So, some background.  October 13th, 2022 my eldest brother passed away from a heart attack, at the young age of 50, just over a month shy of his 51st birthday.  He was in great health, much better than myself.  He was very active, didn't smoke, ate well, etc.  My mom's side of the family has a history of heart problems.  My grandfather died of a heart attack at 42, and my uncle passed away at 60 from a heart attack as well.

I've never been one to cry when grieving.  I've lost several relatives as people my age will, I'm 45, turning 46 in December.  And all through my life I've been a pet owner and there's a long list of animals that have been lost.  I've never had any problems with dealing with death before, but I will admit that my brother is the first close relation that I've lost.

But, as I said, I'm not one to cry.  Since my brother's death I've shed a few tears, mostly when I listen to his favourite musical artists, or music that I like because he introduced me to it.  The tears have been few and far between, and there has been no intense outpouring of emotion that one might expect when losing someone so close to them.

Unfortunately my grief has manifested itself in the form of panic/anxiety attacks.  There were 2 or 3 occasions when I literally thought I was going to have a heart attack myself.  I ended up in an ambulance and then at the hospital.  Every test they ran on me came back indicating I was in good health.  Chest XRay, several ECG's.  I also have been to see a cardiologist and all the tests they put me through there also indicate my health is fine.  Ultrasounds, stress test, blood work, even wore a heart rate monitor for 3 days and it caught a few episodes, but the Dr. said that while my heart rate definitely sky rockets at times, it is beating very fast, but normal.  There is no irregular heart beat rhythm.

The attacks seem to be random, and as all my tests are reassuring that I'm in good health (relatively), the attacks are way more manageable.   I was off work for 2 weeks, but have since returned.  I still have episodes, even while working, but am able to get myself through them with simple concentrated breathing and some inner dialogue.

What I am now experiencing is that I don't notice my heart rate jumping as much, even though my smart watch tells me it has, in fact, gone way up.  So it seems my brain is starting to ignore these episodes.  Sometimes when I look at my watch to check the time I'll see that the last measured heart rate was anywhere up to 140 bpm, and that's basically a rating heart rate, not under any stress due to heavy activity.  I think the highest it ever measured was 160 bpm resting... most episodes now seem to top out at 120 to 130 bpm.  Again, this is all while in a resting state.

My question is, has anyone else gone through something like this, and is the fact that my brain doesn't seem to feel any anxiety or panic during an episode seem to be a good thing?  A lot of the time, as I mentioned I only notice an elevated heart rate after the fact when I'm checking the time on my watch.  There are some times that I definitely feel the anxiety but I force myself not to check my heart rate because for a while I was checking obsessively which really only made things worse.  

I'm hoping to get some feed back from someone who has experienced something similar, whether or not the attacks sort of ran their course and just passed with time.  I have been speaking with a psychiatric nurse and psychologist that the hospital put me in touch with, though I've only had one meeting with them so far, and it felt like they were mostly gathering a lot of background info.

I am hoping that since my body isn't triggering my brain to go into flight or fight mode nearly as much, regardless of what my body may be doing that this is a good sign and things will shortly pass.  It hasn't been easy, but when I started to feel uncomfortable in public places with crowds, I knew I had to get back to work before things went too far and I became a shut in.