I never thought the day would come that I would go to a shrink. I saw that there were two types of the people who go to shrinks: Self absorbed Hollywood types who exagerate their problems and those who did not want to face up to what they already knew they should do.

For a long time, I felt that I could handle my panic attacks on my own, even after I almost resigned from my job. But the attacks have increased and I’ve been in a constant state of anxiety. On weekends, I usually get a major attack. I had to do something. I felt that I was loosing control of my life; my work was suffering because of it and so was my marriage. So a month or so ago, I went to see a shrink for the first time in my life. This was a new experience for me. I imagined that it would be somthing like Adrian Monk’s sessions in the TV show Monk.

He greeted me with a warm smile and handshake. There was no no sofa just a couple of comfortable chairs facing each other. I sat down in one and he sat in the other. He sat back in his chair, rested his chin on his hand and asked, “So, tell me about yourself?” So I told him all about my panic attacks and my “people claustrophobia.” He suggested using meditation to help battle the anxiety. I had meditated in the past and was quite aware of the benefits of meditation. So this was not anything knew for me and is almost useless when I am already in an attack. He also offered some of this thoughts on my experiences, probing with inquiries. Soon, he was stopping me to say that the time for this session had ended and he gave me an insurance form to fill out.

At the second visit, he did the same, sat back, with chin in hand and said, “Tell me what’s been going on.” So, I continued to talk about my anxiety attacks and things that I forgot to mention during the first visit. As this session progressed, I was beginning to fear that this was going to be an endless series of sessions with him just listening and giving comments of relating to what I saying. He hadn’t offered any diagnosis or ways to deal with the anxiety apart from meditating. So near the end of this session, I asked him, “With other medical issues there is a clear diagnosis and remedy; if you are bleeding, they sew you up. So how do you diagnose what I have and reccomend a cure. Since this was at the end of the session, he said that we would discuss this in the next session.

So in the third session, he still did not offer a diagnosis for what I had. For example, he never said that the “people claustrophobia” was what is called social anxiety. What he did do was list a number of scenarios for how we could proceed from here. To be honest, I can’t remember any of them except for two: Continue to meet each week and explore my sources of my anxiety (the one option that I was afraid was going to occur) or he could prescribe some medication that I could use when I feel an anxiety attack coming on and I could arrange for an appointment with me on an “as needed basis.” Obviously, I took the second option, because I felt that I had already said all that I needed to say to him and he had already given me the only advice that he was going to give me.

He said that the medication that he was prescribing was a medication that was intended to be taken on a daily basis, but that I should only take it when I needed it. That was fine with me because I did not want to take any medication on a regular basis and at this point I wanted something that could cut off an anxiety attack when it occurred, because when they occur I am unable to work.
There was one side effect to taking this medication: it makes you sleepy. At the strength he had given me, it really knocked me out. So now, do I deal with the anxiety or with trying to stay awake? I quickly decided that I should split the pill in half and only take half a pill at a time. Even with a half dose I can still feel very drowsy, but it does help remove the anxiety. For several days last week, I was taking one half of the pill in the morning around 10am and the second half when I could feel the axiety coming back around 3pm. And the past two Sundays before last Sunday I would have a severe attack. The Sunday before last was a particularly bad one and all I could do is take a pill and curl up in bed, falling asleep.

Half a pill is working for me and this last week I have been relatively anxiety free. But this has been the pattern of my disorder. A period of a week or so relatively free of anxiety followed by several weeks of anxiety attacks.