Quotes & Sayings About Panic Attacks

I'm in a caregiver's relationship with my body, a perpetual internal gauging of wellness. My spine is Hogarth's thermometer. I ascend and descend its rungs a hundred times a day, reading the mercury level. The same dis-ease speaks many languages. If you block one mouth, another will speak. The symptoms represent differently, and as I get older, my translation changes. The prescription changes. Must be vigilant. Must be my best nurse. — Jalina Mhyana

I used alcohol for my panic attacks, to manage stressors. — Bill N. Lacy

Overcoming panic attacks has left me humbled. It's taught me how to be brave. It's left me compassionate to the fears and sufferings of other people. It's given me the wisdom that my thoughts and feelings are simply subjective responses, and don't need to be taken as true reflections of reality.
But the most important thing I've learnt from coping with panic is this: No matter what happens in life, no matter how hard things seem, no matter how painful things are, moments always pass like fluffy clouds in a blue sky, and I will be fine. — Julie Farrell

I have terrible panic attacks. I usually get so tired from crying and being in pain that my only way out is sleeping. — Soko

Instead of showing visibly distinct alternate identities, the typical DID patient presents a polysymptomatic mixture of dissociative and posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) symptoms that are embedded in a matrix of ostensibly non-trauma-related symptoms (e.g., depression, panic attacks, substance abuse,somatoform symptoms, eating-disordered symptoms). The prominence of these latter, highly familiar symptoms often leads clinicians to diagnose only these comorbid conditions. When this happens, the undiagnosed DID patient may undergo a long and frequently unsuccessful treatment for these other conditions.
- Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, Third Revision, p5 — James A. Chu

The panic attacks have been a part of Zinnia's life for almost six months. They allow no pathway back to the innocent complacency with which she once made sense of the world around her. With every new attack more of her identity crumbles. Every day the panic rubs something else out that has been achieved with application, sometimes with inspiration. — Glenn Haybittle

President Obama telling Americans not to panic in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. — Al Sharpton

Em didn't truly understand about my panic attacks - no one did. But she'd never pushed me to explain, never tried to ditch me when things got weird, and never once looked at me like I was a freak. — Rachel Vincent

I had massive anxiety as a child. I was in therapy. From 8 to 10, I was borderline agora-phobic. I could not leave my mom's side. I don't really have panic attacks anymore, but I had really bad anxiety. — Emma Stone

Was this what it was going to be like? Was I turning into someone who had panic attacks about walking home from the tube or staying the night alone in the house without their boyfriend?
No, fuck that. I would not be that person. — Ruth Ware

I spoke to friends that have panic attacks, and I spoke to a doctor who has panic attacks, himself. I also did a bit of research into them. It seemed like everyone's version of a panic attack had slightly different physical things. So, I decided to choose my own physical things. — Holliday Grainger

Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day. — Sara Barnard

Panic is efficient. Panic is effective. Panic is the way I get things done! Panic attacks are my booster rockets! — Sandra Tsing Loh

Sci-fi is definitely something that I've been wanting to do again since Panic Attack and I want to do it on a feature scale. — Fede Alvarez

The panic attacks - I still have them. They started when I was around 8. They always have to do with my death. — Patty Duke

Somewhere, my thirst for distraction from the pains and poverties of life grew into a sweltering, parching thing. There are always feelings to be numbed, anxieties to tamp down, and panic attacks to avoid. The people of the Shire knew this, and so do I. I suppose I could have turned to things eternal - didn't Jesus promise us rest? - but we seem to have a way of losing ourselves in our manmade salves - the bottle, the pill, the cheeseburger, self-inflicted starvation. I suppose we're all drunk on something. — Seth Haines

Practicing regular, mindful breathing can be calming and energizing and can even help with stress-related health problems ranging from panic attacks to digestive disorders. — Andrew Weil

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed. — Scott Stossel

At sleepovers I would have panic attacks trying to break it to girls that they didn't want to kiss me without outing myself. — IO Tillett Wright

I can't forget things, or ignore them-bad things that happen," I said. "I'm a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk. — E. Lockhart

Powerful new drug-free treatments have been developed for depression and for every conceivable type of anxiety, such as chronic worrying, shyness, public speaking anxiety, test anxiety, phobias, and panic attacks. The goal of the treatment is not just partial improvement but full recovery. — David D. Burns

