Here’s the kicker. My first panic attack probably wasn’t a panic attack! To be honest I don’t know what it was but one thing I’m pretty sure of, if I had stayed in bed that day I would probably never have ended up with panic disorder. This shows the power of the mind and how a simple one off event can turn into more than ten years of nightmare. This is how it all started.

I was home alone with my computer in pieces, can’t remember what I was doing to it but anyway, I was sitting on the floor leaning over and peering into it when suddenly out of nowhere I felt light headed and thought I was going to pass out. I stood up quickly, wondering what the hell was happening. Because I was alone I quickly made my way to the front door and walked out into the street. It was my first reaction, get outside so that if I collapse then someone will see me and call an ambulance. By now my heart was racing and I was starting to panic a little bit but it only lasted a few minutes and then went away.

I went back inside and sat down for a while, feeling worried and didn’t have a clue what had just happened. I waited to see if it happened again, I didn’t want to go to the hospital, at this point it didn’t seem necessary, it may have been nothing. A few hours later and I had no repeat episodes so I carried on with what I was doing. I have no idea what caused it, it could have been anything. The feeling was nothing new to me, if you’ve ever stood up too quickly and gone dizzy for a few moments then you know the feeling I’m talking about, that’s exactly what I experienced, only this time it happened for no apparent reason while I was sitting still. It could have been bad diet, lack of sleep or stress related, a simple one off incident for all I know but the very fact that it happened randomly while I wasn’t doing anything, this made me take notice. This made me constantly think about it, worrying if or when it might happen again.

I went through the day and into the next day with no problems but now my mind was on full time alert. Even though I felt fine I did not stop thinking about it. Why did it happen out of the blue, there must be something wrong, surely?. These thoughts never left my mind. To this day I will never know what caused it, but I now have absolutely no doubts that it was the worrying, the constant fear and wondering if it might happen again that led to my long term panic disorder.

That very first occurrence is still very very clear in my memory, I remember it like it was yesterday but the details of what followed over the next few months is a little hazy. I can’t remember exactly when my next attack was after that, it may have been the next day or a few days later. What I do remember was the non stop worrying that it might happen again, and it did, and this time it was different, a bit worse than the first one and it lasted probably about five minutes. This may have happened a few times over a few days, each time slightly worse. I wasn’t now just fearing it, I was expecting it. I was worried and I could feel myself panicking and getting palpitations when it did happen.

Up to this point I had kept it to myself, I told nobody, not even my wife because I didn’t want anyone to worry but I knew that I had to see a doctor, which I did. He examined me and said nothing was wrong, he said I needed to stop smoking and cut down the coffee. He also sent me for a blood test. Him telling me nothing was wrong made me feel at ease and I was fine for a few weeks. The blood test result came back all good as well. Even though I felt somewhat less worried, it didn’t stop me thinking about it all the time and it wasn’t long before my next panic attack. They gradually become more regular, mostly in places I would fear it happening the most. These would be more often than not, anywhere that I couldn’t easily get away from or in situations that would cause me embarrassment.

I still knew nothing about anxiety at this point , I’d only heard of it, but it was becoming obvious that my fear alone was able to bring it on. This kind of rational thinking didn’t help me though because no matter how obvious that might have seemed, I couldn’t see how it could result in such a real and physical thing. I had no trouble believing that the fear of it could make my heart race and maybe even the palpitations, you can experience those things when somebody startles you or you are extremely worried about something so that made logical sense, but by now it was more than this, the dizziness, the feelings that I might pass out and (by now) tingling in the face and hands. Each time it happened I worried more, and the more I worried the more likely it would end in a panic attack.

Up until now I was able to keep myself together and each attack would only last a few minutes. One day however, I was in the supermarket with a half full trolley and I felt an attack starting. This was the worst place I could be, full of people and the more I thought about that, the harder it was to pull myself together. Suddenly it was too much, the worst panic attack yet and I had to get out of there fast before I made myself look like an idiot. I left the trolley in the middle of the isle and walked as fast as I could to get out, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it out of the door, but luckily I did, I got to the car and sat down. This one I will never forget, I thought I was dying. This was really bad and now I was convinced I had something wrong with me. Fifteen minutes later I had calmed down but now I was very worried.

