BetterHelp, Cyberblade, YouTube, and Prayer Saved Me from a Panic Attack

The first time you experience a panic attack, it feels like you’re dying. Your heart is racing for seemingly no reason at all. Everything you see and hear becomes a threat that will either kill you or drive you to madness. You don’t know why, but you don’t have control over anything anymore and you don’t know if you can survive it. The sound of a chair scraping against the restaurant floor becomes the growl of something much more sinister. The butter knives on the table look much sharper than they did before. Dangerous. Anxiety and panic can drive the mind to dark places, exaggerating everything around you as if everything were made to hurt you. This is not the reality of the world, but a gross exaggeration of danger brought on by an uncontrollable influx of fear. My first-ever (and so far only) panic attack happened while I was at a 5-star restaurant. Worse, it happened on my honeymoon.I didn’t want to worry my wife so I kept everything bottled up inside. On the outside, I was calm as a cucumber. On the inside, my world was on fire. I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t even know if it could be stopped. This is what going crazy feels like, I thought to myself.After the initial panic, the feeling of dread, fear, and anxiety in my chest wouldn’t subside. It’s like constantly being scared without a reason why. It’s terrifying.What finally helped me start to feel better was a combination of prayer (owing back to my upbringing in Roman Catholocism), guided meditation, and noise-canceling earphones.

How I Got Through My First Panic Attack

Let me be clear, this is not a paid advertisement for BetterHelp, Cyberblade, YouTube, or any of the products listed in this article.

I would NEVER use something as serious as mental health to try to sell something to people who are vulnerable. 

However, in this article, I’d like to simply give a shoutout and thanks to the people and products that helped me get through that incredibly scary event in my life.

Find Someone to Talk to

I can’t stress enough how much better I felt as soon as I told someone (even just as a text message). However, finding someone to tell isn’t so easy.There is still a stigma around mental health and at least I felt embarassed to really tell anyone about this episode I was having. I was moreso not wanting to make my loved ones worried (especially my wife).

BetterHelp 

Luckily, my company pays for a BetterHelp mental health subscription for all its full-time employees. 

I opened up the BetterHelp website, opened up a DM with my therapist and marked it as urgent. It was way outside of work hours when I messaged her so I didn’t expect an immediate reply, but she replied about 2 hours after, which is better than I was expecting!She told me: yes, you’re having a panic attack and all the symptoms you’re experiencing are absolutely normal. No, you are not going crazy. No, you are not dying. You’re going to be fine. Let’s schedule an appointment to chat as soon as you’re back home.She followed up with worksheets for me to do to verify whether or not I was having a panic attack, as well as exercises to do to calm the panic down.Honestly, just that brief text message from a mental health professional telling me I’m not going crazy was enough to dispel a lot of the anxiety I felt in my chest.The relief I felt just from hearing that inspired me to tell my wife the next morning, and just as my therapist said: saying the words out loud to someone you trust takes some intensity out of the feeling. It became less of a world-ending situation and just became a feeling that everyone experiences at some point in life: anxiety, panic.In short, talking to a therapist and telling someone I trusted made me feel a lot better.

Find Something to Meditate to

Throughout my journey of learning to live with anxiety, nothing has been more helpful than meditation. That night, when I thought my world was ending, I looked up meditation for anxiety and found this video that saved me and helped ease my panic:This YouTuber has nearly endless playlists for meditations tailored to those experiencing anxiety, stress, insomnia, and more. You should be able to find a meditation that suits your needs.

The Storm Before the Calm

But to make things worse for me that night, a huge storm rolled in. It was strong enough to ground airplanes the next morning. So while I was going through this panic, a heard thunder and loud torrents of rain outside. Normally, I loved those noises. But that night they served only to worsen the anxiety.I’ll be completely honest. I’ve never been a fan of noise cancelling earbuds. But after that night, they’re all I use. I was just fortunate enough to be in the middle of testing the new Cyberblade earbuds at the time.

How the CyberBlade Helped Me Meditate

I popped those in, and I couldn’t hear a single drop of rain outside. Nothing else existed except for the visualization the YouTube video was guiding me through. The audio was the clearest I’ve ever experienced in a pair of bluetooth earbuds. The combination of 100% or nearly 100% noise cancellation from the storm roaring outside and the clear voice and soothing music provided from the meditation helped calm me down tremendously. Before testing the and using it throughout this ordeal, I was the type of guy who only bought $30 earbuds from sketchy manufacturers on Wish or Ebay. However, now I totally understand why people are willing to shell out more money for quality earbuds like these. I don’t want to hype them up so hard because I worry you’ll think this is an ad and not my true feelings. But the truth is, when you experience something as scary as a panic attack, you feel immense gratitude to everyone and everything that helped get you through it. And I’m sure didn’t set out to build earbuds to help with anxiety, but these earbuds could’ve very well helped save my mind from spiraling into darker places. Now, whenever I’m in need of total silence when meditating, I use my Cyberblade earbuds every time. Of course, any good-quality noise cancelling headphones or earbuds should also work for this purpose.

Go Back to What Makes You Feel Better

Perhaps most importantly, in the darkest hours of that panic attack, I started praying. I had grown up Roman Catholic, and as a kid I was taught to pray when things got rough.

In my college years I had lost my faith and at the time of the panic attack, I don’t know what I would consider myself.

I had always believed in a higher power, but I didn’t think it had to be an old man in the sky. Nevertheless, in my desperation, I started praying. And for whatever reason (I’ll let you interpret it yourself), I started to feel better. Maybe it’s because God does exist. Maybe it’s because my mind was conditioned to feel better after prayer.Because of all of our varying religious and spiritual beliefs, I won’t tell you to pray. This tip is to remember the things in your life that have made you feel better before, and hopefully they can make you feel better again.

Final Thoughts

It always blows my mind how far technology has come and what it allows us to do. Imagine if I had been in this situation 30 years ago? Back then, there were no mental health smartphone apps through which I could message a therapist halfway across the world.

Back then, we didn’t have endless meditation videos available at the click of a button. Noise cancelling headphones/earbuds weren’t even available to the general public. So to all of us who work in tech, I’d like to say that you never know what your creation or your company’s creation will do in the future. You never know how big or small an impact you can make on someone’s life.Thank you to Jason Stephenson (meditation YouTube channel), everyone who has worked to make BetterHelp a reality, and everyone at Angry Miao for the Cyberblade. I truly believe it was culmination of all of your efforts that helped me survive my first panic attack.