I really hope someone has gone through something similar because I feel so hopeless right now.

I moved to South Korea in 2022, which had always been my dream. But after moving here, I became very lonely and depressed. I cried almost every day, but I ignored those feelings and just kept going.

In 2023, I struggled a lot with school and put a lot of pressure on myself. I was also living in a tiny apartment that was full of cockroaches. I have a severe phobia of them, so I would often avoid going home until my boyfriend came back from work. I lived there for almost three years, and I never really felt safe in my own home.

In 2024, I became very depressed about turning 30 that next year. I constantly worried about getting older, and my thoughts became very dark.

Then, in January 2025, I started experiencing strange physical symptoms. Sometimes I felt like I couldn't breathe properly, especially at night. I would even wake up feeling like I had forgotten how to breathe. During the day, my throat would sometimes feel like it was tightening. These symptoms lasted for months, but I ignored them.

A few months later, I noticed my heartbeat while lying in bed. It wasn't fast usually around 80–85 bpm on my Apple Watch but feeling it made me anxious. I made the mistake of Googling it, and from that moment on I became hyper-aware of my heart.

Then one evening, after coming home from a concert, I was sitting in the subway when I looked at my Apple Watch and saw my heart rate was 120 bpm. I immediately panicked.

It quickly went to 130...140...150...160.

I tried to get off the subway, but it was still moving. As soon as the doors opened, I ran outside, and my heart rate reached 170 bpm. I was crying, convinced I was dying, and called my parents. They told me it sounded like a panic attack, but I was convinced it was a heart attack or heart failure.

I asked a taxi driver to take me to the hospital. They did blood tests and an ECG, and they told me everything looked normal.

But after that night, my life completely changed.

Now I'm terrified of anything that raises my heart rate.

I'm scared to:

• walk up stairs
• exercise
• walk fast
• go outside in hot weather
• drink caffeine
• even notice my heartbeat

My world has become so small.

In February, I had an echocardiogram and a 24-hour ECG with a cardiologist. The embarrassing part is that I became so scared that I never went back for the follow-up appointment to hear the official results.

I also saw a psychiatrist at the same hospital. She prescribed several medications for anxiety and depression. She mentioned that she had seen my echocardiogram and Holter monitor results. I asked her if there was a heart problem, and she said she couldn't officially discuss the cardiologist's results, but from what she saw, she thought they looked normal. She said the cardiologist would explain everything during my appointment.

For some reason, that terrified me. My anxious brain immediately thought, "What if they found a tumor or something serious?"

At the same time, another part of me thinks: if there had been an obvious heart problem, would a psychiatrist really have prescribed multiple anxiety medications instead of sending me back to cardiology immediately?

Since that panic attack, I feel like I've developed severe health anxiety. I constantly monitor my body and I'm terrified of my heart.

Has anyone else experienced something like this?

Did one panic attack completely change your life?

And if you recovered, how did you get your life back?

hello i’m very new to this sub, im 21 and have always had some degree of health anxiety that would come and go but this year i started living alone which really increased the level of health anxiety i was having constantly. the past month i have been so stressed and consumed by multiple health “issues” to the point where ive been to the er a bunch of times and even gone home because i couldn’t live alone anymore.

yesterday i had what i think was a panic attack for the first time in my life. i am so scared of what happened, i felt like i was out of control of my body and so shaky and in a rush, i was showering and couldn’t even stand there anymore because i had to get out and be with someone. is this normal? more than my usual health anxiety, im now scared about my mental health. i really dont want this to happen again and feel scared of my own body. will i be okay again?

Hey everyone. I had a severe panic attack yesterday that seemed to come out of nowhere. Hours later, I was still panicking with arm numbness, chest tightness and other muscular pains. I called the online emergency department because I was convinced I was dying since the symptoms lasted for hours. Fast forward to today, it’s been over 24 hours since the peak of the attack happened. I still have chest tightness, some minor pain in the chest and other muscular aches (neck, back). Is this normal so long after an attack? I’ve never had one this bad or prolonged before.

Thank you!

I frequently have panic attacks due to my stomach , just 20 mins ago I had a short lived one.

I think I over ate and was feeling extremely stuffed + had gas stuck in my chest. Genuinely felt like I couldn’t breathe and burps were getting caught in my throat making it extra hard to breathe.

Does anyone else experience this? I do have GERD and I suspect I have rumination syndrome, I regurgitate my food a lot bc I feel like I need to burp a lot.

I just am so sick and tired of this. I always get to the point of extreme fear and anxiety that I’m actively dying and about to succumb to my panic. My whole body gets numb and I grab at anything and everything so aggressively. I’ve ripped my hair out and have made myself bleed due to it.

I don’t mean to but I can’t control my body’s reaction to feeling like I’m approaching deaths door

Luckily my panic attacks are shorter lived now a days, I am able to sometimes logic my way out of them, but still. I hate even having to deal with these