Over the next few months I was back and forth between the doctors and the hospital, more blood tests, and given a 24 hour heart monitor. All results came back clear. I didn’t know what to think or do. I was okay for a while after the tests but as you’d expect by now I didn’t stop thinking about it constantly and I still had not told a single person what was happening to me. I couldn’t hide the 24 hour heart monitor from my wife and so I just told her I was having a few heart palpitations, probably stress, and the doctor was just being thorough, which incidentally, the doctor was an idiot because he never once suggested I was having panic attacks, just kept blaming it on smoking and told me nothing was wrong.

By now however I had started to research my symptoms on the Internet and it was there that I learned about anxiety and panic attacks. There was one thing for certain that I concluded, either I was having panic attacks or I had a heart problem. I still had my doubts but after the tests I had recently been through, anxiety was looking like a probability. From this point on it just got worse. I can’t remember how long it was between this and my very first encounter (it was over ten years ago), maybe six to eight months or more but I was well and truly on my way to long term anxiety disorder.

Everyday life was getting harder to cope with, a constant battle trying not to let it take full control of me, almost everything was a challenge, driving long journeys had to stop, visiting friends, going in shops, on busses or trains and all the places that you might get caught out or trapped. The crazy thing is, going to visit friends and family and certain other things I would be okay for the most part, but what I couldn’t do was actually get to any of these places! It was the travelling that caused me the biggest problem, I think this was made worse by trying to hide it from everyone.

At first I wouldn’t tell anybody because I didn’t want them to worry but once I realised I had panic disorder, well, there was no way I was going to tell that to anybody! Although after about a year I did tell my brother but played it down and didn’t reveal too much. He had to know something because I worked with him and it was affecting my work. Nobody else knew, not even my wife or mother and I kept it to myself for ten years. This is a terrible mistake, all it does is make it harder to get over. The fear of sounding like a fool makes you fear it even more, an endless self perpetuating cycle.

For the next seven or eight years my life was ruled by fear and expectation of the next attack and fear of getting found out. I tried to ignore it as much as possible and attempt to do normal things if it wasn’t too far away from home but this often led to me getting off of busses and trains halfway into journeys. Anything that was more than fifteen or twenty minutes from home I would make excuses why I couldn’t go. Shopping for anything would be in and out as fast as possible and many shopping sprees would be abandoned half way through. Sometimes I would go into shops and check the queue size first, more than one or two people and I’d go to the next shop. What might take a normal person twenty minutes could quite possibly take me a few hours and that was if I could even get to the finish line! Living like this became normal for me. Constant avoidance and diversions was part of my everyday life.

I never become agoraphobic but my life revolved around safe zones and excuses. I could still do many things as long as I was never going to be in a situation where I might have exposed my secret and let anybody find out what was going on. I became an expert at suffering in silence. I knew by now that as long as I had an exit then I would be okay and I got used to the constant feeling of anxiety, which at times was quite bad. No matter where I was, as long as I knew I could get away quickly then I could keep myself together.

I think I was lucky really. I’m a fairly analytical person by nature and this probably helped me to cope. I lived like this for about six or seven years, my life rarely went outside of the safe zones, I knew what I could and couldn’t do and I’d be okay as long as I stayed inside them. I still had panic attacks often but they wouldn’t last and they didn’t matter as long as I was in a safe zone. I must have forgotten just how badly it was affecting my life and got so used to the way I was now living that I started to care about it less and less. If I had no need to stray outside my “safety net” then panic attacks were just a part of my life.

