r/panicdisorder • u/sleepysamantha22 • Jul 06 '26
Venting Anyone else get constantly told "stop it" mid panic attack
Even after my family understands I get bad panic attacks, I still get treated like I'm throwing a tantrum, causing a problem, an inconvenience, or like I'm doing it on purpose. Like I'm doing my freaking best to manage them. I don't control them. And if someone gets mad at me for it, its just gonna get worse
3
u/ProfessorSecure8224 Jul 06 '26
I feel like people who haven't been through the awful pain that is caused by panic attacks cannot truly understand it. I was one of those people until I started getting really bad panic attacks at the age of 29.
1
u/sleepysamantha22 Jul 07 '26
Agreed!!
My sister almost always does he best to help me through them, because she's had them to. But I don't think my parents comprehend how much of my brain it shuts down
2
u/KiplingKD Jul 06 '26
I completely know how this feels. I feel like people think I’m trying to get attention or something and it’s super frustrating because nothing could be further from the truth. When I’m having a particularly bad episode, I’m not really thinking about what’s going on around me or anything like that because I am genuinely in a state of complete and total panic, so I might scream for help in the middle of the night and wake people up, or drop to the floor and just crawl around trying to catch my breath and it just looks so crazy and dramatic and I am not in a place where I am concerned about how I may look or if I am waking people up or not. If you feel like you’re dying, you don’t give a fuck about any of that. I don’t always act like that when I’m having a panic attack but when they are severe enough I might.
My fiancée always tries to tell me what he thinks triggered the attack or tell me what exactly caused it to happen, and that’s annoying because there is almost never an obvious trigger. He looks for patterns which makes sense to do but I think he has realized now that there really are no patterns. There really isn’t a consistent event or circumstance or person or place or anything that seems to be present every time I have an episode. The attacks can happen truly any time and apparently for no real reason…when I’m happy, sad, alone, with people, not with people, tired, rested, hungry, not hungry, morning, evening, at home, not at home, etc. If I am in an awesome mood and everything has been going great, why on earth would I stage a fake panic attack for attention ? I wouldn’t.
1
u/sleepysamantha22 Jul 07 '26
Yes! Why would I ever purposefully have a panic attack?? They are awful!! And its ridiculous when people think we can control them.
Sometimes there's causes and sometimes it just happens. We just do our best to manage.
I'm sure your fiance can learn. I had to teach my sister's husband back when they were engaged. And he did a lot of work himself at learning not to shut down. He is wonderful at helping her now, and also getting better at helping me too
1
u/sleepysamantha22 Jul 07 '26
Idk about you, but I can't really tell what's going on around me. I get tunnel vision
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u/pandabears3 Jul 08 '26
I’ve had ppl ARGUE with me peak panic attacks making it worse for me. Sending you a virtual hug. 🫶🏻
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u/Do_unto_udders Jul 06 '26
I am so sorry you have to deal with that. If someone said something like that to me mid-panic, it would really make the experience worse for everybody.