>>11403360100% believed this myself until about 1.5 years ago.
But, I faced hard times financially, was living in a terrible place that made me paranoid, had low self-worth and a couple of failing relationships that were pivotal to my support system, and were otherwise very important to me. For what it's worth, I consider myself a very relaxed and grounded person (I'm not easily startled, don't freak out about trivial things, and am generally pretty stoic and chill). But I broke down mentally. During and since the breakdown, I have had more anxiety attacks than I care to count. The hardest thing about the anxiety attacks is that I can't seem to control them (and I am convinced that they are simply products of the mind). Like I said, I consider myself very grounded and as having a lot of mental fortitude, and yet I seemingly have no control over these episodes. It can be as mild as shivers, a racing pulse and hyperventilation or as extreme as acute heart palpitations out of nowhere. The worst instance was, after 20 minutes of my heart pounding and struggling to breath, I finally called the emergency services because I couldn't understand what was happening and (living in a flat complex, alone) if it was severe no one could get to me unless I opened the gate. When I finally got to the hospital after about 40 minutes of this, my heart-rate steadied itself, and I was just left with the embarrassment of rushing to the hospital because of something as silly as an anxiety attack, for which there were no symptoms.