By the end of this seven year period I was having panic attacks less and less often until one day I suddenly realised I had done a few things outside of my safety zones and nothing actually happened. I can’t explain how this felt, it was like winning the lottery. Everyday was better and this might sound crazy but I now know what happened. I had got so used to living this restricted life style for so long that when I did eventually do something that I wasn’t meant to … I forgot to panic! (This is so important to remember)

Things were great. Weeks and months went past and not a single panic attack. I was straying out more and more and within a year I was completely back to normal, I could do all the things I used to do. Driving was the best, I was back to long journeys, I could go on trains and busses, into any shop, massive crowds, I could even be trapped somewhere with a bunch of strangers, not only would that not bother me anymore, it would be the opposite, it would feel great. I would get high on ordinary everyday things just because I knew I could do them again. Yet another feeling I could never explain. Unfortunately I couldn’t share this with anybody because it was still my closely guarded secret, but never mind, the buzz was unbelievable.

I went for about two years without a panic attack. I would still get stressed at times just like many people do but that was about as anxious as I got. I actually started to forget all about my anxiety and ended up completely back to normal, as far as I was concerned it was now all in the past. Everything was great, right up until March 13th 2009, a day I am not going to forget in a hurry.

I don’t believe in superstitions but I must admit I’ve long had an irrational ‘fear’ of Friday the thirteenth. Fear is probably too strong a word but let’s just say I’ve always got my guard up on this day. Luckily, I’m not a particularly organised person and most Friday 13th’s will pass me by without me realising. (If you are a sufferer then pay attention, it’s very important to see where this is all going!)

I had to meet my brother who lives fifty miles away. Driving long journeys was no longer an issue in my life and neither was anxiety or panic attacks. I hadn’t even thought about them for over a year. Just as I was leaving I looked at the clock on my PC to see what the time was and happened to notice the date. I immediately thought “oh, great!” and associated my long journey with something going wrong. At the time I was thinking about things like the car breaking down or a flat tyre. I got into the car and started driving but this thought was now with me. I got fifteen minutes or so into the journey and could feel my chest tightening slightly, I felt anxious. It wasn’t long before the only thing I was thinking about was how I used to avoid motorways and long journeys and I could feel myself struggling to keep a grip.

I had a battle going on in my mind. I could feel the panic coming but my logical senses kept reminding me this is just not possible. I knew that this could only be happening because I had convinced myself something will go wrong and it’s not real, so I carried on driving for what seemed like forever, trying not to lose it. I turned on the radio, wound down the window and tried to take my mind off of it. It was getting harder to stay focused with each minute. I decided I had better pull off at the next exit and calm down, which now couldn’t come quick enough. I have never experienced anything like this, I was wondering if maybe it wasn’t a panic attack. By the time I had pulled over, my right leg was tingling and so was my hands. I sat there for a few moments but it was getting worse.

Within a few minutes parts of my right leg started to go numb, both of my hands, my right forearm, my entire left arm was burning with very bad pins and needles. I couldn’t breath properly and felt like I was struggling to stay conscious, my heart was pumping like crazy and I was having palpitations, my chest felt like it was being crushed, my stomach was turning inside out like someone was physically twisting it, I had pains in my left leg and groin and I was shaking all over. I convinced myself this was a heart attack, I had to get out of the car quickly and get somebody to call an ambulance. There was nobody around, I was in the middle of nowhere but there were cars driving by.

I didn’t know what to do, I wanted to flag somebody down for help but I also didn’t want to look stupid. I was scared shitless, confused and couldn’t think straight. I started to walk fast along the road, and then run, and then turn back, and stop, and run again. I kept doing this (I don’t know why). If anybody had been watching they would have thought I’d just escaped the psychiatric ward. I was shouting to myself to pull myself together. I was totally and utterly f*cked!

