Panic Attacks

Most, if not all, of the medications and diagnoses I received in my pre-teen and early teen years were, in my opinion, considered a misdiagnosis by a doctor who practically handed the prescription pad over with little to no questions asked…I feel they were misdiagnoses because no one *actually* asked me…

I was diagnosed with depression when I was 13. This was after being prescribed accutane at 11 (a heavy duty medication used to treat acne - with life altering side effects like depression and other mental health issues, and gastrointestinal issues - just to name a few - and this was the first of 3 rounds before the age of 16). I was also prescribed water pills at 12 (I was drinking 0 water and lots of sodium heavy processed foods, plus tons of soda… this caused my weight to fluctuate…) This is not acceptable for someone who has to fit into their beauty pageant clothes, so the answer was water pills (???).

The symptoms of bulimia started to appear when I was 11. I remember the first time I made myself throw up…it was after a photo shoot at my home, when I was praised for losing weight so quickly (they had to postpone my photos because I looked too fat at the beginning of the week), and was rewarded with McDonalds for a job well done…

I remember being praised for not eating by some adults in my life. Compliments when I looked thinner, insults, and shame inducing comments when I had put on weight (even if it was just water weight).

I was put on anti-depressants when I was 13, and birth control sometime around this time as well…After all of this, still no one asked me about my diet, what my home life was like, what my experience was like at school, how much movement I was engaging in, if I had been speaking to anyone (therapy)…. Nope, let’s go straight to the pharmacological medicine. :-|

My mom was afraid that if I spoke to someone about what was going on in my home that CPS was going to be involved (at the time she was in a deep depression that left her unable to do little more than work 18-20+ hour days , leaving me to take care of the home and my younger sister most of the time), so it was made clear we do not speak to anyone outside of the home about what is really going on.

At 14, I threatened to end my life and was admitted into the psych ward for a few days while on those anti-depressants. Guess that one wasn’t working... let’s try another. 🙃

Fast forward a few years, I eventually got off the anti depressants and even birth control in my late teens (both were giving me side effects with little to no benefit), but I was also having to deal with anxiety and panic attacks due to all the suppression and living in a dysregulated system for much of my life.

Around my 18th birthday, I started smoking cannabis for the perceived “cool factor” (not joking), which did help with the anxiety, but then it presented a new challenge…without it the anxiety returned… I had become attached to another addiction that I couldn’t go without, so it became my multiple time a day habit.


Into my 20s and even early 30s, I would purposely get so stoned and do questionable or risky things just to test my own ability to “handle things”…I see now in hindsight that I would do it to make life a bit more exciting and to test myself - how calm and relaxed could I stay while my “house was on fire”? 



As someone who is now living sober, knowing exactly who I am and what I came here to do, and having learned how to regulate myself in ways outside of the path of traditional western medicine, I am not afraid to speak my truth. Remission is possible - we all have a story that could shock someone else or even break their heart - and while I honour your experiences, I know that your past doesn’t have to be your present or future.

I stay on my phone sometimes until I pass out from exhaustion. A few times, I do not even remember what happened. I would fall asleep, and my phone would drop to the floor or get lost in the bedsheets.

I cannot believe how much it tears at me sometimes when I can't sleep! Then there are evenings when all I do is pass out! My brain 🧠 goes 100mph or 500+ mph, and other times it's about 10mph in function.

#Insomnia really sucks but #exhaustion really sucks too!

What else can I do?
Just journal, write, and pretend to talk to someone? It gets lonely.

#Insomnia
#Anxiety
#PanicAttack
#exhausted

I stay on my phone sometimes until I pass out from exhaustion. A few times, I do not even remember what happened. I would fall asleep, and my phone would drop to the floor or get lost in the bedsheets.

I cannot believe how much it tears at me sometimes when I can't sleep! Then there are evenings when all I do is pass out! My brain 🧠 goes 100mph or 500+ mph, and other times it's about 10mph in function.

#Insomnia really sucks but #exhaustion really sucks too!

What else can I do?
Just journal, write, and pretend to talk to someone? It gets lonely.

#Insomnia
#Anxiety
#PanicAttack
#exhausted

How do you, as a fearful flier, not become discouraged after seeing a tragedy happen? It is of course sad and upsetting anytime things like this happen. The loss of life, the grief, even for people you've never met, it is painful and tragic. It makes sense to have these responses to tragedy, whether related to flying or otherwise.

