Attacks Occur Almost Daily Now

[slider9499]

July 2, 2007

I am a 45 year old male who suffers from panic and anxiety attacks for the last several years. But these attacks have gotten worse and worse over the last several months due to my personal situation (unemployed, adopting a baby, lawsuit, selling my house). To say I am under pressure is an understatement.

I had not had a full blown panic attack since March but 3 weeks ago (June 10) I had the worse chest pain I had had in the last 20 years. The pain went from my outside left rid all the way into the middle of my chest. I couldn't breathe for a few seconds and the pain was VERY sharp. It stopped after several seconds but my heart was pounding.

Since that date the pains have been coming more and more frequently and closer together. Where as before they would happen every few months, now they seem to happen every day. This morning I had another bad one. While food shopping I got a sharp pain in my left chest that went again to the middle of my chest. Again, trouble breathing and the pain last for a few minutes. It is now 3 1/2 hours since that happened and there is still discomfort and pain in those same areas

Last week I went to St Francis Heart Hospital in Nassau County, NY (one of the best heart hospitals in the area). They gave me a battery of tests, echo, EKG, a stress test before and after my echo test, blood tests, chest x-rays, etc. ALL tests came back negative. They told me that the only other thing they could do is an angiogram to test for any blockage but this is risky. For the record, this is my second ECK in 2 weeks. I also had some test to determine blood flow in my caryatid arteries and heart - again, all negative.

As I said, I am 45 years old, my blood pressure is about 110/85, and my cholesterol level is 112. I do not have any history of heart trouble in my family (my dad left us when I was 1 year old so I have no idea about his history although I know he is still alive). I do not smoke cigarettes but do smoke one cigar per day when the weather is good. Never did drugs and drink about one glass of red wine per day.

My fear is that there is something very wrong with me and the doctors are missing it, even though I went to four hospitals and they all told me the same thing. I know panic attacks happen at anytime for no apparent reason. What concerns me is that they are now happening almost every day, the pain is getting worse and the pain seems to stay with me more than just a few minutes. It seems to last for hours at a time (like today).

Any advice, suggestions, contacts, etc. that you can provide would be VERY appreciative.

 

[sabbath92002]

Try Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT). There are some ACT self-help workbooks that might help, such as "The Worry Trap: How to Free Yourself from Worry & Anxiety using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy". Exercise helps too. Slow & deep breathing from your gut helps.

 

[Jolie34]

Hi Slider

I think most people that get panic attacks can relate to your story. It would seem you are under a lot of stress at the moment which makes you tense, the muscles tighten and its harder to breathe normally (most of the time you wont even realise) So i'm guessing you subconsciously associated chest pains to stress and then worked out stress and chest pains could be related to your heart.

If you have been to the hospital from a medical point of view it sounds as though you have nothing to worry about (easier said than done I know) Maybe try to Belly breathe ....




Abdominal Breathing

One of the most important things that will help you during a Panic Attack is to control your breathing. Although it is the last thing on your mind, and very hard to control, it is very important as it will calm you down. Panic Attack sufferers will almost inevitably suffer from hyperventilation and must learn abdominal breathing.

Slow, abdominal breathing alone has been shown to abort panic attacks and prevent them. But for a person with panic disorder, learning slow abdominal breathing can be quite difficult. People with panic disorder are almost always chest breathers. The worst thing you can tell a person during a panic attack is to breathe deeply. It takes a lot of practice to breathe with the diaphragm without a great deal of training, but if you can learn to breathe slowly with your diaphragm, you will not panic!

You must practice abdominal breathing so that when you have a Panic Attack you can put it into action.

Here are some tips on learning diaphragmatic breathing. Start while lying on your back. Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly (between navel and ribs). Focus on allowing the belly to rise easily when inhaling and fall when exhaling. HOLD THE CHEST STILL with your hand on your chest. The objective is to breathe all the time with the belly (diaphragm) and not the chest. You are aiming at about 6 breaths per minute. This is a slow relaxed process. There should be no sense of effort.

