 Problem: Post a traumatic fainting episode, for 12 months I always felt weird or sort of dizzy when walking. Like swaying on a boat. I suffered numerous panic attacks. Felt scared of leaving my house and was not interested in doing activities I loved otherwise. 

Progress: From being worried to walk on sidewalks or in grocery stores, I have now cycled myself to grocery stores, walked for hours on sidewalks, fearlessly boarded aircrafts and traveled to different cities, relocated to a new city and all is well. This required months of hard work on a personal front but I am so glad that I did it. I took no medicines in this entire journey. The only solution was to do what my therapist asked me to do. Replacing the automatic thought with alternate thought.

Summary: 

Below is a detailed description of this journey. I write details so that others who may be suffering with something similar may find hope and know they’re not alone. I will share some super helpful tips too that worked great for me. 

TLDR: First step is to meet your GP or certified counselor/therapist and get professional medical help and guidance. Identify the automatic thought that makes you feel anxious and repeat LOUD and CLEARLY to yourself the alternate thought. In my case, the alternate thought was “I am feeling dizzy and scared I will faint” which I replaced by saying out loud to myself “I am fine and it’s a normal bodily response. It will go away on its own. I am normal”. 

Incident: I (25 yo M) fainted while playing a sport on a hot summer afternoon. The fainting itself happened due to dehydration and a few precipitating factors such as overly anxious about certain life events. I remember suddenly having blurred vision, not remembering anything from a few seconds ago and unable to play. Within no time I was on the ground and I was very scared. However, I was immediately given water and hydration salts by people around me and I got up and walked all by myself again. NOT ONCE has anything like that happened again. However, unfortunately I kept feeling scared of fainting or falling down again for the next ONE YEAR. 

Reasons for precipitating anxiety: It was the summer of 2020, a pandemic year, and I was in the midst of major career events. I indeed had a lot of anxiety already but I never knew until my body actually had enough of it. Being dehydrated and playing in 90F temperatures just made it worse. 

Diagnosis: For the first 2 to 3 days after the incident, I didn’t play just to be fine. My doctor asked me several questions about any alarming symptoms and I had none. He concluded it was just anxiety and that I need to meet a counselor or therapist. Within a few days, while on an elevator, suddenly as soon as we reached the third floor, I was very scared and breathless. That’s when I decided to meet a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (CBT) who very quickly understood my problem. I will highlight some important things from that session:

Therapist: What triggered this?

Me: I explained everything I mentioned above.

Therapist:  What sensations do you feel?

Me: I feel like I will fall or faint again especially on hard surfaces. My breath becomes short and I feel tingling in my head that feels like being dizzy. 

Therapist: How much do you believe in these thoughts on a 0 to 100 scale right now?

Me: 80 to 90

Therapist: The automatic thought here is “What if I fall again?” This is what you are internally thinking and we call it an Automatic Thought.
Therapist: What evidence do you have to feel so?

Me: The symptoms I mentioned above make me feel so. 

Therapist: What evidence do you have against these thoughts?

Me: I have not fainted again. My health parameters are all normal. I am able to walk, run and play fine. 

Therapist: What is the worst thing that will happen if you fall?

Me: I will get up again. 

Therapist: Wonderful! This is your Alternate Thought. Remember, whenever you get an automatic thought, always counter it with a logical alternate thought.

I remember within just these 20 minutes of therapy, I felt alright. She asked me to go and walk on the sidewalk and I felt “normal” again after 7 days of unnecessary fear.

The only thing I had to remember was to practice CBT whenever I felt fearful. 

In the days and weeks to come, I practiced CBT both on paper and in my mind. But as soon as I went to play on hard surfaces, I again used to feel anxious/nervous. I tried hard to do the CBT as I did with my therapist but I was too fearful. In a way, the sensations I experienced were magnified by my fear. This lead me into the vicious anxiety cycle. Sensations produced anxiety. The anxiety produced more sensations. 

Soon I found myself talking to my therapist frequently and she spending hours on helping me. I used to feel very good after talking to her but not for long. I was becoming scared of very normal things like walking into a grocery store or being left alone in a coffee shop. Standing in the Starbucks or a Walmart queue used to be so fearful as an experience. Running on the treadmill also became a very dreadful experience. I was heavily depressed due to this nonstop fear I had to live with. I woke up everyday thinking hopefully I will feel “normal” today.

I had been having very frequent panic attack and, it was clear I was having a panic disorder and needed regular therapy and desensitization exercises. My therapist kept asking me to go to the grocery stores, outdoors or play as I always used to. However, with Winter beginning in North America and of course lockdowns continuing everywhere due to the pandemic, it wasn’t easy. The next months were followed by several ups and downs in this journey of eliminating my anxiety disorder. However, it was also a very enlightening one. It taught me many things about myself. I found out the root cause of my anxiety. A lot of it was to do with my ego and perfectionist attitude. I understood myself better. I won’t go into those details right now but I highly encourage each one of you to do so with your therapist. 

