Hello! I'm new here, just signed up for the website yesterday. About a month ago I had an unexpected fainting episode while on my lunchbreak at work. I was under an extreme amount of stress at the time, the biggest source of that was leaving my husband as part of an ultimatum for him to go into a drug treatment program (which he since has and things are doing better - one day at a time). I went to the doctor and so far they have not found anything medically wrong with me. They referred me to a cardiologist and he hasn't found anything either, but I'm wearing this heart monitor thing for 30 days to see. Since the initial fainting episode, I've had about 3 other episodes in which I felt like I was going to faint but didn't actually. I was able to distract myself or take some deep breaths and then the feeling passed. I also have a history of waking up in the middle of the night to a racing heart, stomach upset - panicking that I'm having a heart attack. Since the fainting and near-fainting episodes, I find myself constantly worrying about whether it might happen again. I find myself avoiding restaurants (interestingly, when I fainted I was in a restaurant) and don't even really like eating anymore. Because so far nothing medically wrong has been found, I am beginning to feel like this is all in my head. I'm a professional counselor and know the DSM-IV TR like the back of my hand - and I see that I meet pretty much all the criteria for panic disorder and agoraphobia. So I'm here to work on my mind, and to get support. I'm wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences to mine in which they have either fainted or felt faint due to a panic attack?
