What It’s Like to Have ‘The Perfect Panic Attack’

December 26, 2015 / Patrick Roche

(Content Warning: Self-harm)

Have you ever had a panic attack?

A panic attack is a sudden surge of anxiety, and it’s a terrifying experience. It might make you feel like you’re dying, going “crazy,” or like you’re the only one who ever feels this way.

In this performance from the Button Poetry showcase at the 2015 National Poetry Slam, Patrick Roche perfectly captures what it’s like to have a panic attack. His moving articulation can help more people understand what you’re going through – and remind you that you’re not alone.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about six million American adults deal with panic attacks. Learning more about panic and anxiety could help you understand what’s going on and find options to help you get through and prevent them.

Patrick’s powerful performance can help you remember that you’re not dying – in fact, as Patrick says, “every piece of you…is screaming for you to survive.”

With Love,
The Editors at Everyday Feminism

Click for the Transcript

Instructions on having the perfect panic attack:

Find the trigger

A job interview, the claustrophobia of mass transit, deciding what to have for dinner

It will help if you have a chronic condition

Severe depression, an anxiety disorder, asthma

This is ideal, but may not be possible for everyone

Your body will instinctively revert to its most primal state fearing for your life

Your sympathetic nervous system will activate its fight or flight response in the face of this perceived danger

this decision between Chipotle and Chinese food

The body can only panic for a maximum of about twenty minutes

Follow these instructions closely to make the most of this time

Your breathing is the only part of this process you can control. Do not.

This would drastically shorten the attack

Focus on the constricting of your rib cage, on your drum major heart conducting this frantic march

Mistake this for a heart attack or a stroke

If successful, you may lose control of your extremities

The caveman in your limbs will tense every muscle to flee his predator

Your arms and legs will go numb, starting at your hands and feet

Every twitch and tingle and attempt to run for your life

Stay in place. Do not go for a walk. Do not call your friends, your mother, your psychiatrist, an ambulance

By now, you should be in a full panic

Hyperventilation cutting off oxygen to your brain

You will feel faint, become certain of your own death

Do not call your friends. Do not call your mother. Do not call your psychiatrist

A panic attack is a remarkably solitary experience

The presence of another person could have a calming effect and cut the attack short

Resist the temptation to fumble a hand through the desk drawer for the meditation you’ve been prescribed for this

Instead, locate the toolkit your grandfather gave you three years ago when he told you, “I’m giving you this, so you can fix anything.”

Place it on the desk. Open it. Steady your right hand long enough to grasp the box cutter.

Note how close the blood vessels lie beneath the sheets of your skin.

Place the blade of the box cutter to the snare drum in your wrist.

At this point, your panic attack may begin to ebb.

The body can only panic for a maximum of about twenty minutes

As your breathing and heart rate steady, find a bottle of water to hydrate yourself

Drop the box cutter into the garbage can

Return the toolkit to the desk drawer

Destruct yourself with a walk or TV show

Your body will assume it has survived for another today

Until the next trigger, at which point, you will repeat the process

but do remember, you are not having a heart attack

You are not dying

The body can only panic for a maximum of about twenty minutes, and in that time,

every piece of you, every basic primal piece of you, is screaming for you to survive.

To learn more about this topic, check out:

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Patrick Roche is a spoken word poet from New Jersey and started performing as part of Princeton University’s slam team, Ellipses. Member of the Princeton Team at CUPSI in 2014, the national collegiate poetry slam, and placed third in the nation out of over 50 teams competing. Patrick’s work has been featured on Button Poetry, Upworthy, the Huffington Post, MSN, and Buzzfeed. You can find Patrick on Facebook and on Twitter @PatrickPoetry.

Video courtesy of Button Poetry. For more amazing spoken word performances, check them out on YouTube and Facebook.