The Validation of Fear and Flying Anxiety Setbacks

While there's not a full explanation available yet of what caused the Air India crash, any time someone who is afraid of flying hears about something like this happening it can be incredibly discouraging and increase flying anxiety, or decrease normalization (I've written extensively on the concept of normalization and overcoming fear of flying. Check out the blog on my website if you would like to read more on this topic).

When an incident happens, one of the reasons it can be easy to be discouraged is because a plane incident serves as validation for your worst fears. People I work with sometimes say to me, "See? It can happen. I should be scared to fly. What if that was me?" The validation of the fear, and the sense of "what if", makes someone with flying phobia feel that it is now much more likely to happen to them than before.

It becomes compounded by the fact that when something like this happens, videos are popping up everywhere for days and weeks to cover the one incident. In terms of how we internalize this, it can actually be experienced by the mind and body as more than one incident because there are so many videos repeatedly driving the incident in, while at the same time not taking in much positive about flying to work against it.

Every time you view a video your mind and body can internalize it as another negative interaction with flying and further reverse your normalization meter—making it feel like the danger to flying is more normal than the safety of flying. Even if you "know" it's still largely safer to fly than drive, the validation of the fear and the repeated exposure to the one incident can start to make it "feel" more dangerous than it is.

Maintaining Normalization and Finding Perspective

It is much easier to locate coverage about negative incidents than positive ones when it comes to flying. Obviously, this is for good reason—why would people post every time planes take off and land without incident? The same day the Air India crash happened, if you watched one video for every single plane that took off and landed in the world, you would have gone through the whole entire day not being able to watch them all. And you would have likely become bored out of your mind after the first hour or two of watching these videos. However, while the Air India crash is still an awful incident, had you watched a hundred thousand-plus planes take off and land the same day, it would have likely created some internal perspective to place alongside the tragedy.

This is the reason that you can hear about fatal car crashes and then immediately after still get into your car and drive—or even hear about them while you're driving and still not suddenly become scared being in the car. Not only do you possibly feel more in control by driving than you might feel in the cabin of a plane, but you're likely so normalized to driving by doing it all the time and seeing other cars on the road not crashing all the time, that when you hear about fatal car crashes it likely doesn't discourage you from driving or dent the routine nature of it you've internalized over time.

Emotionally Managing Risk

The validation of your fear after an airplane incident becomes the biggest internal punch to have to contend with. In spite of the more publicized flying incidents recently, flying isn't really less safe, and isn't more likely to end in tragedy than before. But the validation of your fear after something like this really increases that feeling that you were right, and that your level of fear is valid and reasonable. (I've also noticed a great increase in the coverage of private plane flying incidents being unfairly treated as if it's on equal footing and lumped in with commercial airline flying. This makes people feel like airline passenger plane incidents are happening all the time which isn't helping matters for people with flying anxiety).

One of the many normalization exercises I developed for people to work on as part of overcoming fear of flying is called the Fear of Flying Mindset. This asks people to list all the things they do every day that have risk (this exercise, when done effectively, helps create perspective and normalization on risk). People are often surprised to learn how many things they do every single day that in their absolute worst moments can have tragic results.

But a big difference is, most of these things—such as eating, for one example—people don't tend to already fear. So if you hear of a person choking, you don't suddenly fear eating. Also because your daily interaction with eating without choking has normalized eating for you. You have internalized reasonable perspective. So even when an incident happens, it doesn't tend to put a dent in your ability to still interact with these things that also have risk in their worst possible moments.

Keeping Perspective

When you already experience flying anxiety, flying doesn't have this same perspective for you. Remember, the point of overcoming fear of flying has never been to convince yourself that there is no world in which bad things happen once in a great while. Overcoming fear of flying and flying anxiety is all about emotionally aligning yourself with the routine reality of flying. When you fear flying, it's very common to experience flying as much more risky and dangerous than it really is—almost like it's a 50/50 chance you'll be okay, which is one of the reasons people can feel like they just got lucky when they land.

When you see an incident like Air India happen, if you are afraid of flying already, it gives you reason to believe you were right about these odds, spiking your fear. But for those who are normalized to flying and have internalized a reasonable sense of the routine nature of it, it is likely to elicit feelings of sadness and upset for the loss and tragedy, but as far as fear goes, it's more aligned with hearing about car crashes before you get in your car. You may know once in a while stuff happens (a whole lot more with driving than flying), but emotionally you recognize the tragedy was the exception to the normal routine.

#fearofflying #Phobia #PanicAttacks #Anxiety