I don't struggle with anxiety. I'm actually pretty good at it.

This is a long overdue post about something I have been wanting to write - anxiety. Back in 2019 is when I learned I had anxiety and had some episodes of panic attacks. Reflecting back on the rest of 2019 made me understand some of the underlying issues why I had developed anxiety. In this post, I’ll share how I found out and how those few days of managing anxiety were.

Let’s go back to December 2019. It was past midnight on December 15th when I checked heart rate on my Fitbit. It was in the mid-low 40s. Observing heart rate was still a new thing for me since I had just bought a new Fitbit with an HR monitor. That night I was feeling a bit low energy, cold and somehow I just thought let me check my heart rate. That number in the 40s seemed a bit low to me. I knew my general resting heart rate in the mid 50s was pretty good, primarily due to eating and exercise habits. Still I was drawn to learning more. Next morning I started googling about normal resting heart rate range and what a low heart rate can mean.

Bradycardia - Slower-than-expected heart rate, generally beating fewer than 60 beats per minute. This is what the google search brought up. Once you start reading about causes, you keep coming across serious issues. One of the things that stood out for me in symptoms for Bradycardia was Shortness of breath, because I have had a history of asthma growing up, well into my early 20s. I have experienced the feeling of not being able to breathe, gasping for air, clenching your fists hard and forcing your lungs to pull in some air. Although I haven’t had any asthma attacks in the last 10 years, this is something I am well aware of, having lived with it for years.

Our mind does funny tricks. For next 24 hours I was trying to feel if I have trouble breathing. I would pull deep breaths for no reason and my brain was analyzing my breathing nonstop. By the morning of December 17th I was feeling shortness of breath. I went into a vicious circle which looked something like this -

1. My mind would tell me I am having trouble breathing and if there is an emergency where I need to breathe hard, I won’t be able to do it.
2. As a response, I would try to breathe hard. There was a lot going on in this breathing hard attempt, it wasn’t natural deep breathing. By the time I would try to breathe, I had already tightened up my lungs, ribs, whole neck and air passage due to all the stress in my mind that I can’t breathe deep
3. All these physical and mental changes would mean I was actually not able to get a deep breath, and feeling short of breath
4. This would in turn send a signal to my mind and my mind would tell me - See I told you that you aren’t able to breathe deep. Let’s try again if we need it.

Breaking this circle, getting out of this state was one of the hardest things for me. I was trying breathing again and again, failing every time, becoming even more desperate, in turn tightening up my body even more. By the morning of 17th, along with the breathing issue, I had also developed pain in my chest, lungs and neck due to the excessive tightening of them. Till now I had not told Swati, my wife, anything, and so I proceeded with my day as planned and headed for work. I made it to work somehow by 9am, and my hope was once I am there, I would be distracted enough to stop thinking about this and eventually stop doing it. That didn’t happen and every passing minute seemed like an hour. I left the office and started back home around 11am. At this time I told Swati that I am coming back home, just not feeling well.

Next few hours, while Swati was still at work, I tried tons of things to try and calm myself down. I tried lying in the bathtub in hot water with epsom salt, watching movies. And then I was running back and forth in the house for hours, telling myself if I really had a breathing problem I wouldn’t be able to run like this. Nothing seemed to work, my body was exhausted and it was almost time for Swati to come back home. I was in bed when she came back, and then finally I broke her the news and broke down. I know I have created this situation out of nowhere and now I am so helpless, not able to get out of it. We decided to do things that would help me feel happy. So we ate a bunch of things I like while watching a movie. Once the movie finished, it was pretty late and time to sleep.

I switched off the lights and laid down on bed to sleep. Within maybe 30 seconds I jumped out of bed. At this point I was having a full blown panic attack. It felt like everything has choked up and I am not able to breathe. I was grabbing onto furniture, anything that would provide me support to try and breathe hard. I started punching walls and furniture next out of desperation while shouting “I am going to die, I am dying”. There was this fight going on inside my body - a part knew this isn’t real, and a part of freaking out feeling that I am dying. I locked myself in the bathroom, kept staring in the mirror telling myself this is all in my head, I am stronger than this, I can’t let this ruin my life. Putting all focus and energy in doing so helped me overcome the panic attack, and I went back to the room. We slept with lights on and somehow made it through the night.

Next morning I decided to go see a doctor, just to rule out any medical issues, especially since we have a 10 day vacation trip coming up in 2 days. I went to an urgent care and told the doctor about my history of asthma as well as the whole heart rate analysis situation. Doctor did a few tests, gave me a strong inhaler dose for asthma to measure any difference. After ruling out any medical issues, she told me it’s all in my head and only I can control it. She also gave me a prescription drug which was just to help me sleep if I am struggling with that.

Two days later, December 20th, we started our 10 day vacation. In the first few days of vacation I was still struggling, but as days went by and we were busy visiting places, having a blast with friends, it got almost 100% better. Back of my mind I was always aware, but just being so busy and being around people meant those thoughts could never take over. Rest of the trip went smoothly and we landed back at San Jose airport late night on December 29th. While we were on our way back, all the memories of what was happening before we went on vacation started coming back to my mind. My mind and body knew they were going back to the same place where this all started. All the thoughts and flashes started making me very uncomfortable and I was slowly starting to have trouble breathing again. To distract myself from all these thoughts, I opened Instagram. And this is the first image I saw on a meme account

I am glad I could find it humorous in the moment, albeit sad.

We all live through some very stressful times and everyone is fighting their own battles. It feels better to be able to talk about it, share it with someone. It is important to acknowledge ourselves as a whole person and not just a happy face on the outside for the rest of the world.

Writing about this has taken me a while. I tried a few times and it has always been hard - going back into time, reliving it. I have been able to manage my anxiety pretty well, learned a lot and made peace with it. But all of this occupies a place in the back of my mind that has not been vacated yet. And whenever I am under stress for any reason, my body now responds by trying to breathe hard, like even right now while writing all of this. Consciously or subconsciously I am always aware of this and it has become a part of me. In another post, I want to dive deeper into the underlying issues that caused me anxiety, my learnings and the journey since then.