My First Panic Attack (am I dying?)
It's not that I thought "panic attacks" were myths per se, but it wasn't until I experienced my first one (the night my marriage died) that I truly understood their power.

Prior to August 15, 2022, I’d only ever heard about the phenomenon described as “panic attack.”
Truth be told, it wasn’t so much that I doubted their existence as much as I underestimated their power to utterly immobilize you. There might even have been a small part of me that, I don’t know, looked down on those who experienced panic attacks.
As though they simply lacked the mental fortitude to just, you know, get over it.
Ladies and gentleman, I repent of my ways.
I get it now.
What is a Panic Attack?
The opening line of MayoClinic.com describes panic attacks like this:
A panic attack is a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause.
Sudden: you don’t see it coming, you can’t plan for it, it just happens.
Intense fear: your nervous system is in full blown protect mode. Fight, flight, freeze responses are brought online, all systems go.
Triggers physical reactions: even though the episode is only happening in your mind, the reaction is distributed throughout the body.
No real danger or cause: there is no lion in the bush, no poison in the blood stream, no actual threat to your (physical) well being, and yet your body is very much reacting as though there is.
Episodes can vary in duration (when I think back on the dozen or so I had in that two month period of my life they ranged from maybe 5 to 50 minutes). And while the intensity also varies, for me it was more like degrees-of-awful. Each one burned like hell, and at that level of pain it doesn’t really make much of a difference between horrible, terrible, or god-awful.
As mentioned, the first time this happened to me was Monday night, August 15th, 2022.
The day my marriage died.
Trying to Prepare for Divorce
On the morning of August 15th, Kate (my then-wife of 18 years, 357 days) told me that our marriage was over.
As I wrote about here, the ending of our marriage was something that I simultaneously and paradoxically expected and never saw coming. For the two weeks leading up to that morning I had almost daily been giving myself pep talks in the mirror, telling myself, “I got you, Colby, no matter what happens.”
I guess there are some things in life that, no matter how much you try, you can’t ever really be ready for them. Divorce was that for me.
Growing up as a child of divorce (a really nasty one, one that tore apart our family and imprinted trauma on my brain that I’m still trying to heal from), one of my biggest (only?) goals in life was to never put my own kids through that. And perhaps also to never put the eight-year-old-kid-inside-me through it again, either.
But even beyond the mere avoidance of the suffering that divorce can bring, my dream was to reset a Family Tree. To create a legacy of belonging and love and connection with Kate and me at the root, stable and strong and firm. This dream was my North Star, the thing that compelled me to finally go to therapy shortly after turning 30 when Kate, for the first time (or at least, the first time I heard/received it) really truly communicated her feelings and fears about the issues in our relationship.
At that point in my life I was still living pretty unconsciously. Disconnected from my emotional world (thanks to the aforementioned trauma), I had grown in to a pretty selfish person who was difficult to get close to. My lack of openness and inability to be vulnerable kept people out—my wife most of all. Being married to me had to have been a pretty lonely experience.
So when, ten years into our marriage, the prospect of separation first entered the atmosphere of possibility, my revulsion of divorce kicked in and I got serious about getting help. I spent the next eight years in various seasons and sessions of therapy, a truly life saving experience. Thanks to the patience, clarity, and honesty of Angel, Allison, Alair, and Moriah, I’ve had so many breakthroughs on the couch about why I am the way I am and, more importantly, how to get better.
But this article isn’t about that, this is about my first panic attack, so let’s get back on track. Mostly I just wanted to set the stage for how devastating Monday, August 15th was for me—even if, on some level, I saw it coming.
An Erratic Afternoon
After we had the “our marriage just died” conversation in the morning, Kate left the house for awhile and I tried to be normal—but clearly, in hindsight, I was spiraling, trying to manage the chaos swirling in my heart and mind.
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