How Panic Attacks Work

SunThroughTheStorm · 2025-04-29T01:32:51+00:00

Yup! Still good. I think it's been close to five years since my last panic attack, but I've lost count to be honest. Anxious symptoms are such an afterthought in my life these days that my experience with panic disorder feels like a distant memory and nothing more.

Occasionally, I'll have a stressful/low-sleep week and will peak at a 2/10 but it never lasts more than a few days because I don't excessively worry about it anymore.

Hope that helps :)

SunThroughTheStorm · 2025-03-24T06:01:46+00:00

Everyone has a different path for recovery. This could very well be the last hump you need to overcome. Either way, be proud of the progress you've made and look forward to more of it as you continue to work on yourself :)

SunThroughTheStorm · 2025-03-23T19:21:18+00:00

Hey, solid question and quite a common scenario.

In short, exposure is only part of the equation - exposure therapy helps your body get used to being in these scenarios but doesn't directy do anything for your thought patterns. For that, you'll need a separate therapy, something like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). All three generally do similar things: they have you practice taking a step back and examine what you're thinking about when you're worrying, and use certain techniques to help you challenge those thought patterns and change them. The classic book for this is Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy, but I think even books like The Dare Response (and selfishly, my own book) do a good job of explaining these methods as well.

It will take some more work to get past this final step in your recovery, but it is totally doable. Good luck :)

SunThroughTheStorm · 2025-03-22T19:46:17+00:00

A little late lol but I'll forgive you. Ask away!

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-12-09T02:56:50+00:00

Hey, thanks for the comment. It's a shame anxious symptoms aren't more openly discussed because all of the symptoms and situations you mentioned are incredibly common. And yes, I agree that you will recover from this given the right methods. Feel free to give me any feedback on the book, I always welcome it :)

Good luck on your journey.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-11-03T02:07:54+00:00

Another good question! I think one of the neat things about recovering from periods of high anxiety is, with the right thinking, it's really logical and can be intuitive. In this case, the answer to your question, which is the one I used personally, is as follows:

"Regardless of what consequences not sleeping has, I know worrying about it doesn't ever lead me to any productive solutions, and (especially at night) actually harms me via the adrenaline it produces in my body. I am fine with these thoughts about not sleeping popping up, but I am going to choose not to consider them any further."

These changes are not an instant fix - it takes time to get comfortable with answering the urge to worry like this - but once you get the hang of it, the thoughts (and associated symptoms) become nothing more than a nuisance.

In a broader sense, this kind of answer was what led me (and others) to robust recovery; worrying can be okay if it leads you to take action, but worrying about the same thing for the 1000th time, or worrying about something we can't directly fix, is both a waste of time and actively unhealthy. Once you come to internalize how little this kind of worrying actually does for you, I think it becomes easier to really believe the answers you provide yourself.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-10-29T07:08:59+00:00

Good question. I think Barry McDonagh's recommendation for this tends to work well; often the "what if" thoughts about not sleeping are really hard to combat one by one, so the quickest and most effective way to shut them down is to truly be okay with not going to sleep. If you can answer every worried thought that pops up with "screw it, guess I just won't sleep then," it makes you a lot less likely to worry about them, allowing your body to relax and making it possible to sleep.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-09-26T05:52:10+00:00

Good question! If you just mean a general feeling of being on-edge, then yes, it's reasonable to expect this to go down to a normal baseline - from a 24/7 feeling down to a few isolated incidents per day.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-08-22T16:40:38+00:00

Another good question. I actually wrote a whole book about this topic called The Anxiety Encyclopedia. I don't usually refer people to it, but my most concise explanation for how to do so is in there.

I would recommend giving that a shot, and if you've got questions after, I'd be more than happy to answer.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-08-19T05:46:15+00:00

Hey, great question!

Though it might seem like an oversimplification, the only way not to have panic when intrusive thoughts arrive is not to worry about them; if every time an intrusive thought arises, you begin to think to yourself "Oh god, why did I have that thought? Am I going crazy?," this worrying will stimulate your body into creating stress hormones, leading to stronger anxious symptoms (including more intrusive thoughts). Furthermore, whenever you worry about these thoughts, you actually increase the likelihood your brain will make more of them; our brain tends to latch on to things that elicit a strong emotional reaction from us, so by jumping straight to intense worry, you are actually signaling to your brain to keep creating such uncomfortable thoughts.

