Dotsie,

I'd love to.
My panic attacks began at the rip old age of seven. Over my life I developed "coping strategies" which, basically, allowed me to live a sort-of normal life. However, coping often means catering to your anxieties, (which is what I was doing).

Over the years that can mean you do less and less socially (the incredible shrinking world is what we called it in the book). Coping strategies that worked for me as a young girl, no longer worked as a young woman, so I developed new strategies, such as, abusing drugs and alcohol. When I was at a very low point, I met the man who would become my husband (and still is 26 years later). Although he didn't really understand my panic (then again, neither did I), he tried to help me, while also gently nudging me towards a larger world.

I maintained, and we started a family. It was around age 30, when I had three small children that I really began spiralling downhill. Suddenly, my panic attaks were becoming more frequent, and I was being haunted by obsessive thoughts. I was terrified I might lose control and hurt my children, or do something completely inappropriate, like take off my clothes at the grocery store, or suggest a lewd sexual act to my local butcher.

Each time these thoughts even flickered across my mind, my heart would leap and the panic would begin. These thoughts terrified me, and I was afraid to share them with anyone, certain my doctor would have my kids taken away.

But finally I did share, first with my husband, who convinced me that I would never do anything to hurt the kids, and later to a psychiatrist who basically told me the same thing. He explained that I was suffereing from a form of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder known as "Specific Obsession" which comes in the form of an impulse. He explained the difference between my fear that I might lose control and commit some unspeakable act and someone suffering from delusional thoughts who might actually act on their thoughts.

And Imagine my surprise when I was researching our book and discovered in the Diagnostic & Statistics manual of Mental Disorders the definition of Specific Obsession. It reads: Aggressive or horrific impulses, e.g. to hurt one's child or to shout an obscenity in church, and sexual imagery (e.g. a recurrent pornographic image). I had experienced all of these. And yes, it helped immeasurably to know that what I was experiencing had a name, and a treatment...and that I would never do what I feared doing.

I began medication and left therapy. After a few years I went off medication and my symptoms returned. I went back on medication, returned to therapy, and made some lifestyle changes. I began exercising everyday, going to bed earlier (and on a schedule). I began meditating and doing yoga, and eventually I returned to church. I began practicing the techniques of Dr. Claire Weekes, which is basically not fighting you fear, but accepting it. Which means, letting it overtake you, letting whatever will happen, happen, however horrible you fear it will be. Of course, after 10 years, nothing horrible has ever happened. I have been off anti-depressant medication since 1998. (I still carry my xanax in my purse.)

If I feel the first flutterings of panic, I take a moment and try to figure out why. Then, I begin breathing, abdominal breathing, I visualize my breath as a white ribbon that flows in through my nostrils down to my abdoman, turns over then follows the same path in reverse. At the same time, I let the panic come, I don't try to stop it.

This isn't a quick fix. It slowly began to work for me, each time better and better. It's also not a bad idea to do it for a few minutes on a daily basis, or in meditation, to become familiar with the feeling.

That's my story...well, sort of a Readers Digest version really. I hope it helps.

Jeanne