Living with Anxiety and Panic Attacks

My name is Charlotte Cook and I am a 19 year old girl and I suffer with anxiety and panic attacks. Around the age of 15  or 16 I began to have panic attacks at that most random times and for a long time I didn't know what was happening to my body and what I was experiencing. I remember my first panic attack, I was sitting in bed watching TV and I remember feeling scared and my heart began to beat incredibly fast. I felt my face become numb and I could think is "I'm having a stroke" and to this day my bad panic attacks can still feel like that. Now fast forward to today, I'm 19 years old and still struggling with anxiety and panic attacks, I find that now in my life I have bad and good patches. For a long time I will be fine, not a anxious feeling or a panic attack and then one day the feeling of anxiety in everything that I do will come creeping back and the panic attacks will begin. Living with anxiety and panic attacks for as long as I have you begin to get used to the feeling of anxiety but you never get used to the realisation that this is something that you will have to deal with every day for the rest of your life. For anyone out there that is reading this that doesn't suffer with anxiety and panic attacks I understand that  this all can sound incredibly dramatic and over exaggerated  but is how I and every other person that suffers with this feels, there will be times that we literally feel that we have no control over our mind and our bodies.

All I ask of people that don't suffer with anxiety and panic attacks is that you try to understand us, try to understand that a task that may not be a thought in your mind may be something that a person that suffers will anxiety and panic attacks over thinks minutes, hours and maybe even days in advance. In all honesty I believe that our own minds can be the source of our anxiety and the trigger to panic attacks at times, we over think every detail of our life so extensively that we trigger feelings of fear and anxiety. For any of you reading this that suffer with anxiety or panic attacks or both that I understand how you feel, I understand the feeling of wanting to hide away from the world and wanting to hide from what may trigger a panic attack. If you do suffer with anxiety and panic attacks the best advice that I could ever give you is to tell someone and trust me it helps a lot to just talk about it instead of keeping it all inside and driving yourself crazy with your thoughts, when you talk to others about how you feel it helps others understand what your feeling and what your going through; it also allows people to help you get through it. Another piece of advice that I am going to give you is to book and appointment with your doctor and talk to them about it, let them know about your anxiety and your panic attacks and I promise you they won't judge they will help.

I understand that asking for help is hard, it can make you feel weak and that your going to be judged but I promise that asking for help is a sign of strength, it shows that you want to get better and you want to learn new ways to stand up to anxiety and panic attacks instead of hiding away. There is no magic cure on how to get rid of anxiety and panic attacks but you can fight it and learn how to not let it control your every thought and what you do in your life.