I have lived with anxiety my entire life. My symptoms always seem to pile.  I learn to manage a few symptoms, and then get more.

My earliest memory is having a heart monitor in the third grade because I was having chest pains regularly.  My heart is healthy, my lungs are healthy, I've seen every doctor and they had no answers. I learned later- its anxiety. I began having nightmares of family members dying not long after.
Middle school I would become physically sick when I was having a conflict or stressed out. My mother began to catch on and made me push through. Nightmares were occassional High school I started having nightmare and social anxietey. I remember talking to peers and becoming overwhelmingly dizzy and light headed, I couldn't catch my breath and eventually stopped talking to people.  I didn't realize what it was until later in life. No nightmares if I remember correctly
In college I thought I had learned to manage it through exercise, friends and religion. I still felt the choking and worry, fidgety and making many lists. Ocd was there but manageable. Until my senior year.
I started waking up at 3am with nausea, terrible fear of vomitting, sweating, chest pains, crying and shaking. This went on long enough for it to effect my days awake as well. I stopped eating for fear of vomitting, felt as though I was being choked, couldn't catch my breath, chest pains and fear of sleeping. The nightmares returned. My ocd became much more disruptive- counting everything, making sure everything was in evens, holding my breath and squeezing my chest muscles until it felt 'right', squeezing my eyes, clenching my jaw. My fingers were bloody from chewing my cuticles.
This was when I started counseling (again). She was able to help me find a way to get the nightmares to stop, but I never found our conversations to be helpful with my day to day issues.  I am organized and ambitious. I didn't need help managing a schedule or finding new coping skills, because I had been practicing them for years. I needed a reason for these panic attacks to stop so I can work my coping skills again. She suggested I start medication (she was not the first). I recognized that my subconscious was most likely fearing my next step in life (graduating college) and only needed a temporary solution.

I went to my primary and ended up breaking down out of embarressment and desperation. She prescribed me xanax and lexapro and referred me to a psychiatrist. I was too afraid to take the xanax (history of substance abuse in my family) but tried before I went to sleep, hoping I would sleep through the night. It did not work. The lexapro made my panic attack the worst it has ever been, but I continued it.

I saw the psychiatrist and he raised the dose of lexapro, tried another counselor and still did not get much relief.  It took almost 6-8 months before the medication really took hold and I stopped panicking and was able to manage my life again. The ocd was nearly gone, my anxiety was back to baseline, I had minimal side effects from the medication. I finally started to feel like me again. But I felt less ambitious, low sex drive, and wanted to be able to be free from medication. After about 2 years I tried to change meds and then eventually tapered myself off of it with severe withdrawal symptoms (something I was not prepared for). Once I was completely off the lexapro I stablized again and able to manage the anxiety I did feel.

A year and a half later and I still have panic attacks but I am much better equipped to handle them. I can usually catch them early enough to use coping skills. If I can't catch it I try to ride them out. Sometimes they become unbearable (and I actually do throw up), rarely I will be brave (and fed up) and actually take a benzo which usuallly just knocks me out.

I have learned over the many years of anxiety how to hide it. Absolutely no one (except for my mother of course), is able to recognize when I am experiencing heightened anxiety or even a panic attack (until it gets severe). I had worked very hard for many years to make sure than no one could tell that my heart was racing and I was dizzy, I worked hard to make sure that I regained control of my body before anyone noticed anything. And this makes me angry, because people dont believe how AWFUL they feel inside.

I recognize my baseline is much higher than most individuals, but I need to know why. I need to know I can change this if I work to. I need to know the panic attacks can stop for good.

I am sick of living in fear of another panic attack.