Working through anxiety

I had the strangest experience with an anxiety attack today.

I was working on my National Institute of Health (NIH) fellowship application (F31) that I was finishing today (it's due tomorrow but it's like college apps where everyone is turning it in and the website will crash). It's basically this government scholarship that funds your tuition and stipend for 2-3 years until you finish. 

There's a ton of documents that you have to prepare that cover everything from what kind of equipment and facilities you have access to, to what kind of training you will receive (classes, giving presentations, mentorship), to a 6-page proposal with your preliminary data. 

Anyway, I've been working on it for about two weeks, almost non-stop, and I was still working on it all day today.

These past two weeks actually weren't that bad. Don't get me wrong, it was A LOT of work but I wasn't too stressed about it. I would just slowly chip away at it and at the end of the day when I was brain-dead I would go home and relax. 

I was supposed to have all the documents done by 4pm today and I'm working and working and working, so 2pm comes around and then all of a sudden I start feeling the anxiety coming on. And in my head, I knew I was doing fine, I had enough time to finish what I needed to do, and I told myself that I was doing a really great job and working really hard, and everything was going to be alright....

But I still could feel my chest tightening, my breath getting shallow, and I was even getting dizzy... And I just kept working. 

It was the weirdest sensation... because in my head, I knew I was fine... but my body was still going into panic mode. Usually when I get to this point, all I want to do is get away and stop doing whatever it is that's making me anxious, but it wasn't as strong of a feeling this time. 

Except I still felt like I was going to pass out.

Mentally, I felt pretty calm about it and I told my post-doc (and really close friend), kind of laughing, "I think I'm having a panic attack... but I'm still able to work" and she told me it's happened to her before too. 

Eventually it subsided (I think it helped that I told someone) and I'm all done now, but I wanted to share because I really do think anxiety is not something you can always control mentally. In this case, because I've had anxiety attacks before and I have tools to handle it, I was prepared and in a much better situation to deal with it. 

It's the fight-or-flight response due to the pressure and being tired as well and it wasn't something I could just suppress or turn off. I just had to ride it out and wait until it was over without letting it take control of me.