Numbers by the Anxiety & Depression Association of America indicate that anywhere between 2 to 3 percent of adults in the US struggle with panic disorder in a given year. And panic attacks don’t just affect people with the disorder. In fact, between 35 to 40 percent of people experience a panic attack at some […]
Panic attacks can be crippling, and you might find that they overtake nearly every aspect of your life. Unfortunately, the more panic attacks that you suffer, the more likely you are to have more in the future. The key to reducing the panicked feelings is to divert your attention from them. The second most important […]
A few weeks from today, while you suckers are surreptitiously reading The Frisky on your office computers, I’ll be lying in the sun at a hotel in Los Angeles. There’s a pool on the roof and cabanas and waiters who’ll serve you cocktails poolside. I don’t intend to get up from my beached whale position […]
Two days before my birthday last November, I got a facial at my favorite spa. I lay down on the bed, with the paper gown tucked around me, and the technician went about working her magic on my pores. She put a mask on my face and left me to relax for 10 minutes, with […]
In retrospect, it was all inevitable. Not the details, like the time I grew so afraid of using the toilet that I urinated in cereal bowls in my apartment, or the time I collapsed outside a filling station in Sicily and told someone I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Those specific situations weren’t predictable, of […]
When I was growing up I had a friend who was as aloof as she was glamorous. She had a way of holding the cutest and most charming boys in her thrall and all the girls wanted her to like them. Whenever she had problems with her romances, her schoolwork, her friends or her family, […]
I’ve struggled with anxiety since I was a kid. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, earthquakes used to be a huge source of stress for me, and I’d often lie awake at night terrified that the ground would start shaking. As an adult, I’ve got a pretty good handle on specific fears like that, but […]
I remember my first panic attack in more detail than I remember losing my virginity or the first time I drove a car by myself. (I guess vivid terror of suddenly not being able to breathe really ingrains itself into your psyche.) It was 1998 and I was watching the “Psycho” remake with my family’s […]