And even though she checked "yes" to all the symptoms on the card the doctor gave her, she refused to accept the diagnosis of panic attacks because panic attacks happened only to Americans. Nobody in Kinshasa had panic attacks. It was not even that it was called by another name, it was simply not called at all. Did things begin to exist only when they were named? — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Citizens are not prepared for attacks because there is a bias against the public by nearly every expert and government official. In emergency preparedness, there is this belief that public will panic, that the public is not to be trusted, that there will be looting. — Amanda Ripley

Well, unless you've suffered from panic attacks and social anxiety disorders, which is what I was diagnosed as having, it's hard to explain it. But you go on stage knowing you're actually physically going to die. You will keel over and die. — Donny Osmond

I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain. — Ellie Goulding

According to the British Journal of Psychiatry, marijuana can cause panic attacks. I don't know ... The only time I have ever seen a marijuana user look panicky is when they are out of marijuana. — Jay Leno

The sky was so blue I couldn't look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories,
but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk
tick tick tick
me not making a sound
and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind,
but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. — Charlotte Eriksson

You can do this. — Jacquelyn Middleton

In my practice I use neurofeedback primarily to help with the hyperarousal, confusion, and concentration problems of people who suffer from developmental trauma. However, it has also shown good results for numerous issues and conditions that go beyond the scope of this book, including relieving tension headaches, improving cognitive functioning following a traumatic brain injury, reducing anxiety and panic attacks, learning to deepen meditation states, treating autism, improving seizure control, self-regulation in mood disorders, and more. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I started getting these attacks in 2009, just as my music career was taking off. I'd be doing photo-shoots and started to feel like I was having heart attacks. Increasingly I found it difficult to step outside my flat. Things started to get better after I saw a therapist, who told me I needed to make peace with my panic attacks. — Ellie Goulding

The substance of the attacks on the reality of organized abuse and torture of children always reduce to that old chestnut - it is unscientific. "Give us proof," say the naysayers. "How is this different from reports of alien abduction?" say the clever-clever wags of Private Eye. Indeed. How is it different? In the case of alien abduction, we are asked to believe that visitors to this planet from outer space have kidnapped someone, taken them away, and brought them back. It is not believable.

In the case of ritual abuse, we are asked to believe that people can organize themselves into groups for the purpose of torturing children. There would seem to be a significant difference here in what we are asked to believe. — Valerie Sinason

I found my way home, stripped naked, and lay on the bathroom floor, the cool tiles pushing up. Keeping me from falling. I didn't know how long the floor would hold me. I prayed Ellen would come home ... — Juliann Garey

Panic attacks are crazy beasts. They don't care what you think you're ready for. They don't care what you want. They just take control, and then you suffer. — Catherine Gayle

I can't stand THE DEPRESSED. It's like a job, it's the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It's just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. — Deborah Levy

At such moments of extreme panic and anguish you do manage that trick with time: you are at last free from the illusion that time is linear.
In panic, time stops: past, present and future exist as a single overwhelming force. You then, perversely, want time to appear to run forwards because the 'future' is the only place you can see an escape from this intolerable overload of feeling. But at such moments time doesn't move. And if time isn't running, then all events that we think of as past or future are actually happening simultaneously. That is the really terrifying thing. And you are subsumed. You're buried, as beneath an avalanche, by the weight of simultaneous events. — Sebastian Faulks

For the briefest moment, Jack's face formed the faintest smile as he considered fear and anxiety, the latter two of which often caused people to forget what truly mattered most. — Jermaine Watkins

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do. — Geoffrey Rush

We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept. — Miriam Toews

I wanted to die. I had a panic attack. — Shania Twain

Remember having a panic attack isn't a failure, and not having one isn't a success. Success is not letting the attacks run your life — Heidi Cullinan

When you work at home, fellow alums, discipline is the supreme virtue. Suicidal self-loathing lurks behind every coffee break. Activities must be expertly scheduled, from shopping to showers to panic attacks. — Sam Lipsyte

(On Panic Attacks) And once I had my first one with Maegan, they crept up about once a month. And without warning. It was worse than getting my period. In fact, I called it my exclamation point. — Mamrie Hart

Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic attacks when the cameras start rolling. — Scott Stossel

In 'Next to Normal,' I had millions of breakdowns and panic attacks, but nobody ever heard about those. — Jennifer Damiano

I start sweating and shaking and having panic attacks if I am not at home. — Daniel Johns

Oh, just you wait. I'll have, like Great Danes and pygmy goats and maybe even a baby panda living with me. That is what panic does to people if the attacks get bad enough. — E. Lockhart

I grew up very self-loathing. I was a phobic. I had anxiety. I had panic attacks. — Dane Cook

I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn't know that you're making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn't know that that's not the case. — Lori Lansens

