Freaking Out! Anatomy of a Panic Attack

I have come to believe that anxiety accompanies intellectual activity as its shadow, and that the more we know of the nature of anxiety, the more we will know of intellect.

—Howard Liddell, PhD

“The Role of Vigilance in the Development of Animal Neurosis”

The double doors looked like the doors of any other clinic. As I I paused on the top step, my reflection stared back at me from the glass, shadowy but familiar. Yet I knew that I was stepping into a place unlike any I’d ever been before, and I would not come out the same. I was about to check myself in to a psychiatric hospital.

That day in 1991 had begun like most other days at that point in my life: in a blind panic. As the dawn light penetrated my consciousness, so did the now-familiar sensation of desperation and despair that had been greeting me every morning for the past three months. I lay as if paralyzed, my body and nerves exposed and awash with a sense of inevitable, impending doom. Deep sadness and hopeless accompanied the fear. These feelings were now my constant companions. They persisted despite my attempts to pretend them away, drink them away, distract them away, and pray them away. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could relieve my ever-growing mental anguish. I had lost control of my emotions.

I was no stranger to mental illness. I’d watched my aunt descend into schizophrenia, and knew that a great-aunt who ironically shared my name and birth date had spent the better part of her life in mental institutions. This is it, I thought, as I lay in bed. This is my destiny. I am mentally ill. My fear spiraled into deepening panic. I am mentally ill. I will live the rest of my life in a mental institution, locked up like a caged animal, in a dim, grim, dark hell! I began to sweat. I wanted to throw up, but I was afraid that if I did I would never stop, that my body would just continue to retch until I would die. I wanted to run, to get away from my thoughts, my reality, my today, my tomorrow, my forever, my fear of me, my mind, and my life. But I couldn’t run, because there it would be. It was inside of me. It was in my head and I desperately wanted it to stop, to leave me alone.

I wanted to run somewhere, but I needed to rest. I couldn’t go anywhere, anyway, because I was afraid to go outside. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I wanted a hug but didn’t want anyone to touch me. Nobody could possibly understand what I was going through. The thought of someone comforting me made me feel even more hopeless because I knew that no one I knew could help me. Not even my mother, who always provided some comfort or words of wisdom to give me hope. I felt no hope. The walls were closing in on me. This was my worst nightmare and I was wide-awake. In fact, it felt like the moment you first wake up from a horrifying nightmare and every cell in your body is bursting with terror. That is what I was feeling, but it wasn’t a nightmare. It was my very real mental hell.

I leapt out of bed, as if my mind was chasing me, and ran into the kitchen. In a stat