It had been a great night. I had just finished drinking copious amounts of Coors Light, eating homemade buffalo chicken pizza and watching hockey with an old friend at his place.

I lay down to sleep on his couch, noticing that my heart was beating faster than usual. A few minutes later, my whole body convulsed with a feeling of mortal panic. My heart raced like it never had before in my life.

I thought I was going to die of a heart attack! My fear overwhelming any sense of shame, I ran upstairs to wake up my friend.

“Hey, my heart is racing like crazy. Do you mind sitting with me for a few minutes?” I asked, as I shook him awake. Immediately, I felt better, knowing that if I did indeed have a heart attack, my friend would be able to call an ambulance. After 15 minutes or so, he went back to sleep and my heartbeat became normal again. I wasn’t able to sleep the rest of the night; every time I was about to fall asleep, I felt like I couldn’t breathe, and I would jolt awake with a start.

It seems so silly in retrospect to have worried about dying. But the worst part about panic attacks is that they happen without warning, and you have no idea what’s going on.

For the next month or so, my life was a living hell. Panic attacks would come on me without warning at school, at the movie theater, even sitting at home.  I didn’t feel safe anywhere. One evening the feeling of tightness in my chest grew so painful that I asked my roommate to drive me to UHS. The doctor on staff administered an EKG and told me that my heart was completely fine. He offered to prescribe me some anti-anxiety medication. For lack of a better option, I accepted.

I never ended up taking the pills for fear of side effects. WebMD actually said that the medication I was prescribed could cause heart defects! That was the last thing I wanted to risk in my state.

In the following weeks I saw a psychologist, a psychiatrist and a doctor. I even started attending Tai Chi sessions, for Pete’s sake. I was desperate for something, anything, to ease the constant feeling of dread interspersed with moments of panic. I was listened to and offered medication, but nobody offered any advice that got to the root of the problem.

The turning point came when I visited the library to look for books on anxiety. There were all sorts of self-help books with fancy and catchy titles, but one book in particular caught my attention. It was called “The Power of Acceptance,” and was written by Judith Bemis, a woman who went through the ordeal of panic attacks herself. Hers were so bad that she became a recluse! The empathy that shone through in her writing, and the hope she offered that panic attacks could be overcome, gave me the confidence that there was a way out. If she could overcome anxiety, so could I.

She helped me realize that anxiety traps sufferers in a positive feedback loop – in a response to the feelings of panic, even more anxiety is generated and so on. The solution is to break the cycle by allowing yourself to panic and accepting the anxiety without judging it, good or bad.

After weeks of working with acceptance, the panic attacks came less and less. At a meditation retreat, I was able to observe a panic attack happen without being afraid at all. Actually, the explosion of sensations and the rush of adrenaline was kind of interesting, like a fireworks show in my chest. Seeing my attacks as a neutral phenomenon like this was a game-changer, and I knew that I would never be a slave to anxiety again.

After overcoming my anxiety with the help of the book and meditation, the bills started to come in. I had been so frantic to cure my anxiety that I had incurred hundreds upon hundreds of dollars of worthless hours in psychotherapy. It’s quite expensive to talk to someone about your mother, if they have a Ph.D.

I don’t mean to dissuade those suffering anxiety from visiting professionals; they can really be of help in dire circumstances. I just have to laugh at my own story, and the incredible amounts of money I spent. But my purpose will be served here if I can offer the simple advice that not even trained professionals were able to give me.

Contrary to how it feels, anxiety is not dangerous or life-threatening, and there is hope. It just takes work, patience and persistence. Join a support circle or an Internet forum to read stories of hope from other anxiety sufferers. Treat yourself with understanding and compassion instead of self-pity and self-loathing.

Ultimately, the lesson of overcoming anxiety is that you feel the way you feel and can’t push it away no matter how hard you try. Therefore, overcoming anxiety involves an acceptance of the world and of yourself. As awful as it was, I am truly grateful for the experience. Overcoming panic attacks helped me to overcome my fears and embrace a more expansive, honest and enriching life.

Gavin Beeker is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].