Creative Nonfiction: How to stop a panic attack.

[captainpanicattack]

Just something I wrote following a major panic attack a few months back.

How do you stop a panic attack in its midst?
You don’t.
You feel it coming a few seconds, maybe even minutes ahead of time. You know that fighting it is useless, and yet you attempt to do just that.
You panic because you know you are about to panic, and that’s when it begins.
You instantly feel trapped, like you’ve lost the battle already.
Truth is, the battle has just begun.
As it goes on, so do you. Panicking, that is. You overthink and you try to put yourself in a good place. You try and you fail, so you panic some more.
Your breathing becomes more and more shallow by the second. You eventually have such a difficult time breathing that you become lightheaded; your mind, however, never seems to care. It remains in overdrive, and you feel a white-hot flash of emotion, coupled with a lack of oxygen, pierce through you.
Eventually, you start to come out of it; you begin to emerge from the fog. You’re never entirely sure what brought you around, but you are grateful for it nevertheless.
Slowly, your heartbeat slows along with your breath. Your mind begins to fizzle out, and you are overcome with the heaviness of exhaustion.
You let an emptiness fill you, because there is nothing else you can do. Moving, talking, or even crying seems to take too much effort; breathing and blinking are about all you can handle.
If you’re lucky, there’s a familiar comfort object nearby; you grab it and make use of it. If you’re not so lucky, then you simply fight with yourself, or what’s left of yourself, as you try to force a sense of comfort.
When all seems well enough, you finally emerge. Your limbs feel heavy, but you are capable of mobility. Your mind has gone blissfully numb, and you do your best to avoid any sort of thought. You try to take yourself back, way back, to that time you were floating on your back in the ocean. You try to remember the chill of the water, the smell of the sea, and the pure beauty of the cloudless sky. You remember what it was like to be able to hear nothing other than the water lapping in your ears, how it felt to feel at peace for just a few moments.
When that fails, you make a cup of tea, put on a movie, and fall asleep with the knowledge that whatever triggered this instance of panic is still out there; it has simply gone in to hiding for now.
You begin to panic in your sleep because you know it will return. You have such nightmares that you wake up remembering nothing, but feeling everything.
And that’s when you take a breath, force yourself out of bed, and pretend that everything is ok.
In reality, the battle rages on. Nothing is ever ok, but some things are passable enough to be ignored.
You can’t stop a panic attack in its midst because it never stops.
Once it has begun, it can only be suppressed.
Once you’ve been thrown into the sea, you struggle to stay afloat every second of every day of your existence.
Once the anchor has a hold on you, you’re trapped for good.
Your best bet?
Learn to float.
Learn to appreciate the silence of the water.
Learn to fall in love with the beauty of the cloudless sky.
Learn to hold on to any and every moment of happiness and comfort, however fleeting.
But always be ready to hold your breath, should a monster decide to pull you under.