** Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as sexual assault. **
“I remember you…Emily, right?”
When I heard those words, my breath stopped. Not in a romance novel, “Top Gun” theme song sort of way. In an “Oh my God I can’t breathe what is happening am I dying??” sort of way. It was the beginning of my first panic attack.
My name isn’t Emily. My name is Erika. The names are similar enough, but he should have remembered me. I remembered him: John*. A month before he called me Emily, he sexually assaulted me.
This is what a panic attack feels like, for me: Suddenly, I can’t breathe. I’m hyperventilating, taking breaths that are too shallow, too quickly. I cry and shiver uncontrollably, even if it’s August. Sometimes, there’s a slight ringing in my ears. Now that I’m used to them, when they happen, I’m also thinking on some level, “Ugh, no, another panic attack. This is annoying. Is it over yet?”
Panic attacks are relatively common. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults in a year, or 18 percent of the population. There’s even a Bright Eyes song about panic attacks: “When panic grips your body, and your heart’s a hummingbird….”
Recently, I sat down with a close friend, Maria*, who also gets panic attacks. We talked about our experiences for over an hour while I recorded our conversation, discovering how we’re different and how we’re similar. Here’s what we said, edited and condensed:
E: I want to talk about our different experiences with panic attacks, what they feel like, how often we have them, how we cope. I think I’ve had seven in the past two years.
M: For me, I don’t have them as frequently but when I do it’s really crippling. It’s a result of a ton of stress culminating into one thing.
Last year at work, I was facing this very stressful situation where I was subject to be terminated for very capricious, unjust reasons. Silly me, I decided to read a very important email about that in the middle of a lecture at grad school.
I felt my heart palpitating like crazy, and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to excuse myself from the lecture, but when I got up I blacked out and fainted. The professor ran to my side, dismissed class and got campus security to make sure I was okay. That’s the worst panic attack I’ve had.
E: For me, there’s a big range of severity. My first panic attack was bad, but now I can usually talk myself down. When it happens, I know I need to get to a quiet place where no one is touching me and concentrate on breathing.
It helps to be alone or maybe with one other person, but there has to be a physical distance between us. I have to be like, you need to not touch me for ten minutes and then you can give me a hug.
M: With me, I cannot talk myself down. I think it might be a personality thing. I’m more extroverted and I process things by talking. I can’t go cool off in another room, because my own thoughts would eat me alive. When I had the last panic attack, my professor calmed me down by holding my hand and talking to me. Having that tactile sensation helps.
E: When I’m having a panic attack I will sometimes touch rosary beads, even though I’m not that religious anymore.
M: I’ve heard about mantras helping. That’s actually something I would like to try. I feel like I’d want to have something to repeat to myself to calm me down. Kind of like a meditation.
E: Usually I kind of dissociate, where my body is freaking but then on another level my head is like, “Is this over yet, I’m so bored, are we done?”
M: When I have a panic attack, I lose control. After I fainted, people were standing over me ogling at me and I was saying, “Stop fucking looking at me and leave!” while I was crying. A really nice girl who I was friends with said, “Oh no, are you okay?” And I said, “Do I look like I’m fucking okay?” I later apologized to her but I was having a fight or flight response.
E: Are they usually that severe for you?
M: Yeah, when I do have panic attacks they’re usually pretty severe. I also really only have panic attacks when I’m near a breaking point. Like when I was sexually assaulted and then I ran into my assailant on campus [during undergrad].
E: That’s when I had my first panic attack, too. It was when I ran into the guy who assaulted me.
M: When that happened, I saw my assailant on the way to class and was just trying to stay calm but then started sobbing in class and had to leave.
E: Did he say anything to you?
M: Yeah. He just said “Hi” or something. Nothing crazy. But he said it like it was normal. Like he hadn’t drugged me and raped me.
E: Yeah. My first panic attack, I ran into John* and he said, “Oh, hey, I remember you. Emily, right?” And I was like, a month ago you pinned me down while you tried to force your dick in my mouth, and you don’t even remember my fucking name? I didn’t say that, of course, I just left.
M: What a creep.
E: I know you don’t have panic attacks as often as I do, but do you take any measures to prevent them?
M: Well, I’ve always had health problems. I get overwhelmed by not sleeping or by working too much, and my body crashes and burns. I’ve always known that happens physically, and it happens to my brain also. So I take precautions to make sure that I make time to hang out with people and that I’m eating well and sleeping enough. And going to therapy.
E: Have you ever tried medication?
M: I haven’t been prescribed it but I used to take my friend’s Xanax. But I didn’t know how the dosing worked. One friend was bigger and had a different type of pill from what I was used to and I took one tablet without knowing that I was supposed to split it, and I fell asleep on the desk working on a group project and everyone had to stick around and make sure I was okay.
E: The main thing I do to prevent panic attacks is that I watch how much I’m drinking. Especially if I’m with a guy, I might have one or two drinks but I make sure not to be drunk. I’m much more likely to have a panic attack if I’m drunk.
Something I recently realized I need to do is to be really careful on anniversaries. I don’t know the exact date that I was sexually assaulted, but I know when it was roughly and that time of year can be harder for me than I anticipate. This year, I had a panic attack when I was making out with this boy I was dating. And I wasn’t drunk. I think we’d split a tallboy.
A different anniversary, I went and saw “The Fifth Estate,” the Julian Assange movie, because my friend had free tickets. And the movie doesn’t really talk about the rape accusations against him but all through the movie I was thinking, Julian Assange is a rapist and this movie is glorifying him, and then I had a mini panic attack on the way home.
M: That’s why I stopped watching “Game of Thrones.” And I read that “Breaking Bad” has some rape scenes so I decided that’s not something that I want to see. I developed the habit of reading Wikipedia summaries for anything before I watch it. Even with shows like “Parks and Recreation,” where I know there are not going to be rape scenes, I’ll still read the summaries. It makes me feel safer knowing what I’ll see.
E: Are there other things like that?
M: Hearing anyone talking about roofies can really freak me out.
E: And that’s something that people joke about a lot.
M: Yeah. Someone sent some guy friends a free pitcher of beer and they were like, “I hope this isn’t roofied, ha ha.” Jokes like that can make me go “Aghh.” It definitely disturbs me.
E: I feel like I test people before I tell them about being sexually assaulted. I’ll tell them about a rape scene on TV and see what they say. I’m not ashamed of it but it sucks to have to justify yourself. With me, I know it could have been way worse. I wasn’t like, properly raped. And I sometimes feel like, it was my mouth, it wasn’t my vagina, it doesn’t count, I should be over it, I should be fine. And some people kind of imply that.
M: For me, it’s like, “Oh, you don’t remember it, it doesn’t count.” I feel like if they’re that kind of person, whatever happened, they’ll try and make you feel bad. Lord knows, even children are blamed. That’s the culture we live in. People who buy into that notion will defend a rapist no matter what. People’s reactions sometime can cause me to freak out, too. Not being validated is painful. Especially if it’s something that haunts you and is so much a part of being a woman.
* Names have been changed.
Header art by Annie Yiling Wang