If the belly won't move and the chest continues to move, put a weight on the belly between the navel and ribs (where the hand was). A heavy book will do, but something that is not painful and weighs 3 - 5 pounds is best. Focus on allowing the weight to rise on inhale and sink on exhale. Again - no effort!

If still no success, kneel on all fours, i.e., assume a position of a four-legged animal. In this position, the chest tends to be locked in place, forcing the diaphragm to take over the breathing task. Slow and easy, no effort. Once you learn to breathe with your belly, you must practice, practice, practice.

The first week, you should practice for only a few breaths at a time while lying on your back. Then gradually extend the practice time to 15 minutes. When this can be done comfortably, you should start to practice while sitting. Then standing. Then walking.

After you can breathe with the belly in all positions, you should practice in different situations. Start with easy situations like sitting in a car. Then sitting in a restaurant. Progress until you can breathe with the belly in situations that previously felt un-natural and uncomfortable.

IMPORTANT: If at any time during the breathing training, you feel dizzy or light-headed, then stop the exercise, rest, and try again in a few minutes. The breathing training is not about being tough or facing your fear. It is about learning to breathe to normalize the bodily functions.

You may find it helpful to have someone doing this breathing exercise with you as they 'take control' and get you to breathe on their command.

Ok, so these techniques may not be very sophisticated but they work and may help you:

Also a little medical knowledge can be a bad thing to us panickers as we tend to analyze every twinge and jump to the worst conclusion. Hope some of this can help you out.

Wendy

 

[symphonyodd]

I could CRY.. thank you SO much for this post.. for the OP for sharing his story (it describes me perfectly) and for the second poster who told about the breathing. THANK YOU~!

I have been having the WORST panic attacks.. like.. I seriously think I am going to die.. I have chest pains.. arm pains.. my doctor said it is anxiety.. It is so comforting to know my symptoms are not just 'mine' alone.

 

[random]

