Читать книгу Jog on Journal: A Practical Guide to Getting Up and Running онлайн

21 страница из 37

OK, good – moving on. I’m going to write down a list of panic attack symptoms – and you tick the ones you’ve experienced.ssss1 This isn’t an exhaustive list but these are the very common ones. It’ll be like a fun puzzle exercise, except it’s about mental illness and there’s no fun involved. Tricked you. OK, GO!

Truly horrible bloody things. What’s your worst symptom? Mine is that I can’t breathe. I pull at my throat and gasp a lot. Which makes me think that people must be noticing my freak-out and that can make me more panicky. But here’s the thing. Mostly, panic attacks are happening beneath the surface – like when a serene duck is barely moving on the water but actually its feet are frantically paddling. All the things going on in your mind and in your body feel IMMENSE but are normally not visible to a passer-by. Think about how many times you have seen a stranger having an anxiety attack – I’ve never seen one person experience one and I have them myself. So put that worry out of your head. So many people worry that they’ll cause a scene and look stupid when, in actual fact, human beings are really self-absorbed and barely notice anything you’re doing unless you fall over. Then they notice, trust me (I fall over a lot).