All panic, no disco – MAN CAVE MAN
The symptoms of a panic attack can feel overwhelming. According to Zul Andra, they can also feel like inhaling a Harry Potter Dementor
Text: Zul Andra
An hour before an important Zoom call with a client, I experienced my first ever panic attack.
I’d heard of these. A close friend had them for years. I’ve worked with, coached, and mentored people whose mental health has been crippled by them. But I’ve never experienced one or its symptoms personally.
Even when I’m stressed or anxious, there is nothing a glass of whisky can’t fix. What does a panic attack feel like? In short: Death. For a longer slow burning dread, read on.
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As mentioned, I was at a cafe working on my laptop and preparing for that important Zoom call. From a scale of one to 10 — sun-kissed normalcy to balls out panic — I was at a zero.
Work was routine, I’ve done this a million times. Then, the panic attack came knocking. The next thirty minutes was a rollercoaster ride in hell.
A random deep breath and all of a sudden, it felt like I inhaled a Dementor — those pesky creatures in Harry Potter. A rising swell of fear, anxiety and dread engulfed me and I slid — full-throttle — from same o’ to o’ nowithin a minute.
In that minute, I could literally feel my heart gearing up to dash out of my chest to greet my client on the screen before me. As anyone about to experience a car crash a moment before disaster would say, I whispered “shit.”
Even the whispering under my breath was a great struggle as though there was a cloth over my mouth, and someone was pouring a constant stream of icy cold water on it. Drowning. Gasping for air. What. The. Hell?
Tensing and easing, my muscles and organs felt like they were blubbering into smush. Palpitations. Heart pounding. Sweating. Shortness of breath. My tanned skin turned monarch-pale. The negative energy throbbed through my body and discharged from my trembling hands like some kind of superpower from a poorly thought-out superhero design.
I tried to regain control. Eyes bugged out, mentally drained, physically debilitated and nearly in tears, I held on to the edge of my seat. Imagine that. I thought I lost control of the wheel, but I soon entertained the idea that I was not even driving.
One measured breath and an attempt to regulate my heart rate later, I realised that I’m not a Shaolin monk. A clenched fist, a curled toe, and an arched back later, I must’ve looked like a cat that just got run over by a truck. The idea of a dead cat and a poorly trained monk added to the repertoire of mental anguish.
If you had watched me go through a panic attack, it might have looked like I was just zoning out. Inside I felt like I was fighting an invisible, unnamed force — a battle that wouldn’t end. Like a shadow that you can only get rid of if you’re dead and good and buried.
I needed to get back on track in the next few minutes or screw up the Zoom meeting. I’m rattled at a scale of 10. How do I even get myself down to a nine?
Attack debrief
I didn’t regain control. I gripped my seat throughout the Zoom call with the client so as to not to appear like I was sitting on a vibrating chair.
I texted my wife and my brother. Told them not to worry. More of a FYI than an SOS. I just needed to tell someone. I left the cafe and took a train to my parents’ for dinner as I'd promised them earlier.
The whole time, since I first “inhaled a Dementor” to the time I finally rested my heavy head on a bed, the battle raged on. It got so bad at one point that I missed a train stop because I couldn’t let go of the handlebar. It wasn’t until the next morning that I returned to normal.
It’s now a good time to recap, like watching a sports highlight reel from a game that lost its network connection: I didn’t seek medical attention after the panic attack although a friend recommended a renowned therapist. I didn’t continue to talk about it with my wife or brother who were, naturally, concerned. Shrugging everything off. I got this. This is a semblance of control, I thought. The very thing I thought I lost during the attack.
I was trained in containing and managing public riots as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force. I’ve pitched to a hundred advertisers in the same room. I frequently stepped out of comfort zones to grow as much as possible. These never rattle me. But there I was at the cafe, nearly 40 years old, and very much preferring to cradle myself in a fetal position from an anxiety attack that came out of nowhere.
My strategy with the feeling of losing control was to instinctively regain it back. “But I soon entertained the idea,” I shared earlier, “that I was not even in the driver’s seat.” It became a struggle for ascendance. What I should have done, and what professionals recommend, is to “ground” myself.
Ground control to Major Tom
Take a deep breath and find five things you can see; four things you can touch; three things you can hear; two things that you can smell; and one thing that you’d like to feel emotionally. This is grounding.
If you feel like you’ve gone too far in your head and are losing all sense of control, trying to regain it is harder than regaining a sense of reality. A friend of mine shared this with me and I’ve been applying it whenever I feel like I’m going “off”.
Grounding isn’t a miraculous exercise, it’s a thing that we tend to forget to do because we are too deep in accepting the past and changing the future.
Your version of the Apollo spacecraft, the Destroyer naval vessel, or your Honda, might lose connection to mission control, the GPS system. Take a look outside, beyond the window of your fear, dread, anxiety and panic, to find a system anchored in reality.
Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker that everyone loves and hates, asserts: “When you’re in your head, you’re dead.” A panic attack isn’t something that can be fixed, but like a loose electrical cable, it can always be grounded.
From balls out panic, there’s a way to get back to sun-kissed normalcy. You’re strong. But are you strong enough to be weak? What does that reality look like?
