Hi my name is Brooke and I’ve had anxiety and depression ever since I can remember. But growing up I was either on too much medication or during my teen years I would either walk away(lock myself in a room, fall into fetal position, run away anywhere I could be alone and calm down) and avoid the situation that caused it completely or I would get high. I became a heroin addict, at age 14, for many other reasons but while I was using my panic attacks stopped. I just joined a very good methadone clinic(now age 23) and finally got to my blocking dose and stopped using heroin over a week ago. I know I’m not technically sober because I’m on methadone but I finally feel sober and I’m happy to be turning my life around. The only problem is now my panic attacks are back and worse than ever. I’m also an empath indigo child. If you’re unsure of what that is it’s easy to google. Mostly I feel things and emotions much stronger than most I can also feel and understand the emotions of anyone I’m around, so with my anxiety the slightest bit of an uncomfortable emotion shoots me into hot flashes, shaking, hyperventilation, and tears... oh the tears. It makes me feel so embarrassed when I get this way which makes the panic attack so much harder to deal with. I know I shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it, it’s more of the feeling you get when you’re embarrassed like a shadow of embarrassment covers me and that’s why I usually throw my hood up and try to close myself off so that I see less and feel in more control of my surroundings. Even just writing this message I’m starting to shake and tear up. Every time I see my counselor at the clinic we try to talk about it and work through it. That’s actually how I found this website. My counselor found it and the first thing I read was of someone not having a panic attack for ten years and suddenly getting them again and it felt so good to see someone I can relate to. It’s really hard to work through my issues when every time I try I get an attack. It makes me feel so weak and that embarrassed feeling gets stronger which makes the attack worse and I just don’t know how to cope because I’ve always either walked away from the situation or used drugs(prescription and/or heroin) but I don’t want to be that way anymore. I want out of this bad habit of avoiding the situation. I want to work on myself and get better but just talking through it isn’t helping. I try to breathe deeply and take a moment but as soon as I continue speaking or put myself back around the people the attack happened around it starts up again. Does anyone understand what I mean or how I feel? And if so how do you handle it or how do you think I should handle this? 

I also plan to find a good doctor to maybe talk about medication for my depression and anxiety but definitely not what I was on before because it was too much and made me sick. Plus I don’t want to be dependent on it forever. 

Thank you for reading this long message. I hope someone out there can help me :)