I think I have always suffered from anxiety my whole life. It became obvious when I started flying hot air balloons. It all started getting serious when we were due to meet a balloon pilot while out flying in competition. We were about to leave the car and enter a party, and I just couldn’t get out of the car; in hindsight, it was a panic attack. I ended up staying in the car for the whole party. As soon as I stayed put, the feeling subsided.

I think what I did was put the pilot on a pedestal. Also, I now think I felt a negative energy from the pilot/situation.

That was my first real encounter with Panic Attacks. 

As life went on, the panic attacks progressed to be created through stressful situations, but usually social or personal interactions.

Another event centred around a client who, as it turned out, was stressed in her job, and as I worked directly for her, I started to feel/react to her stress-related demands. I started to feel the panic attacks rise, and I would go to meetings and come back to the office feeling exhausted. I would start to dread going to see the client. To a point of not functioning correctly and spending way too much time trying to recover from physical exhaustion.

I started to learn more about stress. The Fight or Flight Response gets the body ready to RUN or FIGHT. A huge amount of chemicals enter the body to prepare us. But as we can’t RUN or FIGHT, the chemicals (hormones) don’t get used up. Leading to the feeling of exhaustion. 

I also learnt it is about the triggers that we build. You have an experience you don’t like, the body somehow remembers this, and if that experience repeats often, then the trigger starts to fire automatically, before you even know it. This can be a name, a situation, an event, anything – it causes the trigger fires, and the panic attack happens.

I suffered for so long.