I have OCD and generalized anxiety (professionally diagnosed) and just last week I had a friend over who also suffers from this and we talked about our experiences with panic attacks.
Her symptoms are mainly physical and almost always appear out of nowhere. She suddenly gets short of breath, her heart beats really fast, and she feels barely able to walk. She said that she actually knows it's just a panic attack, but then there are these thoughts that it might be a heart attack after all and she's going to die.
It's different for me, because I don‘t have these severe physical symptoms (just hot flashes and a very weird feeling of restlessness that‘s hard to describe), and my panic attacks are always an immediate reaction to something that has just happened:
If there is the possibility that I could have made a mistake, fear sets in like a punch to my stomach, and I can't stop thinking about terrible disasters resulting from this mistake. It’s like a song you can‘t get out of your head no matter what you do.

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Birgit M

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For me it feels like what I imagine a heart attack feels like. Usually I get them at night when I’m almost asleep and can’t quite my thoughts.
Out of the blue my heartbeat runs really high and I can’t breathe.

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Szirra

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I have GAD. I used to have panic attacks but now I’m finally on a medication that works for me. This is what my panic attacks used to feel like: my heart would beat so fast and so hard. I couldn’t catch my breath. I could see but not interpret what I was seeing. I couldn’t be around many people because this would happen. I hated work meetings and family gatherings. I hated shopping. The best thing that ever happened to me was finding a psychiatrist who would talk to me and listen to me. She kept searching for the magic meds and found them. She died of cancer but before she passed she hand picked a new doctor for me and made sure the new one understood my journey. That doctor made all the difference in the world for me. She was the only reason I am still alive.

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Mistletoe

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I have no idea why my response was posted several times. 🤔

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Mistletoe

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