Been there, 4 years of constant panic attacks. Last 2 years have been great, and the solution was simple. Exercise. I still feel the symptoms now and again. I've merely refactored my programming.

thanks. crazy situation. don't get me wrong, i'm just naive, but would using headphones (listening to music), not looking at people and closing the eyes in the elevator work?

An actual panic attack is completely and totally devastating. The entire fight/flight system goes haywire, and people think they're about to die. It's even possible to start hallucinating. Lots of sufferers wind up in the ER absolutely convinced they're having a heart attack.

What's worse, this can lead to a whole range of phobias (I'm in the middle of this theater. What if I have an attack? Then you start having one. Now you're afraid of theaters and theater-like spaces).

It can take many, many years for people to learn how to "talk themselves down" out of this (or, more accurately, to endure the onset of one without letting it get full blown). It's not life threatening, but it's a very serious illness indeed.

I think it's people usually don't get that these are often just random and not always tied to an event, but vice-versa. Certain situations and interactions can lead up to or trigger attacks, but when it's a real disorder with the fight or flight mechanism, there's often no rational meaning to the sense of panic.

In my case my attacks turned out to be related to a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, which (among lots of other things) results in my response system overreacting to stimuli. It took me a long time to get diagnosed and I've learned to cope by rationalizing my panicky feelings as nothing more than flawed biology. I know that there's nothing really wrong, and I can calm myself down, telling myself it's just my screwed up vagus nerve, before an attack becomes full-blown. Thanks to that I was eventually able to taper off taking Xanax regularly.

But while going through that process I had days where I couldn't even work, and even had a boss drive me to an urgent care place once in a full-blown attack. The work at the time was definitely stressful, but I think the panic attacks exacerbated the work more than the other way around.

Yes, the main deal is that the fight/flight system gets triggered too often, even in inappropriate situations. The result is devastating.

I feel for you so much. I've gone through this for the last 14 years. On and off. Mostly off since I've been on medication, but it's debilitating. When you don't go places or do things because you're afraid of simply being there for a panic attack. Always sitting on aisles (when you finally get to the point where you can go to a movie) so you have an easy escape.

And yeah, often you don't look at people, wear headphones or do other things like that. That's when you're doing "well" and not having panic attacks. When you've learned how to manage it.

Well, it's more complicated than that. Your hand will start to tremble uncontrollably when someone looks at you. Your face will blush, your legs will start to shake. You might eventually go and vomit. Elevator filled with people is of course extreme case. But I was in the elevator alone. I just couldn't open the doors of the office, take a sit in my corner and greet all these great guys that I've worked with for many years.

I'm not sure what caused that. I've actually acted as a project manager in my early twenties and everything was fine (I could handle meetings and all that idiocy just fine). Then it all went downhill and I can't tell if the onset of these symptoms was gradual (and I was just simply ignoring them) or if they appeared suddenly.

I know you probably wrote your post in good faith, and you appear sympathetic to the posts you've replied to in this subthread.

I can see how you would jump to the assumption that there is something "wrong" in the person's life, as this is a universal reference point; Something bad happens in your life, and you feel bad about it.

But the fact is that most mental illnesses generally aren't a results of anything like what you've described.

There's no meaning behind them, and they're not rational - which is one of the reasons why they are described as illnesses.

This, in addition to severity, is some of the difference between an anxiety disorder and an anxious mood.

So the assumption made is basically dependent on your healthy perspective, and does not take into account the experience of people affected by mental illness.

If you really don't know much about mental illnesses (as you say in your post) I urge you to try to read up, as ignorance and stigma (which is to some extent a result of the former) are huge problems, even though mental illness is very common and affects around 20% of people, depending in the source (NIMH says 18.6 percent of all U.S. adults had a mental illness the previous year in 2012 [0]).

[0]: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/any-men...

thanks for sharing this. Since i'm in a somewhat comparable situation, would you mind getting in touch? you can find my website, alas email, on my profile page and I think talking about some stuff that worked and didn't work might help me. Thank you.