Slider9499 and SymphonyOdd,
I really sympathize with you! I used to have panic attacks and I used to HATE to go to bed at night because I KNEW I would be on my feet, hyperventilating and believing I was dying when I woke up in the night. I was prescribed Prozac - and this really helped control or reduce the attacks. I also had Xanax to take when the episode hits (gotta watch that one - Xanax is addictive). I was on the Prozac for 8 months and remained on the Xanax for attacks for about 4 months afterwards. I am unusual in that Prozac gives me insomnia and common remedies like Benedryl won't help me sleep. Because of the sleeplessness, I tried taking Trazadone. Trazadone is technically an antidepressent but I causes sleepiness and can be prescribed for that reason. I wish I had not mentioned the Trazadone to a co-worker - she stared at me and told me that people in mental institutions are given that to calm them down. Whatever - taking half a pill once every two weeks or so was sometimes the only sleep I got - it's very strong.
At my worse - I would take Ambien (sleeping pill) Prozac and Xanax and Trazadone before going to bed and, in the worst cases, I could still have a panic attack. THe Xanax helped but I gotta say - it is so addictive - even at low doses. I think I was chemically, not psychologically, addicted to Xanax so I had panic attacks when I WENT OFF Xanax. SO - my sisterly advice is if you do use Xanax, make sure it is not routine use (every day). and keep the dose as low as you can.
I would wake up with a sense of unreality, like awakening in a nightmare, with absolute knowledge that I was dying, and hyperventillating etc. I read about the 'belly breathing' listed above and I did try it and it did help - but I was a wimp and still took Xanax. The articles I read said the sense of impending doom and unreality are due to hyperventillating and if you could control your breathing, you literally would not have the chemicals in your body to fuel a panic attack. I did find some relief through breathing...but it takes about 10 minutes or what seems like 10 minutes to a person who is having a panic attack. I would still have onslaughts of adrenalin while practicing the belly breathing but after several minutes my shoulders would relax enough to drop down to the bed (while lying down). You really do have to keep encouraging yourself to stay with it - it does work. I would say that I kept trying to take 'cheater' breaths (big gulping breaths) to prove to myself that I could STILL BREATH but, as I read, if you are already hyperventillating, you have too much air in your lungs so trying to take big reassuring breaths doesn't work - your lungs are already too full of air - you can't breath in even more air and that makes you feel like you can't breath at all!
Now, I was able to slow my breathing down some and that took away the weird unreality-this-must-be-a-horror-movie sensation but I didn't take the next step. I didn't make my breathing shallower. I was too chicken. For a person lying down, it's not necessary to take the DEEP slow breaths I was taking - slowing my breath down helped I just needed to take the next step and make them shallower 'normal' breaths.
I attended an anxiety group where an 84 year old man said "When you're my age and you have panic attacks, you are REALLY not sure that you aren't actually having a heart attack." So he read an article about the chemical processes (like a domino effect) that take place in your body (this chemical makes THAT chemical and THAT chemical makes the OTHER chemical) when you have a panic attack. He said he didn't understand alot of it because it was so medical but he tried to understand whatever parts of it that he could. The next time he had a big panic attack he was up in the mountains at a cabin - he was sure he was having a heart attack and was too far from medical assistance to survive. BUT then he said he remembered what he read and he compared each horrifying sensation (coldness, sweating, racing pulse, pounding heart) with each of the chemicals he read about that were said to create these sensations. He said that just telling himself "I do feel cold and my heart is slamming into my ribs for a chemical reason - the chemicals in my body are creating these symptoms etc." and that he was able to calm himself that way. I told a friend about it and she said just knowing this, telling herself this helped when she had a small panic attack while driving "A chemical imbalance in my body is creating symptoms - it's not in my head, I am not going crazy, I am not having a heart attack..etc"
I have heard about the kinds of problems that Slider is having causing panic attacks. My friend had them under simliar circumstances and when I called my health insurance company to ask to see a psychologist because I was having panic attacks, I was asked if I was having the same kinds of problems SLider was having.
But mine were centered around things I just couldn't face. For example, I supressed all thinking about my mothers death (she died around Christmas about 30 years ago) but my first panic attack a few years ago was Dec 15. I did not conciously know that I was experiencing old trauma from 30 years ago. I can honestly say that since my mother had died so very long ago, none of my waking thoughts were about her death. As I so a psychologist, and talked about my past, I started having WORSE panic attacks. THen when I uncovered issues that were behind my panic attacks, I would first feel emotional pain (realization) and I would grieve (for example - I realized that as a kid I felt responsible for my mothers death from cancer) and cry maybe for an hour, or become almost hysterical crying. BUT then I would feel really strong relief because what I had been hiding for 30 years was gone- until that night when I would have my strongest panic attacks. What I am saying is - when things that hurt me were hidden away in my mind and I wouldn't face them, I started having panic attacks. Then when I would realize some old pain or talk about something that was behind the attacks, I would feel pain and relief by day, and panic attacks by night. But the panic attacks would then get smaller and smaller. By going through the dicovery phase, crying over old pain or trauma etc. I increased panic attacks in the short term and then as the days passed, and I got used to accpeting things I hadn't faced for so long...the panic attacks went away..... I repeated this process several times - and then stopped having panic attacks completely for about 6 months. I uncovered something else recently (old trauma) and had a mild panic attack in the night (interupted my sleep, had to sleep with the light on, but pretty mild) but have not had anymore. I mention this to you because I believe it's reasonable to say that anyone in your position could have panic attacks, psychotherapy really helped me, medication really helped me, the panic got worse before it got better whenever I got 'near' the things causing my panic, and now I am off medication and have only had one mild panic attack in the last 7 months. I am in your corner, rooting for you, hoping you will get through these tough times quickly. :lol: