Your Anxiety Toolkit

Whether you suffer from general anxiety or panic disorder here are strategies you can learn to help manage your condition

- Kim Arendse

I HAD been suffering from frightening, debilitating panic attacks almost daily for months before a concerned friend asked me how it was going with my “stress”.

Those who experience panic attacks know it’s not stress. Panic attacks are terrifying and you live in constant fear

of the next one, and the next, and the next. When it was at its worst, I’d wake up

in a frightful state and the panic would taunt me all day long. Some days I would come close to having an attack, the panic building like gas in a shaken cooldrink bottle while I tried to get on with taking care of my newborn.

I also suffer from depression and had been prescribed a breastmilk-inducing medication that’s also used as an antidepressant, so I wasn’t worried about using it.

Fast forward a few weeks and the medication hadn’t made any difference to my milk production, so I simply stopped taking it – without informing my gynecologist.

It was only later that I discovered if you don’t wean yourself off this medication, panic attacks can ensue – and boy did they.

There were days when the attacks blindsided me, leaving me completely exhausted. The rest of the time I lived in fear of them, feeling the panic building as I got on with the daily tasks of looking after a baby.

I’d had a few panic attacks years before and thanks to a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and antidepressants I’d been free of the crippling fear for a few years.

I dreaded doing that therapy and medication dance again but I knew I had no choice. It was either that or the fear monster would keep me in its grip.