Reddit reviews Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks! - A counterintuitive approach to recover and regain control of your life.: Die-Hard and Science-Based ... recover from Anxiety and Stop Panic Attacks

Oh yes, can I write about panic attacks :) Mine weren't brought on by church issues, but I can share my story and give advice.

Brief back story first: I'm temporarily single-parenting 4 young children overseas while my husband works an ocean away for about 4 months. I am normally a very calm, competent, rational person and not prone to emotional outbursts or even emotional roller coasters. At all. I didn't cry when I got married. I didn't cry when my kids were born. I didn't even freak out when my 3rd baby was born before the midwife arrived and stopped breathing and I had to resuscitate her. That's the kind of calm person I am. Okay, now onto the main story...

About 4 weeks into our separation, I had these crazy symptoms--what I now know was a panic attack--that lasted all night long, persisted much of the next day, and lasted about half the next night. My symptoms were racing heart, heart palpitations, chest pain/pressure, waves of fear and adrenaline, sweating, dizziness, weakness, trembling, nausea, and full-body tingling. I thought I was having a heart attack and went into emergency care. They did an EKG, ran a huge battery of blood tests, and all they could tell me was "Nothing is wrong with your heart."

6 weeks later this happened again and lasted about 5 days. Again, I thought it was a heart attack and went in to emergency care. Same slew of tests, same lack of helpfulness in giving any answers other than that my heart was fine.

After this 2nd episode, it only took me 5 minutes with Dr. Google to figure out what it likely was. Panic attacks!

I had a 3rd attack lasting a few days and then a 4th attack soon after, again lasting a few days. I met with my family doctor and she confirmed my suspicions that I was experiencing panic attacks.

I'm normally not one to take medications, but as I was not sleeping and not functioning but still responsible for 4 young children, I was desperate.

She put me on 10 mg Paxil daily (SSRI/antidepressant) and bromazepam 1.5 mg as needed. Bromazepam is a mild sedative and at very small doses can calm down a panic attack. This with the goal of getting me through the last month until my husband returned.

For the first few days everything just slooooowed way down and the attacks mostly stopped. But then the Paxil sent me into a depression. The attacks started coming again nonstop. I felt numb and dark and very somber. And on top of that I stopped sleeping again. I started having dark thoughts. That freaked me out and immediately I knew I needed to change something.

So 10 days into the medications, I had a doctor come do a house call (a benefit of living in this particular European country! Doctors do house calls night or day!) He was amazing and spent an hour going over everything in great detail and exploring some additional possible somatic causes (low magnesium, for example).

He advised me to immediately stop Paxil, gave me an antihistamine to help me sleep (25 mg hydroxyzine aka Atarax/Vistaril), and generally was AMAZING. We are running some more blood tests and I'll get my results back in a few days.

By time I had the house call doctor come, I'd been working on doing lots of deep breathing and meditation to calm down the panic attacks. During the day I could generally stop the attacks really soon, but I was still having issues at night being woken up by a full-blown attack that just wouldn't calm down even with the bromazepam.

A few days ago I read a book about a counter-intuitive approach to panic attacks: Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks by Geert Verschaeve. It was amazing. Instead of trying to resist/stop/fight panic attacks by deep breathing or relaxation, you either

• a) laugh at them--humor and anxiety can't co-exist
  
• b) give them the middle finger by, essentially, deliberately inviting them on and saying "come on, give me your worst!" or
  
• c) accept and welcome the attacks as a sign that your body is desperately trying to protect you (although in a very unpleasant way).
  
  BEST ADVICE EVER. I've done all of the above strategies and all of them work. Bam.
  
  It's been 5 days since that last doctor's house call. I made some drastic changes in my life (flew my MIL in from overseas to help with the kids until my husband comes back). I've been sleeping better and better and now have reduced the antihistamine to a half dose (otherwise I'm super groggy the whole next day--it's powerful!). The daytime attacks have stopped entirely and the night attacks got less and less. I haven't had a strong night attack at all for a few days. I've stopped using bromazepam entirely.
  
  I know this is super long. If you got through it, thanks! But I want to leave you with this main message: your panic attack is your body desperately trying to keep you away from danger. Your body is trying to help you! Don't think of your body as your enemy or of the attacks as something you need to fight, to resist, or to stop. Instead, embrace the attacks and tell your body, sincerely, "Thank you so much for keeping me safe. Thank you so much. I'm okay, so you can stop freaking out. But thank you for caring so much about me." I had some nights where I'd repeat this over and over, feeling an immense amount of love for myself and especially my body (which, previously, I had described as my "enemy").

