Hi there, I don’t know where else to post this so I am turning here. The purpose of this post is to find anyone who has suffered something similar and to hear your ideas and experiences on how you have overcome or learned to cope with this. 


My husband is 27 and works a desk job as a buyer for a retail chain. He had this panic issue once before, during his senior year of high school, but after graduating it went away. 


Here is the situation: My husband started this job a year and a half ago. He has always been great at what he does and has excelled here. Now obviously there are challenges, and one of those being that it is a fast-paced environment and his managers are very “go go go”. Another word is they are very “corporate”. But that has never been a problem until now, and I asked what triggered it and he said he has no idea. There was nothing that really changed much since he began this job.


He is NOT scared of public speaking. He actually really likes it. But the panic attacks started when he had to give a presentation over the summer and it hit him all at once. He wasn’t scared for the presentation that he KNEW of, but once the fast heartrate hit, he couldn’t slow the panic down and he lost it. He had to leave the room and could not give the presentation. It was very embarrassing for him and he called me crying. It has slowly degenerated into panic attacks every single day where he throws up and feels like he is having a heart attack. Every. Single. Day. Because he has meeting every day, and he gets a panic attack before every meeting. There are days I have to drive his commute with my toddler, meet him in the parking lot, and give him a back massage and help him calm down just for his weekly zoom call with his boss (super easy 10 minute call). 


He explained it to me like this: the panic is not the fear of the meeting itself or speaking. The panic attack causes my throat to tighten and I can’t get words out or speak. So then I panic more at the thought of being frozen. And now, I’m at the point where I pre-panic because I know I will panic. So my panic attacks come at THIS point because I am panicking ABOUT the fact that I will probably have a panic attack. So then my body just fully panics right then just thinking about it. And it happens every day before my meetings.


Anyway, he is starting to really lose it. He is barely functioning as is and knows he will crack at some point and quit. I know him, and that is probably true because this is getting BAD. He cries every night. 

Here is what we have done so far. We have pursued everything we can with our religious and spiritual beliefs to help bring him peace, but he feels like God has abandoned him. This is a very damaging thought for him, as a generally highly spiritual Christian person. That has really put him in a depression. We also saw our doctor who tried some anxiety and panic meds, but those made it astronomically worse. So we got him to a psychiatrist as soon as I could get us in. She has prescribed 10 mg of fluoxetine, .1 mg of clonidine, a low dose of slow release adderall, and some vitamins. She diagnosed him with ADHD and said that it is causing a lot of the anxiety and depression because it has been untreated. She said in time she will observe how much of the ADHD is related to the panic. We have also been doing everything she told us- the progressive muscle relaxation, meditations, breathing exercises, and… nothing. It has been 4 weeks and he has still had the panic attacks. In one week we have his follow-up appt, but he is crying right now telling me its hopeless and he will never be cured, he will never be normal again. He doesn’t think theres hope or a point to even go back to the psych. Obviously I am going to make us go, but is there anything else that we are missing here? Is this our only hope? Can panic attacks be cured? He tells me that he believes its all mental so it’s his “fault” so he can never be cured because a medication can’t change his thoughts. 


I’m grasping at straws here. I just need any and all advice- thank you.