Symptoms I felt:

1. Heart Palpitations
2. Dizziness/Swaying on a boat 
3. Feeling weird in the head
4. Hand muscles feeling very light or weak. 
5. Shortness of breath
6. Fear of walking outside house
7. Fear of panic attack outdoors
8. Catch in chest
9. Tingling in chest and arm pits

What helped me and tips which will help you too:

1. Talk to a medical professional: This is the first step. Get professional advice. Doctors often look for things that you won’t find online. Google search isn’t a substitute for this. It often is the worst thing you can possibly do and make your situation even worse than it is. Listen carefully to what your body is telling you and convey the same to your doctor. 

2. Know that you are absolutely fine: Yes, this is all that is there to know. Our mind for its beautiful mechanism of preparing for danger automatically, often produces a false positive response in harmless situations. This is an evolutionary benefit we humans have got. However, once your GP and therapist have said there is nothing to worry about, do not let your mind trick you into believing something else. In my case, if I didn’t feel panicky or dizzy while walking on grass / carpet but I did while on hard floor, does it make any sense? Clearly, it was anxiety. 

3. Say it out loud: ALL IS WELL. I AM FINE: I understand how frightening all the symptoms I mentioned above are since I have felt them all. BUT you need to know (and you really really need a lot of practice) that you should tell yourself LOUD and CLEAR: “THESE ARE NORMAL SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY. I AM ABSOLUTELY FINE. I DON’T NEED TO WORRY”. My therapist told me to do so right from the first session. However, it took me a while to believe that just by saying this I can be alright. Replace the automatic thought of “I feel dizzy or shaky so I must be having something wrong” with the alternate thought “I am fine. This is a normal bodily response. I am continuing with what I am doing”. Practicing this for just three days made me feel so normal again. It is very hard initially. I promise it gets better. 

4. Exposure therapy: Do those things which make you feel scared. Have a friend with you to help you out. I used to be scared of putting on a mask and going into a grocery shop. Why? Because my body used to produce an anxious response to the idea of being around others in an “indoor” shop. So weird right? I had enough of it after 7 to 8 months. One day I told myself: “I am going to Walmart. On my own. I am going to wear a mask and shop as I usually did. If I fall, I will get up again. I am not going to worry about it. I am going to be okay if I fall. I won’t be embarrassed”. It’s funny but after that I never had any anxiety of going in a shop or a Walmart. 


Note: All points below are very helpful. However, if I didn’t practice point 2, 3 and 4, it didn’t help me to eliminate my fear of fainting or feeling dizzy while walking even if I followed all the points below. Addressing the automatic thought with an alternate thought is the only solution to eliminate the anxious response accompanying the automatic thought. Then why am I mentioning the points below? That is because they also helped me create a healthy lifestyle that I was lacking in the first place and which was the reason I was slowly but steadily building up anxiety over the years. 

5. Eat, Sleep &amp; Exercise: I used to write diaries as a school kid. I picked up all of the ones from 6th grade to 10th grade. I noticed a beautiful pattern. I always slept by 10:30pm and woke up by 6:30am. Even on weekends, I wasn’t breaking this pattern by more than 2 hours. I had a dedicated time for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Every evening my friends and I spent 2 hours playing. How beautiful was it! Never in my school life I ever had any anxiety or panic problems. I decided to start this life again. And it slowly but steadily gave me very good results. Good food gave me good energy, exercising made me feel fresh and energetic. Sleeping for 8 hours made me fresh for the next day too. 


6. 9 to 5 work life: Set aside a fixed time for working, for sleeping, eating, family, exercise. Believe me, it works wonders. Having specific hours set aside for work and then for yourself or your family is a beautiful way to prioritize your time and take care of your health, both mental and physical. The pandemic forced so many to work from home and then it was common to hear stuff like “I am not working from home. I am living at work”. This is because you have not prioritized your time. Many “inspirations” will tell you how a 9 to 5 job is bad and void of ambition. Do not listen to such nonsense. You have a personal life to look after. Nobody else will. Certainly the “inspirations” won’t.

7. Meditate: I reserve 15 minutes every day after work at 5pm to meditate. All you need is some space in which you can relax and sit quietly for 15 minutes. It really helped me to refresh after working. Maybe meditating in the morning works for you. Or maybe before sleep. Do what suits you. 

8. Good vibes only: Surround yourself with good friends, relatives and family. Talk to them about your problems. When I say “good”, I mean the ones who won’t judge you and will support you. Play board games with them. Laugh with them. 

