[dustractor]

Wow. It's nice to finally have a better name for this. I saw several therapists when I was age 12-17 and they would just slap the blanket label "panic attacks" on it which never felt very apt at all. It rarely happened out of a state of panic. For example, I might look out the window at some trees and houses on the horizon and suddenly something would trigger a sensation that was like the awareness that the true scale of things was much, much larger than we usually let on. That line in a Pink Floyd song -- "My hands ... felt like ... two balloons" was like a lifeline for me in my teens to believe that I wasn't the only one dealing with this. (Except I would have sung it "My tongue ... felt like a ... schoolbus")

Sometimes I would be riding in a car, looking out the window and suddenly the "panic attack" would occur and I would beg the driver to slow down. Even when they stopped the car completely I would still be freaking out. "No! Go slower!"