I’ve had panic attacks all my adult life. As a journalist, I travelled the world. On the surface I was able to take whatever was thrown at me: tense meetings; high-profile commissions; long-haul flights; tight deadlines. Under the surface, it was chaos.
At work, mornings would begin with the sensation that my ribs were being squeezed. I felt a strong, physical pressure in my lungs as soon as I opened my eyes, and it got worse throughout the day when I started to ruminate about how bad I felt.
Wall edges got sharper, the sound of doors closing grew louder and made me jump. Smells such as drying paint and new furniture would become overpowering. The volume on every sense got dialled up a notch,