Today, I had my first real anxiety attack and it was the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my life. At first, I suspected that it was due to lack of sleep but I tried to relieve that by taking a nap. Not only did I have trouble falling asleep (which rarely happens), I also had a very restless sleep (which is even more rare). When I awoke, the tiredness did not surpass and I was not in the mood to do anything. However, I forced myself to get up and start studying for my exam tomorrow.
As I was studying, I began to gradually experience dizziness and nausea then this unexplainable feeling of losing control. I have felt this before, mildly, but it usually went away within an hour. This horrible feeling lasted the entire afternoon until it started to progressively worsen.
The chest pains hit me suddenly and sharply , dragging with it waves of chills and hot flashes. That's when I got really worried; but at the same time, I was very aware of these symptoms so I tried to exercise deep breaths to prevent myself from hyperventilating. I began to research what might be the cause of all of this to find that it matches up to all the symptoms of an anxiety attack. This is really surprising to me since I'm generally a very unemotional and calm person. I hate showing showing any negative feelings almost as much as talking about. But today I realized when you keep it in for too long, its just going to all come out at once and that is extremely overwhelming.
Anyways, since I was completely alone in a room for hours, I figured that it might help if I was to go to the library and actually be surrounded by people even none of them are talking. So that's where I am right now, and I feel so much better but not completely normal. Maybe it was the fresh air during the walk there, or iced capp that I picked up on the way or just the feeling of having indirect human interaction.. Also writing this is almost like telling a very close friend whom I trust what I'm feeling so it helps alot.
For those couple of hours that seemed to drag on, I failed to believe in the phrase 'it gets better' but honestly, it felt like it was never going to. The worst thing about it is that I know that this is probably just the first of many.
I hate this feeling, please make it stop.