These are all very normal things to have anxiety about. I KNOW how hard it is, trust me. I do promise you that it will be OK no matter what happens. I'm going to reccomend a book I read recently that has helped me a ton. Whenever I get to feeling like this, I read a bit of this book and its like the author just "gets" people like us. Slow down, breathe it will be OK. Very normal things to have anxiety about but this will help you keep it all in perspective. Even if you don't have what you would classify as a panic attack per say, the book is an absolute life changer. It hits on several of the specific things you hit on in your post (Am I over-reacting, am I not good enough, am I not qualified, no one would hire me, etc.). It's all in there. It helped me so much. https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Ways-Anxiety-Panic-Attacks/dp/9090305262/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540500534&sr=8-1&keywords=badass+ways+to+end+anxiety+%26+stop+panic+attacks

• Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks!
I got this on a whim upon seeing the 5 star reviews, and I though, why not? It ended being an invaluable resource when I experienced a setback. It's a very casual, common sense, and at times humorous, approach to tackling anxiety. Read this, if nothing at all. The author also has an app with audio supplements as well as a weekly email with helpful tips you can subscribe to.

• The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook
This has tons of researched, science, and evidence-based information thats incredibly helpful. Definitely take the time to do the worksheets and practice. No matter how tedious, you can never do too much. Not to mention the fact that you can access to their online audio recordings once you register the book online. The audio files contain meditation, calming, and visualization techniques. The guided progressive muscle relaxation was a life saver before hitting the sack and waking up as calmly as possible. Tip: if you do fall asleep well after trying that, also try saying, "today is going to be a good day" the moment you wake up. It will drastically change how you approach your whole day, and helps with the onset of panic attacks.

• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
Although this isn't geared towards anxiety, I found so many useful tools for approaching vulnerability and finding the bravery you need to go through the scary, dark parts of recovery. Very uplifting and enlightening.

• Notes on a Nervous Planet
I will simply quote a reviewer:
"As someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, Matt's writings help in letting me know that I'm okay. This book is exactly what I needed to read. We are living in a time that is hard to understand and sometimes letting go is necessary, but not to the point of recklessness. Matt seems to always find the right way to pinpoint the struggles of many and he has the ability to make us feel as if we are wrapped safe in a warm blanket."

24m here. I tottally feel for you my dude. I grew up with bad sweating on my hands and then it started to transition to armpits but the face is where I get it the worst now. Like somebody noted, it's the emotional and mental toll that it puts on a person. I've always had anxiety and my social anxiety got really bad to the point where I couldn't take certain paths because I didn't wana see people.

So your thinking is tottally right, the root of the problem is the anxiety. I went to therapy for literally this specific condition and it was a struggle at times because my therapist who was actually really good would always touch on the point that accepting it is the key to feeling somewhat good about this. Through CBT methods and looking at it as not as the enemy, I was less able to get less depressed of this "flaw" I had. One thing that helped me is putting myself in really uncomfortable social situations where I basically know I'd be sweating and one of the reasons I did that is after reading this book, https://www.amazon.com/Badass-Ways-Anxiety-Panic-Attacks/dp/9090305262
Definitely helped a ton and I recommend it to EVERYBODY in this community even for those who don't have anxiety induced sweating like myself.

The real change though started to happen when I was consistently meditating. Unfortunately, I've had to take a break from it because of vertigo case I've been dealing with it so I was actually put on Lexapro until the vertigo is cleared up (I can let you folks know how that is). But with the meditation is where i started to notice a real genuine effect. You start to see your sweating problem as not the enemy anymore and you in a way transcend into it. Meaning that you become one with it and you sorta embrace it as who you are.

This results in caring less and less about when you do sweat. Slowly, you evolve into not caring as much and you start to sweat less. But that's not the goal though, if you need to not sweat then there's always going to be resistance and that's going to be a problem. Try meditation (Headspace), some CBT methods (online), and reading that book. I'm curious how you respond. Please let me know after a few months how you're doing! :) best of luck and I'm still sweating but as long as you can feel better about it, that's all that matters!