Chronicle of my first panic attack
Note: I originally wrote this back in 2022, but I translated it and am posting it here because I feel it's worth sharing. This is also the story of the attack that started my GAD (General anxiety disorder).
It was a Wednesday, I remember (or maybe I don’t anymore). The day before, I had gone to a pharmacy doctor, and his diagnosis—made pretty hastily—was that I had low blood pressure and needed to stabilize it first before figuring out what was really going on with me. I took three doses: that afternoon, at night, and on Wednesday morning.
From the moment I woke up, I felt weird and dizzy—something that had already become normal in the past few months. But that morning, I noticed a symptom I hadn’t felt before. It was as if my soul wasn’t inside my body.
I went on with what had already become my independent adult routine. I left my apartment, ready for another day in the chaotic Mexico City. I got on the Metrobus, and when I arrived at the building where I worked, I decided to buy a coffee because, supposedly, I had low blood pressure, and I was afraid I might pass out.
I walked into the office, sat down, turned on my computer, and then it hit me—hard: I was dying. I started struggling to breathe, turned pale, felt my limbs go cold, and somehow managed to raise my hand to signal the person who was my boss at the time. I remember seeing my coworkers’ faces—they were terrified; they were genuinely worried about how I looked.
I explained that I wasn’t feeling well and that the day before, I’d been told it was probably my blood pressure. They helped me downstairs. They put me in a van. I lied, saying I was starting to feel better because I was embarrassed about being taken to the hospital. Deep down, I knew what was happening.
They dropped me off at my apartment, and I waited for my mom to pick me up. The whole time, I was struggling to breathe, but I no longer felt like my soul was leaving my body. Something inexplicable was pressing between my eyebrows, and I couldn’t stop thinking that air was entering my lungs but wasn’t filling them with oxygen. I started to panic, pulling at my hair, sometimes screaming into a couch pillow to muffle the sound.
When I saw my mom’s face, along with one of my aunts, I felt a deep sense of shame. I explained what had happened, and the first thing she said was: "There's nothing wrong with you." She was upset because in the 15 minutes it took her to get to my apartment (an eternity for me), I had called her about five times, begging her to hurry because something was happening to me, and I didn’t know what it was—but I was dying.
We arrived at the Red Cross. I explained how I was feeling and answered the dozens of routine questions. They ran a cranial nerve exam. They checked the blood and urine tests I had anxiously done a month earlier when I first started feeling “weird.” Everything was fine. My health was in excellent condition. How was that possible? I wondered.
Why was the doctor telling me I was fine when I felt like I was dying? Or rather: I felt like I had already died, over and over again.
The doctor said I was anxious, prescribed me an anxiolytic, and called the clinic’s psychologist to talk to me. When she arrived, she introduced herself with that kind of gentleness that all (or most) mental health professionals have. Then she asked the question: "How have you been feeling?"
"Bad," I said, and then I started crying. Crying everything I hadn’t cried in months, years—maybe a decade.
I cried because becoming independent was hard because I missed my city, my home, and my family. After all, school, work, and my ambitions were suffocating me at that time. I cried because just a few weeks earlier, my brother had been discharged from the hospital after nearly losing his life. And I cried because I realized anxiety had been present in my life all along, repressed, and I hadn’t recognized it until it turned into a disorder.
That Wednesday, I had my first panic attack. After that, they started happening almost every day. Something inside me just broke. That was the moment my battle, my journey, my torment, my whatever-you-want-to-call-it with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) began. Because I’ve seen it from so many different perspectives that, even five years later, I still don’t know how to describe this experience.
What I do know is that anxiety came into my life to show me that I needed a radical change in the way I lived and thought. Although it’s been a long process, today I can say that “suffering” from it has changed me for the better. It has helped me love myself, improve my mental and physical health, and build better habits overall. It has shifted my perspective on life and our existence in this abstract thing we call reality.
I’m sharing this small fragment not to seek sympathy, but empathy. As a reminder that self-love and mental health are the real foundation of a fulfilling life. I’m doing it because maybe you’re going through this, or maybe you know someone who is, and you don’t know what to say or how to help them. From my experience, it’s impossible to truly understand anxiety unless you’ve lived it, but sometimes, all it takes is saying the right words of support—or staying silent when needed.
I’m also sharing this because, after so much therapy, breathing exercises, yoga, meditation, CBD drops, and clonazepam, I have no doubt that the best thing for me is to spill out into the world everything that eats me up inside.
🫥 Sometimes remembering helps us realize how much we've improved. Thanks for reading!