9. Look forward to something new: I began engrossing myself in activities like learning to cook new recipes at home, setting personal running records, painting, decorating my house interior and I found that whenever I did something new it had a beautiful feeling of satisfaction. This kept me feeling happy. Weekends are a time especially for this. 

10. Journal: Pen down your thoughts. They help us have so much clarity. Our minds produce automatic thoughts on a very involuntary basis. Write down what you think. This helps bring perspective. I used to feel that if I drank coffee at Starbucks I was becoming more anxious and panicky. But that didn’t make sense. I didn’t feel the same at home. Thus, I recorded everything from what I ate, when I ate, how much calories I burned, when I exercised, how much I exercised, when I slept etc. I found that there was no correlation between any of the above factors and my fear of falling down again. On days when I ate just 1500 calories, had 4 cups of coffee BUT still practiced point number 3, I had ZERO anxiety. But on days when I ate 2400 calories, exercised one hour, slept 8 hours BUT didn’t practice point 3, I was miserable. This reinforced my belief in practicing point number 3. Note that this didn’t mean I be careless about my health. But my main problem of “being fearful of feeling dizzy” could only be addressed by saying “I am fine. This is a normal bodily reaction”. 

11. Love yourself: Be kind to yourself. Understand that we are humans. We all have problems. But we CAN solve them. All you are having is just a harmless bodily reaction that is magnified and thus terrifying. Treat yourself to simple victories. If you love yourself, the world will too. 

12. Be kind to the world: When I first felt petrified of standing in a queue at Starbucks, I realized that people around me didn’t even notice. The next time you try to be rude to someone or shout at them, know that they maybe battling something that you don’t even know. Be generous to the world around you. 


Here are some points which I dearly will request you to NOT DO: 

1. Alcohol / Smoke / Drugs: It’s a no brainer that these substances will only worsen your condition. I wasn’t ever drawn towards smoking or drugs so I never had any problems around those. I loved beer once a while but since I knew I was fighting a disorder, I didn’t drink till I was very sure that I am normal again. I still don’t drink more than once a month. 

2. Google Doctor: Do not research your symptoms. That will only tell your brain that you are not okay and it will inevitably produce stress chemicals that will give rise to anxiety and the vicious anxiety loop begins. Google searches often give you the worst possible diagnosis. Not sure of something? Call your doctor. Talk to them. There’s a reason why they study well into their 30s. Trust them. In my case, if I felt dizzy, I had to practice point 3 in the section above. Not google the causes for it.

3. Social Media: The pandemic opened the flood gates for so much anxiety producing content on the internet. People constantly posting depressing news through their stories or posts. Fighting and arguing about politics. You don’t need that. It doesn’t help. Unfollow / block any content that you feel is depressing or negative. 

4. Celebrity inspirations: You would have come across videos titled “Inspirational / Motivational journey of Mr. X who founded company Y”. In that you would hear Mr. X say stuff like I worked all day and night. I didn’t take weekends off. I was determined to reach my goal. Only because I worked 100 hours a week I achieved them. DO NOT pay heed to such nonsense. This is the perfect recipe for building anxiety slowly over years only for it to come out very badly later on. As I said in point 5 in the previous section, good regulation of eating, sleeping and staying fit has a very important role to play in our lives. Sure, hard work will always help you. I myself have worked 14 hours at work. But that really is once in probably 6 months as we had a deadline to chase. And then that followed days of rest. Staying disciplined in life also is hard work in many ways. You would not hear online inspirational videos talking about the negatives of a perfectionist attitude. Besides, success has also come to those who lived just normal lives. There’s nothing cool about putting in 100 hours a week. Get over it. 

5. Negative people from your life. Seriously. Blocking out such people doesn’t make a difference to them. It shouldn’t make a difference to you either. It may come with costs such as “What will people say?” which are far cheaper than being victims of unhealthy relationships. Nobody cares about us honestly. Everyone has a life. And of course, everyone wants gossip. But that doesn’t have any significance. Even when you gossip about someone, you do it for your entertainment and move on. Similarly, when others do that to you, take it with a pinch of salt and move on. It doesn’t have any worth in your life or theirs.

6. Judgmental people: Unfortunately, there are enough people in our lives especially in family who will judge us for taking counseling or help. These are the same people who never have even thought they need help for decades altogether. Do not mess up your life because of them. You don’t need to tell them about your struggles. 

Resources:
I read this book called “Anxiety: Panicking about Panic” by Joshua Fletcher. I highly recommend this book as this book literally details every single symptom that an anxiety sufferer feels and gives a very detailed explanation of why we feel anxious. It will make you feel very relieved.