4 ms·

The Case of the Suffocating Woman

• novia 9y ago
  This is extremely interesting! I have deadly food allergies which can send me into anaphylactic shock, and it is truly terrifying when it happens. I also occasionally get panic attacks, and I never thought to correlate the two. I remember in elementary school I would sometimes have panic attacks, and I would be hyperventilating and crying. For some reason my teachers thought I was faking to get attention, and they would pull me out into the hall and tell me, "stop crying," which of course didn't help, and actually made it worse. I didn't yet have the words to tell them, "I am having a panic attack." Additionally, I'm extremely sensitive to anything involving choking. Once I was taking a self defense class, and we were learning how to break free of a choke hold. For practice I was supposed to pretend to choke my friend who was taking the class with me, and they would practice the technique. I had just barely put my hands on her neck before I started crying and going into a panic attack. I obviously had to exit the class at that point.