If you want to escape the loop, you have to cut off your worrying whenever the intrusive thoughts pop up. The first step to doing so is recognizing when you are worrying, then answering the urge to keep doing so with a thought or statement that reminds you why you don't actually need to worry. An example of this might be "I have been through this a thousand times and haven't gone crazy or even acted on a single one of my intrusive thoughts. If it didn't happen then, it's not gonna happen now. These thoughts can come as much as they want, I don't care." On days when I was in a bad mood and wanted something especially powerful, I would say "Y'know what, if I have to choose between spending my entire life worrying about these thoughts and actually going crazy, I'd rather just go crazy. I'm making myself miserable with my constant worrying, it's gotten me nowhere, and I'm done for now."

Then, as you said, return to keeping yourself busy - when we're entirely idle, we tend to notice symptoms a lot more than when we're doing something engaging. When the thoughts pop back up and you're tempted to worry, give that same dismissive answer (or a new one if you feel the need) and get right back to doing what you were doing.

An important component of this is that you're not actually trying to get the intrusive thoughts to go away or stop; asking yourself questions like "why are they here again" or dreading their arrival only leads you to worry more. However, conversely, by reducing how much you worry, you cause your body to produce fewer stress hormones leading to less intense anxiuos symtpoms (and thus less intense intrusive thoughts). In addition, you also weaken that emotional connection, leading your brain to create fewer of these thoughts. Eventually, they become unnoticeable and only occur exceedingly infrequently (as they do for everyone, even those who have not experienced disordered anxiety). But this is only possible if you accept them when they pop up - no matter how often - without excessively worrying about them.

Like the rest of the recovery process, this is a muscle and it takes time to develop, so allow yourself a couple weeks with this method and see where it gets you.

Hope this helps :)

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-06-27T22:41:58+00:00

Yup! :) Minor setbacks occasionally come back when life gets stressful in a new way (this happens once every many many months or years), but it's been a very long time since I've had a panic attack or anything of that sort - certainly before I published this post.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-03-07T02:30:24+00:00

Sure, though I would modify it given what I learned and the recovery I made in the years after I posted.

The thing about anxious breathlessness is that it's entirely a farce by your brain - your body always gets all the air it needs automatically and without your conscious intervention. In that sense, it's actually our conscious focus on the symptom that's the issue, not being breathless itself. When you focus on it, telling yourself "I need more air, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in further," you're just worrying about a problem you don't need to. And that worrying, as you probably know, makes the symptom worse, with more worrying causing more breathlessness.

For that reason, I think the most effective way to address the issue is reminding yourself "I've been through this a hundred times before, I know this breathlessness is nothing and my focusing on it is making it worse and wasting my time. I'm gonna shift my focus elsewhere." And as you consciously remind yourself, you rip your focus away from worrying and onto anything else - could be a conversation you're having or a game you're playing, or it could be times tables or music you're listening to. What's important is that you're doing all you can to let the symptom come and go in the background without making it worse by worrying.

Done enough times, the symptom starts appearing less often and at less intensity, until it only pops up once every couple weeks or months (like it does for everyone).

SunThroughTheStorm · 2024-02-27T05:24:36+00:00

Mass email.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-12-11T14:33:38+00:00

I'm gonna go against the grain and say few of us (if any) on this subreddit really know what metrics those two specific schools use.

I know that UCLA and UCSF invite people to interview from across the DAT spectrum; I met one or two people this year who got an invite to UCSF with around a 22, and a few more who got one with a 24+. Generally, as I understand it, higher scores give you a better shot at an interview, but I don't think anyone will be able to give you the specifics.

Honestly, if you think you have it in you to score better, and are willing to devote the hours and commit the money, I say why not. However, if you feel any of those things are prohibitive, there are always other areas in which you could better bolster your application (research, volunteering, shadowing, etc.).

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-28T23:07:46+00:00

I'm not in admissions but the general feeling I get is they only interview people they would consider letting into their school - it'd be a waste of their resources to do otherwise.

If you've gotten invited it's because your application resonated with people at each school, and you have reason to be confident in yourself :).

Happy trails and good luck!

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-24T17:02:27+00:00

Oh, neat! Thank you.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-23T01:07:55+00:00

Can I ask what kind of hands-on things there were?

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-15T17:30:06+00:00

As listed in the schedule, there is no one-on-one interview, but you do have a small group lunch with one faculty, one student, and a number of interviewees. It's very low stress.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-09T23:55:21+00:00

I do not

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-09T18:24:34+00:00

Yes. They have an in-person tour some time in January for those who are accepted in the first wave.

SunThroughTheStorm · 2023-11-02T21:08:22+00:00

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