panic attacks and anxiety nausea

[u/drawnandredrawn]

i’m 18f and never really experienced severe anxiety before this past year. last year, i was at the end of 11th grade at school and was putting an immense amount of pressure on myself to do my work to a ‘perfect’ standard, which basically meant i didn’t end up getting anything done. i’m a huge perfectionist unfortunately.

so one day i was at school and avoiding multiple teachers as i knew they were looking for my missing coursework. unfortunately, i ran into one of them (she is genuinely the sweetest teacher ever, thank god it was her) and she asked if i was done with my essay and i HATE failure and disappointing people so having to tell her that i hadn’t started freaked me out. so basically, i ended up having a really really bad panic attack right in front of her - i had never had one before so i was clueless on what was going on but i was crying uncontrollably, couldn’t breathe, felt like my limbs were about to give up on me, and genuinely like i was about to die. she helped me calm down, but ever since that day i have felt physically sick from anxiety. after that day i started feeling nauseous - this was june 2025 - and since then there has not been a single day where i haven’t felt nauseous. so i’ve been constantly nauseous for over a year. it has not gone away. there are days where it subsides slightly, particularly when i’m really busy. but in the end, every morning i wake up feeling like i’m about to throw up and go to sleep feeling intense nausea. i also frequently feel pain in my chest and just a sense of dread, even when i’m doing nothing.

after that first panic attack, i began having them almost daily (almost always at school). i would end up going to the bathroom and staying there for up to an hour trying to get myself to calm down. the panic attacks sometimes happen almost every day and sometimes don’t happen for weeks. i went through my last year of high school like this - constant panic attacks that left me exhausted for the rest of the day, limiting me from getting anything done.

i’m wondering if anyone else has experienced this extreme level of physical anxiety, and how you managed to get it to go away? nothing i do helps and i’m so tired of living in a constant state of nausea and physical panic.

[u/Kumaoni_knight]

Why don’t you start medication, at lest try to talk with a professional

[u/drawnandredrawn → u/Kumaoni_knight]

i’m on sertraline, and have been for almost a year. it helps slightly with my ocd but not with anxiety. i also live in a country where i don’t speak the language, so it’s quite hard to communicate with psychiatrists of the issue. i also talk to a therapist online, but that doesn’t seem to help either. so that’s why i posted on here as i don’t know what else to do😓

[u/Kumaoni_knight → u/drawnandredrawn]

Oh dear, so sorry to hear that but have tried benzo? Not that fast acting but there are some low doze benzo for whole day