Help! Need Urgent Advice, Badly. . .

[Saint Nik]

Hi,

Right now I am taking a terrible, horrible. . .no, the most scariest panic/anxiety attack ever! It began this morning around 4am. Managed to calm myself down and went to sleep, woke up groggy. Felt like someone had beaten the shit out of me. I am struggling to breath, like I am on a limited supply of oxygen. Breathing exercises are hurting my chest and lungs more, so I've opted for rocking back and forth with some crying. My stomach is in knots and my organs inside my body feel like they are crushing, twisting and throbbing in so much pain.

Keeps coming in waves the pain. Feel like I am dying.

I am not on medication. . .this here: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/honesty-the-best-policy.55022/ will explain my phobia of medication. I have completed therapy and they tell me I am doing everything right. I don't know if am super alert, super charged with adrenaline right now. All I know is I am panicking because my lungs feel they wont inflate, my heart is crushing, my insides and organs are in knots and twisting, I feel sick and nauseated!

I am up for all types of advice on how to get through this, because right now my mind is screaming at me to go to the hospital, that there is something wrong (with experience, I know there isn't, but my mind is terrified of the pain my body is in) I am struggling so much today and plus, I have had lack of sleep. I have been checked out for everything and had a clean bill of health and from many doctors and the hospital. It's all in my other thread and was all done this year. So medically there is nothing wrong, but I am in a great deal of pain. I am typing so many words because I am desperate to take my attention elsewhere. Can anyone help me get through this?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

@Saint Nik I am sending you some approved grounding technique's to help you, please try and stay safe and feel free to message me back for any other help I can give if it helps you.

Warm safe :hug:s if you accept them.

Laurie

 

[digger]

Might sound counterintuitive when it feels like you can't breathe well enough, but I've found that one of the things that helps me to regulate and reset my breathing is gentle exercise - for me walking does it. It helps to shift my focus and seems to let my body take back control over breathing from my head.

 

[joeylittle]

I had a good friend who would get heart-attack type panic attacks. She always said two things helped her - one, was to constantly remind herself that what she was experiencing was real, but not a medical emergency (this was her way of validating her pain without spinning out into needing the ER), and two - sun salutations, a pretty traditional yoga sequence. She said the salutations always began as painful, but after 10 or so, she was relaxed and breathing normally. I'm not sure it's gentle exercise, as @digger refers to, but it's definitely body-integrating.

 

[Intrepid]

I've opted for rocking back and forth with some crying.

Some times I just have to go with it. However it helps to know that I am going with it by choice. I would say to my self "I'm in the middle of a panic attack and I am not going to be doing anything else for a while. My job at the moment is to ride it out. And since I've ridden these out before, I can do so again."

Note that this is after some experience. The first panic attacks I had, as the traumas were coming out of their deep dark caves, almost caused me a lot of harm. It wasn't because of the physical experience, but because I didn't know what was going on, panicked because of the panic attack, and ended up suicidal, and a bit psychotic.

I like what you said about having a clean bill of health. I spent a lot of money before realizing that my small aches and pains were not big physical problems, but just normal parts of what I feel, caught up in the PTSD.

Also, use the link that @Mr Laurie sent you. I don't know what it is, but it's probably has a list of really good suggestions on how to make it through what you are going through.

As @digger says: be gentle.

That's my advise. Hope it helps.

 

[illusionist]

I too find that walking helps...even a slow walk around the garden. Try and focus on the sights, sounds, smells around you touch any plants...even weeds! Smell them, feel their textures, feel the wind/ Sun on your face.....these help to take the focus away from what my body is doing and has a calming effect.....talk to yourself..tell yourself this will pass just as it has many times before.

Hope you feel better soon.

 

[Neverthesame]

I get the breathless fake heart attacks, what helps me is (this will sound stupid but it works) I sing. I put on something calming and sing along to it.

Having to focus on the music to be able to follow along with the lyrics, keeps me distracted. Singing also requires a fair bit of diaphragm control to hold a note. Helps to get the your breathing back under your control.

Hope something any of us has said helps.

 

[Jencordiner]

Hi, I also suffered panic attacks for a long time due to childhood issues. I know right now you are desperate for something you can do right now. This works almost instantly for me and you can tap for as long as you need. The page link is the basics. Sign up for emails because they tend to come to me when I need them. They have podcasts also. If not just look up EFT tapping for panic etc on YouTube. Let me know how you go. It's used with veterans with PTSD very effectively. Hope I'm of some help. You're feeling desperate I know. X

Nick Ortner Tapping Solutions is the website and same for podcast. Look at tapping 101 for the basics. Won't allow the link. X

 

[Chava]

Unless I'm having heart palpitations I need to MOVE because the panic is an adrenaline dump. Just because I feel like I'm dying does not mean I am, or that I should lay down and hope that heals it (rarely works for me). I do some resistance work or get out for a walk. Or if I'm having palpitations, or dizzy, I push against the couch or a wall, or my car in the garage...slowly and exhaling as I push, but with a decent intensity of force. Lets the energy have an exit and also reminds me I'm "okay". I'm not at all sure if this would work for you. But if you are physically able to move about or just try pushing something with your arms or legs, mindful and exhaling as you do it, that's just another idea...

 

[Jencordiner]

Also grounding techniques are invaluable as Mr Laurie said. X

 

[Saint Nik]

Note that this is after some experience. The first panic attacks I had, as the traumas were coming out of their deep dark caves, almost caused me a lot of harm. It wasn't because of the physical experience, but because I didn't know what was going on, panicked because of the panic attack, and ended up suicidal, and a bit psychotic.

Hi, I have been there, January passed, this year. I had this very same experience for that whole month solid. I didn't sleep well for that whole month and by the end of January I went into suicidal feelings and became very psychotic myself and was in and out of hospital. I think January traumatized more than the actual trauma of what happened to me a few years ago.

I do have experience with taking the fear out of symptoms. I think that is the key to panic attacks. I think what happens with me now is, I just refuse to believe physical pain appears for no reason, without a trigger, is spontaneous, I even wake up with these panic attacks. Nothing is worrying me or stressing me out at the moment (well, when I am in chronic pain) and it's hard to hear from doctors, the hospital and therapy - " There is nothing wrong with you! This is what trauma does, the operation and near death experience and the loss of your mother is what is causing this psychic pain!" and I have gotten like yourself and just ride them out. But when they get so bad. When my heart feels like it's in a vice and being crushed, and my breathing is so irregular then the pain starts to travel all around my body and I can't focus on anything else because I am in that much agony. No flashbacks or memory comes back, I don't even have a thought about my mum to blame it on! It's the pain, the symptoms and my brain trying to figure out what it is. Isn't like a headache and I know what it is to pop some paracetmols. . .I just can't seem to make sense of it and always get tricked into believing that something is terribly wrong because my body is in too much pain. And then I am left exhausted and bewildered when it passes. . .only for it to come back again!

 

[Saint Nik]

Also grounding techniques are invaluable as Mr Laurie said.

Yeah, they helped me today. . . feeling a lot more settled, though I have the adrenaline rush kicking in, have flushes and waves of it up and down my body, surges of energy. I can cope with them. . .it's the pain and the trying to convince myself that I am safe and not dying. Pain is pain to me. Even I have a high threshold of pain, but when I get excrushiating pains like that in my chest, heart and around my back and into my gut. . I just find it hard to believe it's anxiety! It feels like I am terminally ill and dying at times! I just feel my body isn't mine anymore!

Anyway guys, thank you so much for all your suggestions and advice. I take on board what you all say. I think it helps that you all know what this feels like and it doesn't make me feel all alone! Thanks guys.