When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long. — Deepika Padukone

I do have panic attacks every time I go on stage so I'm really not sure why I put myself through this. — Emma Bunton

The criteria of agency and ownership distinguish structural dissociation from other manifestations of insufficient integration such as intruding panic attacks in panic disorder or intrusions of negative cognitions in major depression. — Onno Van Der Hart

I was having panic attacks. I didn't want to live that way anymore. I was in love and I wanted it to work. I was tired of travelling, tired of the whole scene, just tired. I sat around. I was lazy. I wanted a routine, and I wanted to wake up in the same bed every day, and I got my wish. — Linda Evangelista

The anxiety does crawl up. The other night I was having panic attacks: 'Oh, my God, what's going to happen to me? Am I ever going to have another job?' — Chloe Sevigny

The waterfall, while scary, would've released us. The panic attack will also release you. Just relax, and don't feel weird about being vocal about your feelings. ... Just breathe, And if possible, drink the nearest thing to you. — Mamrie Hart

On December 31st of 1958 Lila had her first episode of dissolving margins, The term isn't mine, she always used it. She said that on those occasions the outlines of people and things suddenly dissolved, disappeared. That night, on the terrace where we were celebrating the arrival of 1959, when she was abruptly struck by that sensation, she was frightened and kept it to herself, still unable to name it. It was only years later, one night in November 1980
we were thirty-six, were married, had children
that she recounted in detail what had happened to her then, what still sometimes happened to her, and she used that term for the first time. — Elena Ferrante

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him - the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse. — John Corey Whaley

Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told. — Charles Linden

People don't die from panic attacks. It just doesn't happen. You're body is a dick, but it's not going to let you self-destruct like that. Even though the emotional pain and physical discomfort may be quite unbearable, anxiety will not physically hurt you. — Robert Duff

I was not a silly kid or outgoing. In fact, I suffered from quite a bit of anxiety. I used to have panic attacks when I was a teenager, really incapacitating moments, because I had some phobias. — Dane Cook

Yeah. I do get incredibly anxious. Almost borderline panic attacks. — Julian Cope

I suffer panic attacks which has made me really conscious about my fitness and I have become addicted to jogging. It might sound odd but a lot of good has come out of it. My fans send letters saying they have taken up jogging because I do it. — Ellie Goulding

It can hit at any time [anxiety/panic attack]. You feel like you're in an open field, and there's a tornado coming at you. And you're just consumed by it. — Kim Basinger

In my experience, the words "now just calm down" almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to. — Elyn R. Saks

I had panic attacks during rehearsal. There were times when I really thought I wasn't going to be able to do it. — William Petersen

I guess they're having what you might call panic attacks. It's an old place and smells a little musty. The hallways are sort of long and narrow. The exhibits are gory. The people are listening to some creepy, nasty stuff on their earphones. It apparently just overwhelms some of them, especially on a busy day when there might be some congestion in the rooms and hallways. You'll have flippers, fainters and barfers every so often.'
'It's sounding more fun all the time.' 'Not as much fun as the heart attacks.' 'You get heart attacks?'
'I don't, they do. Not often, though. — Richard Laymon

We don't talk about anything substantial, it's just the introductory session, the getting-to-know-you stuff; he asks me what the trouble is and I tell him about the panic attacks, the insomnia, the fact that I lie awake at night too frightened to fall asleep. He wants me to talk a bit more about that, but I'm not ready yet. He asks me whether I take drugs, drink alcohol. I tell him I have other vices these days, and I catch his eye and I think he knows what I mean. Then I feel as if I ought to be taking this a bit more seriously, so I tell him about the gallery closing and that I feel at a loose end all the time, my lack of direction, the fact that I spend too much time in my head. — Paula Hawkins

My heart seemed to drop down and back, the thing it always does right before I start to spin and spin. I refuse to call it a panic attack. Panic attacks are for nervous fliers, hipster neurotics. Their demons, whatever they are, can't even compare to the terror of knowing it's about to happen, the something bad I've been waiting for ever — Jessica Knoll

The truth about oppressors is that they are also as fearful as their victims if not suffering continuous panic attacks about losing power — Peter Mutanda

Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. Our measures have repelled these attacks of fear and panic ... We have used the credit of the Government to aid and protect our institutions, both public and private. We have provided methods and assurances that none suffer from hunger or cold amongst our people. We have instituted measures to assist our farmers and our homeowners. We have created vast agencies for employment. — Herbert Hoover

When I was immobilized by fear, I might have a panic attack. I've had a couple of panic attacks in my life. — Gail Sheehy