I’m sharing my experience with covid and how it affected my mental health so that anyone else going through something similar can find comfort in knowing they aren’t alone. This is not medical advice. Okay?

A brief history

My brain is comprised of a sexy, 3-part cocktail: 1 part panic disorder, 1 part general anxiety, and 1 part major depression. All of these, when combined, create a beautiful symphony of emotions.

While depression and overall anxiety have been difficult over the years, to say the least, my panic disorder has been especially challenging to cope with; it doesn’t care what you are doing, who you are with, or where you are. It shows up when it wants, how it wants, and for whatever reason it wants.

I once found myself lying in an alley outside work for over an hour, physically paralyzed and unable to move my hands to call for help, because the panic attack I was having was so severe it had locked up my entire body. A lifetime of panic attacks, depression, and anxiety sucked all the desire to continue living out of me. So, three or so years ago, I finally asked for help.

EMDR therapy addressed the root of my triggers. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy taught me how to speak to myself with love. And my psychiatrist got me on the right medication. After years of hard work, acceptance, and professional help, my panic attacks dissipated. I no longer had to fake a smile. I no longer needed to stay in bed all day because facing the world was too hard. I was able to wean off my medication. I was content. And in my naive brain, I was also fixed. I had beaten my disorders, obviously.

While getting off medication was a personal goal of mine, it may not work for everyone. So please, just be smart and let your doctor do their job.

Covid and its first side effect

In May of 2022, after 2.5 years of dodging Covid, it finally caught up to me. (Thank you Lumineers concert.) The illness itself was fine, as far as Covid cases go. I had a fever that left after a day, my oxygen levels never dipped below normal, and I never lost my ability to taste. I recovered in less than two weeks and was ready to face the world again.

It was only a week or two after this that the first wave hit.

I was on my way home from the beach, riding shotgun when a wave of pressure washed over my body. It radiated from the deepest part of my gut, throat, and chest, to the furthest tip of my extremities. It felt like I was a balloon being blown up from the inside. Or, an atomic bomb was being detonated at my center, slowly making its way out of my body.

We pulled over so I could get out of the car and regain my composure. I was terrified. I never felt anything like it before. Once we got back on the road, my body started tingling and I knew I was about to have my first, in almost a year, panic attack. My shoulders were high and locked, my neck tense and straining, and my breathing short and irregular. I couldn’t stop hyperventilating and crying. I was convinced something horrible was wrong with me.

We drove to urgent care where they checked my vitals and did an EKG. Of course, you guessed it, everything was ‘normal’. They prescribed me something to take that night for my anxiety and told me I had long covid, whatever that is.

This was the first of many appointments.

What came after

Over the next few months, it didn’t seem to matter what I was doing or how I was feeling mentally, these waves would come seemingly from nowhere and wash over my body, creating heat and tension.

A heart monitor (and a second EKG) told me my heart was healthy. An upper endoscopy told me my stomach and intestines were fine. I frequented urgent care. On one specific occasion, a doctor was trying to check my eyes while tears were streaming down my face. I was breaking. All signs pointed to me being okay, but I knew what was happening to my body was not okay.

Not long after my first wave episode, I lost the ability to swallow. Not because I wasn’t physically able, but because my mind wouldn’t let me. She was betraying me. She convinced me if I tried to swallow my food, I would choke. I lost weight. I lived mostly on soft foods that seemed impossible to choke on. I was a modern-day Benjamin Button, reverting back to baby food. I could no longer exercise. I was terrified I would have a heart attack or have some sort of health-related accident if I exerted myself too much.

I was averaging 2–6 panic attacks a week, the worst they had ever been. I was living in fear of everything, unable to drive myself places, unable to stay home alone. I had this vision of me dying alone in my bathroom, screaming out for help but with no one there to answer. There were multiple days when I had to call out of work because I couldn’t keep my heart from beating out of my chest, or because I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like I had lost all control over my mind.

My therapist taught me a few coping mechanisms for my panic attacks, the most effective being this breathing exercise. He helped me see the value in sitting with a feeling and not judging it, how to scan my body and accept whatever sensations I was having. This helped me to manage the symptoms, but it didn’t address the root.

I also was seeing my psychiatrist who helped me understand how much of an impact Covid can have on our brains, and in turn, mental health. I wasn’t the first patient of hers to have their anxiety, depression, or panic disorder come back, and come back worse.

I was gaining some knowledge but not enough to stop what was happening or figure out what my body was going through.

Vällkomen till Sverige

Cut to July and me dreading an international trip I had planned to see my family in Sweden. I considered canceling, feeling incapable of making the journey, but I pushed through it and made it to the land of pickled herring safely. On my first night there, my brother grilled tons of food and handed me delicious Belgian beer, as if I could eat or drink any of it! I was terrified of alcohol. If I drank, I couldn’t take my panic attack medication. And if I couldn’t take the medication, how would I survive a panic attack?

