I want to share my experience with anxiety so far and perhaps get some help or see if anyone’s going through something similar. 

Backstory: When I was in 4th grade I had really bad panic attacks for several months. They would last for about an hour and would consist of hot flashes and shaking, but when I wasn’t having one I generally wasn’t thinking about it. They went away over time without any medication or counseling and I forgot about it. 

Now I’m 19(female), just finished my first semester of college. I stay in a dorm with my best friend from high school and for a time I was really loving the whole college experience. October 22nd (a Friday), I woke up feeling very anxious in our dorm. I had gotten really drunk the night before so I figured it was just hangxiety. Me and my friends love to drink and I’m very familiar with hangover-anxiety so I know how to cope with it. That day felt different though, for some reason I was having a lot of trouble ignoring the anxiety which was super uncommon for me. I decided I needed some sleep to feel better and ended up sleeping most of the day away. By that evening my friend asked me if I wanted to go get dinner from our student center on campus, I agreed despite still feeling very anxious. On our walk over, my body started feeling very heavy like gravity was trying really hard to pull me down, my heart started racing and I felt extremely disoriented. I told my friend I didn’t feel good but she told me if I sat down and ate/drank water I would feel better. I tried to ignore the extreme panic my body was going through but I couldn’t. By the time we got to the student center my heart was beating extremely fast, and my chest felt like it was on fire. I was also sweating profusely, had dry mouth, nausea, and was unable to focus on anything besides my racing heart. Nothing that normally calms me down was working. I was convinced I was dying and having a heart attack and needed to go to the hospital right then. I got a bottle of water and we walked back to our dorm. I kept telling my friend that I was definitely having a heart attack but she told me I just needed to relax. After a while my symptoms had not improved and I had begun to shake uncontrollably. I called my mom and told her my friend was driving me home (to my actual house which is about 2hours from my college). I trembled the entire ride home, by the time I could see my house I started to feel slightly better but not normal. I talked to my mom about it for a few minutes while she made me something to eat (my younger brother suffers from OCD and GAD so our mom is familiar with panic attacks). I sat there with an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. I decided I just needed to go to bed without eating anything. All night I tossed and turned barely getting any sleep. I was trembling and sweating all night. By morning my mom decided it was best to go to the doctor. The doctor agreed with my mom, that it was a panic attack and gave me some Valium. The Valium helped me sleep which in turn helped my panic attack subside. I felt extremely out of it and physically weak all that day and the next. I only took the Valium that one day because I didn’t like the way it made me feel. 

That Sunday night (October 24th) I was feeling better, just weak from not eating much all weekend, but not panicking which was good. My parents drove me back to my college and dropped me off. I started panicking a little as my family left but I calmed myself down pretty quickly. 

Two weeks went by without any bad attacks, but I still didn’t feel right. One weekend (2 weeks after first attack), I was home hanging out with my cousin at her house. I started feeling extremely nauseas and disoriented. I didn’t want to alarm her family so I just left without saying why and started driving back to my house, panicking the whole way. I calmed down a bit once I got home and laid in my bed. I forced myself to go to sleep to escape the feeling. The next morning I had to drive back to my college. I felt fine the whole morning until I was walking to my first class and started feeling a little anxious. During class I tried not to think about it but the feeling persisted. By the time class ended, I was walking out and got the same heavy feeling I did with the first panic attack two weeks prior. I didn’t tell anyone, I just walked back to my dorm and laid in bed all the rest of the day without going to any of my other classes. All day I was panicking off and on. I also felt like there was this dark cloud looming over me, as if every trace of happiness was gone from my body. I was a hollow shell. The next day was the same. I was worried about myself so I called my mom, she had me come home and go back to the doctor. I told the doctor how I was feeling and he prescribed me Prozac 10mg for one week and 20mg everyday after that.

I’ve been taking Prozac everyday for the past 6 weeks. At first I thought it was helping but obviously not. I still have anxiety everyday, panic attacks 3-4 times a week and long depressive episodes. My brain never seems to shut off, constant anxious thoughts even when I’m not having a panic attack. Some days I would feel so bad that I would just stay in bed all day. This caused me to miss a lot of class. I haven’t felt truly like myself since that first panic attack. I have little interest in doing things I normally love. I have no appetite. I’ve lost significant weight, everyone keeps telling me how skinny I look which if it were under a different circumstance would be appreciated but not this way. My friends began to notice my sudden change in personality and have confronted me a few times but I never know what to say. I’ve withdrawn from them a lot. I just don’t feel normal. Today I went back to the doctor to talk about my medication, I told him I didn’t think it was working and he changed me to 10mg once a day of Lexapro. Considering Prozac didn’t help me I’m now skeptical of the effectiveness of SSRI’s for myself. My doctor also suggested counseling. I’ve never been one to be open about how I feel with anyone let alone a stranger. I know they’ll just tell me “it’s all in my head” and try to give me little tricks to deal with it. I’ve always been a very rational and calm person until this. I just can’t seem to rationalize it. No matter how many times I tell myself, “it’s just anxiety there’s nothing actually wrong with you”, it just doesn’t seem to work. 

I don’t want to worry about panic attacks anymore. My mental health has taken a dramatic nosedive. I can’t keep living my life feeling like this all the time. I want to be the normal teenager I was at the beginning of the semester. I just feel so hopeless. I’m home for the holidays and have felt a bit better the last few days but I think it’s just the comfort of being home. 

I guess we’ll see how it goes with Lexapro but if anyone can relate or has any suggestions let me know. I feel so alone and it’s been hard to articulate how I feel to my parents and doctor. Thanks for reading.