The college years

Junior year of college. I was voted in as the leader of a organization I was involved in. For me it was life changing. As someone growing up pretty shy and quite, I was now in a role where others were looking up to me to for advice and following my lead. I was getting ready to lead my first meeting, dinner had just ended, and the room was waiting for me to begin the meeting. I stood outside the door, when a feeling of panic overwhelmed me. Sick to my stomach, starting to sweat, my thoughts going 100 miles a minute. Could I do this? Was I going to be sick? What was going to happen if I couldn't go through with it? Our advisor for the meeting had just arrived, she looked at me and probably could tell right away by the look on my face that something was wrong. I told her something from dinner wasn't settling well with me. I stood there thinking to myself, I needed an answer to all my "what if" questions if I was going to go through with this meeting. She told me she could cover for me if I felt like i was going to be sick. With those words, I instantly started to feel better. I told her I was feeling better, opened the door, and started the meeting without a gliche. Having the unknown answered for me, instantly brought me back to reality and made feel like myself again. My first full blown panic attic came and went in just a few minutes. From that point on the meetings never bothered me...but the panic attacks still came for other reasons. I didn't know till much later on that I was developing full blown panic disorder, aka general anxiety disoder, GAD. More stories to come...