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I spent the better part of 2014 completely avoiding all seafood after experiencing what I later learned was a panic attack and not an allergic reaction to shrimp, like I’d thought. The initial episode came out of nowhere?I was sitting on the beach eating lunch with my family when I started freaking out, my heart began racing, I couldn’t breathe, and I found myself in an ambulance convinced I was having an anaphylactic reaction. Within 15 minutes, the paramedic ruled out any problems with my lungs, throat, or heart, and suggested I needed a therapist rather than an allergist.
Bizarrely, I didn’t even realize I was stressed until the anxiety manifested in the full-blown attack that felt far more physical than mental, a reaction clinical psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Susan Albers recently told me is actually very common. “Sometimes [a panic attack] feels like a heart attack, and often a person’s first hypothesis is that it’s an allergic reaction, because the symptoms are so physical it makes perfect sense for this to be your first assumption,” she said, adding that people often don’t realize they’re anxious until they’re hit with that first attack.  I’m definitely not alone in this experience either?anxiety disorders affect more than 40 million adults in the U.S., which is roughly 18 percent of the population. Often panic attacks send sufferers strai...