depression had reached its lowest point and life was beginning to feel a real burden. I'd lost control of everything it seemed. I decided that perhaps rather than wait for this heart attack to hit me unexpected I'd end it myself and regain control of the situation. At the time it seemed very logical and quite the right thing to do.

That night my three o'clock call was very bad, the pain was right the way through me, it ran down both arms and I was writhing in agony for perhaps twenty minutes. I walked about feeling desperately afraid, I made peace with God and decided that I should leap over the balcony and out into the night and end it there. I'm not sure what really stopped me but I somehow found the strength not to do it, because by far the easiest option was to jump.

Back home again and things were still as bad, if not worse. I tried to start a regime of nightly walks, but at first, I was so tired that the effort of putting on my coat seemed enough. They helped and I knew they did, it gave me encouragement to keep at them. I began to try and think of a way to fight back, but what was I fighting. Was it just myself that I needed to defeat.

One day I called at the local library and looked up all the books on stress and panic, on blood pressure and heart attacks. It's not always the best thing to do, you imagine every symptom in the book, but at least I was finding out was going on. It was the first time I'd come across the term 'fight or flight' which meant that your body goes through a whole load of internal changes ready for battle stations. All the books on stress mentioned meditation as a good way of fighting stress. I borrowed books on Yoga and meditation and began looking into these ancient sciences for help.

The books were a help but not enough. The lady at the library suggested that I try yoga, I had many reservations about doing it. I finally enrolled for a Yoga class at the local night school. The lady at the enrolment was very negative and I think she tried to put me off, saying that there were only ladies enrolled on the yoga class. I asked if it was just a ladies class, she said no was open to anybody but men don't usually do that sort of thing do they.

I must say I did feel rather stupid and out of place, but the yoga teacher was very kind and understanding and she put me out to the side of the class. At first it was painfully hard, not just the exercises most of which I couldn't do, but I had a room full of leotard clad women all staring suspiciously at me.

At the end of that first session, my teacher asked if she could have a word with me.

"Don't be discouraged," she said, "is there any help I can give you."

I told her my problem, and she gave me a very simple breathing exercise but she said I should practice anytime, and in particular when I felt panic attack was about to come on.

With her encouragement, I kept attending classes, and very soon, the leotards had accepted me as part of the class, some would even come and ask how I was getting on.

I had practised my breathing exercise at every opportunity, but I was not sure that it was making any difference. Then one night when the three o'clock attack happened I got up as usual and went down and sat in front of the fire which was still smouldered. My heart raced I had severe headache, and I gripped my own wrist to check my pulse. My heart rate was hundred and 30 bpm when I began the exercise, and for the first time suddenly my heart rate dropped. It fell to 79 bpm, and then down to 69 bpm. I was overwhelmed, elated by the fact that I suddenly felt in control. I probably sat about an hour in front of the fire still not daring to go back to bed, but I felt now that I probably would survive until the morning.

It was slow, dreadfully slow, and the attacks still kept on coming, but I had peaked and now I knew I could descend back into normal life. Each day I meditated, my yoga teacher gave me a number of different scenarios that I could run through in my mind to help divert the fear and panic. Whenever I had a moment I would go through the breathing exercise and meditation. I started walking again and every night before I went to bed whatever the weather I went for a 1 mile walk. I would sing silly little songs as I walked. We lived in a semirural area at that time and know lots of pleasant walks along country lanes. I'm sure it was the combination of exercise and meditation that worked like magic on my troubled mind.

I asked the doctor if it was all right for me to drop some of the tablets, and that in itself felt to be a major victory. Each time I controlled the panic also felt like a small victory. I felt a little like King Canute who tried to stop the tide, except I was able to stop the tide of panic waves that had swept over me and made my life miserable for over seven years.

There were many factors that brought on this episode, and it is Époque of my life that I hope that I never have to go revisit. Two or three years prior to this, I had been made redundant from a job that I really enjoyed. I had worked for the company for fifteen years, since I was 17 years old. This event I found very traumatic, we had just moved house and had a large mortgage, there were no engineering work to be found anywhere in Yorkshire at that time, and I had no idea what I would do.

The new little businesses went well, but they were 24/7 commitment, days that we were not working in our retail outlet we were trailing round wholesalers buying goods for the week.

I played guitar for many years and played in groups in pubs and clubs around the country, but once I became self-employed there didn't seem time for that. And I think giving up my music was another factor that brought on my illness.

I taught myself to play keyboard and decided that I would go playing again this time as a solo entertainer. I went for singing lessons to boost my confidence as much as anything. I contacted one of the agents I had used previously with the groups and he gave me a few bookings in some small pubs. I was certainly nervous when I did my first gig, and I even had a panic attack during one of the songs, I managed to hold on and although I was completely shattered at the end of the night I felt at last that I could beat this thing. So much so that in 1990 I went full-time as a professional solo entertainer, eventually spending seven years working hotels, holiday camps, and cruise ships.

Something that helped me, was to remind myself whenever I had an attack and however bad I felt it was that I had survived these feelings many times before.

It's quite easy to feel yourself foolish people say "pull yourself together" "don't be silly there's nothing wrong with you". You are not foolish and it is not a matter of simply pull yourself together, but I truly believe that taking tablets and visiting your GP is not the answer. You have to look for your own answer, I found mine, it did not find me; I had to make a serious effort to look for it, and now I am so glad that I was able to find it.

I found this quite hard to write simply because it reminded me of such a painful time, it is now probably 20 years since I last real panic attack.