I've been dealing with PAD and GAD for as long as I can remember. Maybe not that long, but pretty darn long.
I always felt alone in dealing with them, confused, embarrassed, the ER visits, family and friends telling me, or yelling at me, to just calm down, that I had nothing to be anxious about, nothing "bad" was happening, what was wrong with me, what was my problem?
(And I'm using polite user-friendly words to convey some of these conversations).
No one around me seemed to know how to handle a panic attack, including me....and it made everyone else uncomfortable. This just added to me freaking out.
In my early 20's, I was sitting with my girlfriend in her apartment, and I remember in particular we were listening to a Billie Holiday album (yes, back when records were vinyl...before the sanitized sound of CD's or streaming music)... Nice jazz music playing, slow, relaxing,...
.....then *WHAM* out of nowhere, I got a panic attack. I felt afraid, thought I was dying, or if I wasn't, then I felt foolish for thinking I thought I was dying,...my heart raced, and I just shook and freaked out.
At that moment, for the first time in my life, my girlfriend sat me down in the living room, she let me rest my head in her lap, she stroked my hair, and she didn't say a thing....I asked her what she was doing, and she said to me: "I'm letting you go through what you need to go through, and I'm right here."
That singular moment had a profound impact on me. She didn't try to change me, or convince me I was wrong for having those feelings, or try to stop me and fix me, she didn't get frustrated or angry or walk away. She accepted not only me, but the me with the anxiety, right in the moment.
Before that moment, I have never had a single person respond in that way. I wanted to share that moment because she, and that experience, impacted me so strongly that even today, I think of her and what she did at that time. We hadn't even known each other all that long, which made the experience even more frightening. But also because of that, it also made it that much more powerful.
Acceptance without trying to blame or change or fix....It's a healing experience.
See? Thirty years later, and I still think of her and that moment.
Merrida