Physical Anxiety symptoms/ worse at night

[rach0407]

I have suffered with anxiety since I was 16, I am now almost 30. I am seeing this amazing therapist that has basically has helped me get my anxiety under tremendous control without medication for about 5 months now. Unfortunately, I have had a lot of stress in my family life recently, and that has set me off all over again. Also, my therapist is out of the country until mid July, so I am on my own. I had an episode where I was fine and out of no where I felt like my arms were very far away and my coworker who was right in front of me seemed far away as well. Almost like my vision seemed compromised. I started to get really cold (almost like my blood pressure dropped really low) then I began seeing spots and basically almost fainted. My heart raced and my blood pressure went up very high. I then had ringing in my ears and a tingling feeling all over my body. Again felt faint. Long story short I ended up in the ER and was diagnosed with a panic attack and sent on my way. I have always been able to tell if I was going to have an attack. This is something physically brand new. I don't understand where this has come from and now since Friday this same feeling has happened to me twice. It seems to get worse at night. Sometimes I wake up feeling this way and get a full blown attack where I need to blow in a paper bag to calm down. Can anyone please give me some help or insight into this torture, I really just want to live my normal life!!

[superchick22684]

Hello Rach0407, welcome to the forum!
I don't know if it would help you but something that I have found to be useful is visualization where I imagine myself in a peaceful and safe environment. My usual choice is the beach and I focus on what things around me look like, smell like sound like and feel like. For example since I'm on the beach I focus on how the sand between my feet would feel and if I'm right along the water's edge how the surf would feel rushing over my feet as the tide comes in.
I know what I mentioned is kind of a coping mechanism but perhaps it could help you. I had a panic attack in my therapist's office yesterday and using visualization was the only way I could get myself back to normal. I'm putting a simple link on the bottom that has kind of a brief description of how visualization can be used. Something you do need to know about if you choose to use it is that it takes practice.
Another thing that some people use is progressive muscle relaxation. My first therapist that I had introduced me to it and my current therapist gave me a cd recently to try out called 20 minutes to Total Relaxation by Beth Salcedo, MD. I've found progressive muscle relaxation to be helpful in the past and I'm going to start using it again to see if it will help. Maybe it could help you as well?

http://panicdisorder.about.com/od/livingwithpd/a/Visualization-For-Relaxation.htm