Panic Attacks

Do you ever start to panic? I mean really panic. When you start to feel really cold. When you know deep down in the pit of your stomach that something is not just situationally wrong, but emotionally wrong? When everything suddenly seems to cave in on you. When your heart starts to race and when you feel like you're in a bubble all alone. When you start to hyperventilate. When all you want to do is to crawl into a tiny tiny space and cry. When you suddenly become hyperaware of every single thing around you and you can't take the overload on your senses. When you start to shake and you can't stop it. When nothing seems right.

It's called a panic attack.

I personally have experienced this more times then I care to remember. It's a scary feeling honestly. My latest one was in my school's library. We had to print out our project that we've been working on for 5 months and present it. And everything that could have gone wrong was going wrong. We were late for class along with other groups from our class and I started to panic. No one knew though. 

In the middle of the printing room, I suddenly lapsed into silence. I moved to stand behind my friends and let the panic take me. You never really know that you're having a panic attack until you're in the middle of one or even only after you've calmed down. My heart started speeding up and I started shaking. I felt like throwing up. I stood there next to my friends in silence for a while and then I had to walk away from them. I walked away, tried to breathe a bit and then walked back. I did this a few times. I ended up snapping at one of my friends because she told me to stop tapping the table. I was tapping the table to count my breaths and to try to calm down but she didn't know that so it's not her fault.

I eventually completely walked away from them and I texted my mom asking her to call me because I wasn't sure if she was teaching or driving. Thankfully she called me back immediately. She spoke to me for a bit just calming me down and telling me to breathe and relax. Mostly it was her voice that calmed me down. After I got off the phone, things started to look up and by the time we got to class and had to present, I was calm enough. The panic attack had passed. I only realised that it was a panic attack while I was on the phone with my mom which was interesting.