But bruh. I ate and drank that night as if it were my last. It was as if my belly had no bottom. I wasn’t scared of choking. I wasn’t scared of some impending panic attack. For the first time in months, I was free. I couldn’t believe the normalcy of the night. I saw a glimpse of my old self and she was happy and alive and unafraid. I was reminded of the woman I worked so hard to become, I saw her so clearly, and it was at that moment I knew I would find her fully again. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but I finally knew that it was possible.

The entire first two weeks of my trip looked exactly like this. (See the above photo.) I was having no waves or panic attacks or much anxiety at all. It was sunny and beautiful and I didn’t have a damn care in the world.

We planned a shopping day in Copenhagen and I walked into a store to check out an art print I spotted from outside. It was suffocatingly hot inside. Being hot without a way to cool down is like slowly running out of air while trapped in a hot coffin. I tried to ignore how it felt and picked up the art print only to immediately have a wave wash over my body. It froze me in my place—I was unable to move as it pulsed out to my limbs. I tried to just let it pass.

When it finally did, I ran out of the shop and onto the street. We cut to a side street and began walking. I was trailing the others by a few feet when I called out to them that I needed to stop—a panic attack was coming with a vengeance. She reared her nasty self as if to taunt me. How dare I be happy. I dare I be anything but afraid.

My brother began rubbing my neck and shoulders down, asking me what I needed. Through broken words and sporadic breaths, I asked for my medication. I was hysterical and couldn’t come down. I was terrified of my own body.

I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the second to last panic attack I have had in almost 5 months. Hell yeah.

Good advice and hard work

My sister-in-law encouraged me to focus on the things that I do know about myself and my body. I knew I had a hormonal imbalance. I knew I had panic disorder. I knew I had mitral valve prolapse. I would become an expert in those things, seek help with what I know first, and then slowly check off the items that I didn’t know.

And well, she was right. (Don’t tell her I said that.) Doing this gave me some level of control back. I was able to focus on what I could do and could control, versus all the wild unknowns and what-ifs that haunted me. I could make a plan. Even now, this is still helping me.

When I got home, seeing my house for the first time made me cry. I was reminded of all the pain I had been experiencing before my trip and felt myself immediately reverting back to that person. I even lost my ability to swallow again, for a short time.

I started back with EMDR therapy. I knew something was triggering these episodes, something deep within me feeding my panic. I had to figure out what it was.

Without disclosing too much about my past, it didn’t take long to unearth some core beliefs I had about myself that were contributing to my anxiety. I believed I didn’t deserve to be happy. Which meant whenever I felt happiness, something horrible was going to happen. I also believed I would die a tragic death—there were a few events from my past that caused me to believe the same would happen to me. Are you shocked? Neither was I.

From this point on, I was able to control my panic attacks. If I felt one coming on, I would repeat back to myself my new beliefs: “I am strong and capable of facing scary things. I am strong and capable of facing scary things.” I have accepted that I can’t prevent awful, scary things from happening to me. I can only control how I react to them.

What I’ve learned and what’s next

What’s been the most interesting part of all of this to me is how connected our mind is to our bodies. Covid (body) triggered a panic attack (mind) on the way home from the beach that day. It brought back my anxiety (mind) and created pulses in my (body).

I can’t say for certain which came first, the waves I was experiencing or my anxiety. Maybe I was anxious that first day without even realizing it. Maybe my body experienced something my conscious brain didn’t quite register, setting off the wave because it was scared. I don’t know for certain, but there is one thing I feel pretty confident about.

When I began EMDR for all of this, addressing my fear of illness and dying, the waves backed off almost immediately. When peace began to set in, they were no longer constantly threatening my existence. This doesn’t feel like a coincidence. Now that I’ve learned to be mindful of what’s happening in my body, and am able to pause and pay attention to what I’m feeling, the few moments that I have felt small waves, it’s been when I’m anxious. When my thoughts are stuck on something.

I’m still not the person I was before getting Covid. I have more work to do with my mind and taking care of her, and more doctor appointments to continue ruling out other causes.

I still have moments of anxiety. Moments my face and chest start to tingle, egging me on. But I’ve accepted that I will never be ‘fixed’; there is simply no such thing. I’ve also accepted we change, for better or for less better, and we have to be willing to bend to those changes.

My mental health will go through seasons, just like anything else. My goal is just to fight to have more happy ones than anxious ones. I know now that finding contentment is a lifelong endeavor, not a destination, and as long as I’m growing and learning, and working to be better, I can find happiness. I can face my fears. I can continue to accept the ebb and flow of my mental health.

I’m not sure what Covid did to my mind, or how much of my angst is new and how much of it is predisposition, but I hope hearing my experience and that I was able to fight my way out of it is helpful to someone.

If anything else comes to light, I’ll update you.