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[NickyNacker]

My name's Nick. I started having panic attacks in June 2008 after abusing ritalin (I know, stupid). Before last night, the last one I had was in October. Over the weekend I stayed up for about 30 hours, and had a lot of caffeine. By sunday night I was very anxious and had another panic attack. I decided to get online and look for a forum, and that's when I signed up here. I've never talked to anyone else that's had really bad anxiety and panic attacks, so I'm glad I finally decided to sign up to a site like this. My panic attacks are generally me getting really overwhelmed with emotion. I get really nervous, scared, and confused and it's hard to think straight. One of the main things that is going through my mind when I have one is that I'm scared I'm going to go crazy and do something bad, or that I'm just a bad person in general. Another thought it that I'm going to hell. Also, when I'm in the middle of one I keep telling myself "What if these aren't panic attacks I'm having, what if I'm just psychotic and I just don't know it yet..". I also get this really weird lonely feeling that I can't even explain. It's not normal loneliness, it's this strange horrible depressing feeling like I'm the only real person and everyone else is fake. Idk..

 

[Aiyieeeee]

I've had 1 or 2 artificially induced Panic Attacks. They've never naturally come on but ever since then, now that I have a taste of what one is, whenever I start thinking about stuff, because I'm a hyperchondriac, I can freak myself out so bad that I feel like I'm on the precipice of a Panic Attack, but I never fall over into it so yeah.

But yeah, the 1 or 2 that I did have that I mentioned up above just made me feel like I was going to die. It was a very depressing feeling. My heart was racing and I thought I was going to die. It was in the middle of the night so I got up out of bed and turned the radio on and the music soothed me. It brought me back to reality and linked me back to the world and not just alone in the pitch black in my room.

Panic attacks aside, I use to have nightmares every night as a child and when I got older in my teens they kind of went away just returning every once in a while but they seem to be coming back because if I don't fall asleep with the radio or television on and just lay in the dark, my head will start going crazy. I'll start feeling are loose in my head. Hearing voices. Songs. Feeling unknown presences. It's weird and really freaked me out as a child. Sometimes I figured I was dreaming, but I wasn't.

And sometimes it'll catch me in the inbetween state where I'll be falling into sleep but still conscious. So I'll be aware of my surroundings and it'll get real crazy. Still freaks me out. All kinds of things can happen. If I scrunch my eyes, while they are still closed, real tight and then open them, as I do I'll open them in real time and come out of that inbetween stage. I use to be terrified of bed time as a child, but it's better now.

 

[NickyNacker]

I've had 1 or 2 artificially induced Panic Attacks. They've never naturally come on but ever since then, now that I have a taste of what one is, whenever I start thinking about stuff, because I'm a hyperchondriac, I can freak myself out so bad that I feel like I'm on the precipice of a Panic Attack, but I never fall over into it so yeah.

But yeah, the 1 or 2 that I did have that I mentioned up above just made me feel like I was going to die. It was a very depressing feeling. My heart was racing and I thought I was going to die. It was in the middle of the night so I got up out of bed and turned the radio on and the music soothed me. It brought me back to reality and linked me back to the world and not just alone in the pitch black in my room.

Panic attacks aside, I use to have nightmares every night as a child and when I got older in my teens they kind of went away just returning every once in a while but they seem to be coming back because if I don't fall asleep with the radio or television on and just lay in the dark, my head will start going crazy. I'll start feeling are loose in my head. Hearing voices. Songs. Feeling unknown presences. It's weird and really freaked me out as a child. Sometimes I figured I was dreaming, but I wasn't.

And sometimes it'll catch me in the inbetween state where I'll be falling into sleep but still conscious. So I'll be aware of my surroundings and it'll get real crazy. Still freaks me out. All kinds of things can happen. If I scrunch my eyes, while they are still closed, real tight and then open them, as I do I'll open them in real time and come out of that inbetween stage. I use to be terrified of bed time as a child, but it's better now.

i feel stupid for not knowing, but what is a hyperchondriac?

oh and about the thing when you heard voices and felt unknown presences and stuff, i actually had stuff like that when i was a child and have never understood what it was. it was always at night at bed time, i felt like i was hearing some sort of voice, and i would have to sleep with the light on and the radio. i remember several nights when i would hear what sounded like a voice or something and i would run down the hall and run around the dinner table scared and pacing and what not. i would get so scared that i would sit out in the hallway outside my sisters room and cry until she heard me and let me in to sleep in her bed. i don't know what it was, but it was so creepy and unreal and still creeps me out.

 

[Aiyieeeee]

No worries.

A hypochondriac is someone who thinks the littlest thing means they have an illness and/or are sick. And forgive me, I spelled it wrong in my first post. HYPO-, not HYPER-.

But yeah, I'm just always preoccupied with getting some illness. I look at everything as a symptom of something to come. People with it can get obsessive and start self diagnosing, which isn't smart. You go online and start looking up everything. There's a name for that too, when you use the internet to diagnose yourself. And it's not smart because the internet makes everything scary. It'll make a person with a simple headache think that they have an aneurysm. So yeah, I've had to cool down and have been told to stop.

So when I start thinking for instance that I have gangrene and am going to lose my fingers or hands, I start feeling a panic attack coming on, but it never does. Basically I always think I'm dying from something.

But yeah, those voices. I don't know. I mean one time I was just laying in bed and I heard my favorite singer singing one of her songs just as clear as day in my head. It was weird. That instance, it wasn't scary at all. But yeah. And I can tell when it's going to happen. My head starts to feel all spaced out and airy and loose inside, like there's nothing holding anything together and that's when it happens.

One night I was stuck in this loopy nightmare. I kept waking up inside my dream in my bedroom in pitchblackness thinking that I was awake and I would get to a certain point and realize I was still dreaming and I'd go to scrunch my eyes and wake myself up and I'd wake up in my bed again only to find out that I was still dreaming. This happened like 7 times. Freaked me out. I was like, "I can't do this forever, how long is this going to last?" Because it was a lucid dream and I was aware of everything. The very last time I woke myself up inside the dream and this dark figure was down on their hands and knees and as I got out of bed wondering if I was finally awake or still asleep, it attacked me and freaked the heck out of me and I finally woke up. One of the worst nights of my life. Like Groundhog Day in reverse.

I don't know how old you were when that was happening to you, but mine went on for too long. I was in my teens still suffering. I thought it was normal to have nightmares every night by that time. But when I was really young. Like 6 and younger, I was scared to sleep by myself only because my parent's room was at the end of the hall and I was on the other side by myself. I was closer to the front door. And I'd hear creaks and noises at night from the house. Just normal stuff. So I'd sneak down and sleep with my mom and/or dad. If my mom was awake, she'd make me go back to my room though. So I'd just come back later when she was asleep and ease on in. hehe.