As I was running up and down I could feel the pins and needles fading and my legs felt a bit better. I got back in the car and sat there for a while. I calmed down quite a lot but still wasn’t right for a while. I reclined the seat and just laid in the car for about half hour until I eventually felt better. I started thinking about the panic attacks I used to have and relating them to what had just happened to me. The series of events, the feelings were all similar only it had never progressed this far. Maybe this was a panic attack but I wasn’t convinced that they could get this bad. I had to get out of here but I couldn’t get back on the motorway, there was no way I could chance it. Luckily I didn’t have far to go and I managed to drive the rest of the way sticking to roads that I could just pull over without causing any danger to myself or others. I went the rest of the day feeling unsettled but okay and managed to get home but the next few months were a nightmare…

I was now having more panic attacks than I’ve ever had, not as bad as the one I just described but much worse than what I was getting a few years previous. I was on the edge continuously. I was tense everyday and once again my thoughts were dominated by it for every waking moment. This was not like what I went through years earlier because now there was no break from it, not even in my safe zones. I woke up feeling anxious and went to bed feeling anxious. I now couldn’t do anything without it being a struggle and I stayed home as much as I possibly could. There were times that I could now get a panic attack while I was at home, something I had never experienced previously. I now feared almost everything.

This just wasn’t going away. I was trying hard to remind myself how this had progressed again but rational thinking was not helping. I kept putting off going to the doctor, although I came very close to doing so. I knew the doctor would only give me two options, medication or CBT. The trouble is I wasn’t convinced of either but I had to do something. If I thought drugs would have worked then I would have taken them. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done to stop this but if I wasn’t convinced they would help then I was off to a bad start.

I done my usual and researched as much as possible on the Internet, it became clear that I have three options, CBT, medication or try one of the methods that are advertised on the internet. I actually wasn’t convinced by any of them. I spent a week or two mulling it over, trying to make a decision. If I was going to buy any of the methods then it was going to be the Linden Method for reasons that I describe here. You would think that as there’s nothing to lose, why is it so difficult to decide whether to try something when there is a full money back guarantee. I think the reality is it wasn’t about the money. Yes, there was an element of trust, is this just another one of those marketing tricks? But the real reason was fear! Why? Because if I’ve only got three options and the first one doesn’t work then I’m down to only two, and those I already didn’t believe in. This was what I feared the most. I had to do something though and eventually I bit the bullet.

One of the first things Charles Linden mentions in his ebook is how some people read through to the end and never have a panic attack again. My reaction to that was “yeah, right”. .. Well I can tell you I read through to the end (it never left my computer screen all day) and I have not had a panic attack since, which at the time or writing this is now five and a half months. He also says that some people have stuck to the method and their attacks have gone within weeks, some might take months, but they must stick to it otherwise it’s a waste of time.

If you want to be rid of your panic attacks then it is so important that you realise how they start and what they are. The Linden Method is absolutely jam packed with information and research explaining all of this and more. I think for all of those people that cured their panic attacks simply by reading the book are possibly a few steps forward in their understanding of this condition, or at least in their own confirmation that this is caused by our own thoughts which triggers a series of events. If you are having trouble with that belief then you may have to work a bit harder. Either way the method cannot fail if it is adhered to.

The education that I got was enough for me. Knowing exactly what anxiety is, how it progresses, how a panic attack escalates, how to control your breathing and things you should do when you feel a panic attack coming, it all made so much sense that I managed to put it all into practice straight away because I so clearly associated everything I learned with my own experiences. Everything I was doing to try to stop my attacks were actually making them worse. Simply having this knowledge was all I needed ten years ago and I would never have had to go through all those years of hell.

I’m not one hundred percent cured of all forms of anxiety just yet. I still get anxious or stressed at times but this isn’t a big deal to me. It will go when my life becomes less stressed generally as long as I don’t slip into old habits but the panic attacks are gone and that’s all I really care about. This is the only part of anxiety that debilitates you and destroys your life. With a bit of general anxiety I can still live a completely normal life and as my previous two year break from it proved, this will go too. Learning to recognise the various stages of anxiety and the things you can do to stop it is the key to curing your panic attacks.

Whatever choices you make are up to you but never allow yourself to believe you cannot be cured because I know you can do it. There is no need to spend the rest of your life in hell. Whether you use the Linden Method or CBT, don’t just sit there hoping for a miracle like I did, take action and do something about it right now, today, don’t allow yourself to waste any more of your life being controlled by this life destroying pointless crap.

The Linden Method - Stop General Anxiety and Panic Attack Fast!

Filed under: Anxiety