The Secret

Part one – Panic Attacks

Six years ago, while living alone as a student away from home, everything was going pretty well, until that fateful day.

It was a typical Wednesday. I had missed my early morning class – as usual – so I got up around noun and went for my daily shopping trek.

And then . . . boom! Something like a wave hit me out of the blue, as if someone had slapped me, but there was nobody around.

Walking in the middle of an empty narrow street, I started feeling so small, that I thought the buildings were about to collapse and bury me, and I just couldn’t catch my breath.

Suddenly, I felt like I was dying. I started walking home faster and faster, but my house wasn’t getting any closer!

When I finally arrived, I dropped the shopping on the floor and went straight to bed, wondering what was wrong with me.

The next few days passed normally, and I started to forget the “incident.” “Probably some kind of flu”, I reassured myself.

Weeks later, I was at a supermarket checkout, waiting and waiting. In front of me were old ladies, middle aged housewives with crying babies in their arms. I want to get out of here, I thought. . . And then the wave hit me again!

I began hearing everything louder than normal . . . the cry of the babies, the old ladies talking…everything seemed in slow motion.  

The check-out person was smiling and chatting with every customer with so much patience and I just wanted to scream!

Suddenly, the room seemed so small that I couldn’t breathe. I was choking . . . about to die! Finally, I caught my breath and I realized I was “the next customer,” so I managed to pay and leave. Outside, I looked at my watch in amazement. Ten minutes. I was in that supermarket just for ten minutes . . . and it seemed like an eternity.  

After that, I went to see a doctor.

“So, what’s the problem?” he asked kindly.

“I have some kind of serious illness and I think I am dying.”

He asked me about the symptoms and then examined me. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with you”, he said, “but just to be sure, let’s do some tests.”

When I returned to his office for the test results, he smiled. “See? I told you there was nothing wrong with you!”

“What do you mean there is nothing wrong with me?” I asked him with great surprise. “No cancer, nor HIV, nor hepatitis, nor some kind of incurable decease?”

He laughed! I can still remember his laughter . . .

“Of course not! You are twenty years old. Live your life happily and don’t worry about illnesses.”

I looked at him suspiciously.

“Posous frape pineis ti mera?” was his next question.

“I drink 3-4 coffees.”

“Well, reduce your coffee intake and you will be fine.”

Reduce my coffee intake? That was it? I was dying and he was telling me to reduce my coffee intake?

Well, I did it, but the “incidents” continued. On lines in banks or the post office . . . in a store’s dressing room, even in a pizzeria on the first – and last – date with most boring guy I ever dated. Since the doctor had assured me I wasn’t dying, then I must be going crazy!

“Katerina, I think I am going crazy”, I told on the phone to a friend of mine, a student in the psychology department and I described my symptoms. “You are not going crazy,” she said. “You are just having ‘panic attacks’.”

“Having what?”

“Panic attacks,” she repeated. “Don’t worry, it’s not serious. Everyone has had at least one panic attack in their life.”

“And how would I know when this panic attack will ‘hit’ me again?”

“Do you know when a headache will ‘hit’ you? Be careful though, your body and mind is ringing a warning bell. There is something that you do which makes your system react. Find it and the panic attacks will stop,” she explained.

A whole new world was revealed to me: The world of psychology and how the human brain works… (Continued next month).

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