Heart pounding!

Sweating

Whirling Thoughts

Fear

You Can’t Breathe!

Dizziness

Tingling

Nausea

Sense of Dread

Is This a Heart Attack?

You frequently find yourself in a panicked state. Maybe you’ve been able to identify some of your triggers, but trying to avoid them causes even more anxiety and doesn’t entirely prevent them anyway. Or worse, maybe you have no idea what triggers your panic attacks.

In little ways and big ways, your panic attacks drive your behaviour. Maybe you avoid certain situations, like parties or crowds. Maybe you never want to be alone. Maybe you treat certain objects like a safety blanket, never leaving home without them. Maybe you never leave home, period.

Whenever and wherever they happen, your panic attacks likely affect all aspects of your life:

My name is Laval Martin. Not only am I a registered social worker (RSW) and the holder of a master’s degree in social work (MSW), I have also suffered with panic attacks from my childhood all the way up until recent years when I learned the tools that I now want to share with you. I’ve been there: the visits to hospital emergency rooms, the fear that I’m dying, struggling to hide my panic from the people around me, terror at feeling like the world isn’t real, running wildly through a shopping mall in full fight-or-flight mode. Or curling up in bed, hoping that the feelings will pass. I’ve thought that I was having a heart-attack, a stroke, that I was going “crazy.” I tried to describe my fears to others, but no one understood.

Now my life is completely different! The triggers still come up. For me they’ve almost always been related to sensations like tingling or numbness or pain in my chest, or thoughts about the nature of reality and my own existence. These things still happen. Only now, I have tools and strategies to keep them from sparking panic. It’s gotten to the point that…