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The Day I Had My First Anxiety Attack

It definitely was no laughing matter.

By Kathy LesterPublished 6 years ago 5 min read
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Anxiety attacks are no laughing matter especially when they are caused by high volumes of stress. I never thought I would ever experience this but one day it hit me so hard that I literally thought that I was going to die. It all started about eight years ago, when I was working as a marketing associate for a health insurance company. The job wasn’t too hard but the hours seemed long and tedious when you wore a headset and was hooked to an auto-dialer cold calling senior citizens to persuade them in changing or adding a Medicare Advantage plan to their current insurance policy.

I originally started working there in 2007 because I was hired on as a full-time manager that assisted health insurance agents with their sales and making sure everything was documented appropriately. I worked the 2:30 PM to 11 PM shift, which I loved a lot, because after 9 PM at night, the outbound cold calling stopped and the associates would be inbound waiting on customer service calls. Only a couple of them would happen, on a two hour basis a night. The rest of the time they would surf the Web or read a book they had brought with them to work. That also gave me some downtime as well. I would just sit at my manager’s desk and list some drop-shipping items on my website just to kill some time.

Then one day it happened. The human resources department came to me, brought me to their office and told me that myself and a few other managers would have to start taking about two weeks worth of health insurance classes that they would pay for us to take and pass the health insurance exam so we would become licensed health insurance agents. They said the law had changed and anybody who was managing the sales floor had to be licensed in order to keep their position. At first, I wasn’t worried about it at all. I was used to taking training classes in sales for quite some time and I figured as long as I paid attention in class and took good notes, that I would ace it, and be A-okay.

Well, things didn’t go as planned. The teacher wasn’t that great even though the material was relatively easy comprehend, but the test was not a simple multiple choice pattern like they had originally described. It was like a hard riddle, and you had to figure out what the question was trying to say, similar to mind reading. I had failed it by a few questions so I took it one more time and failed it the second time, with the same amount of questions I had missed originally. I was so upset that I cried for hours. I had no choice but to take a demotion and start working full-time as a marketing associate.

It started out okay but as time progressed, it became more rough. Nobody likes to be on a leash, tied down to a computer for hours on end with an auto-dialer moving as fast as a speeding bullet going from call-to-call non-stop. You couldn’t even get up to use the bathroom in an eight hour period and your lunch break was only fifteen minutes long. Not enough time to really relax before going back to the grind. I really started to hate my job but at the time, there was no where else that offered twelve dollars an hour. I would go home at night and cry and feel depressed. Then get up for work, drive thirty minutes and cry all the way to work. I started to become depressed and felt suicidal. I was normally a really happy person but this job really got me down.

And then it happened. I had my first panic attack right at the job. I was in the bathroom and started to cry uncontrollably while having a hard time breathing. My hands were cold and all I wanted to do was just die right there. I didn’t care about the world around me and I really hated my life. This happened on and off for a short while. I thought I would never be able to leave such a dreadful sales job.

Then redemption came. They were losing contracts and they started to ask for volunteers to take a nine month furlough. I got so excited, I almost fell out of my seat as I raised my hand. The next thing you know, I was drawing unemployment pay for nine months while working at home with my family, with the relief of having some time to recoup before going back for three months and living through solid hell again. But after three months of work, redemption came again. I had experienced another nine more months of furlough before my husband and I had to make the decision for me to look for another job that wasn’t laying off all of the time. My unemployment pay was about to run out, and thank goodness a full-time position came up right next door to where I was working. In August 2011, I had become a publishing consultant for a publishing company.

If you’ve never had an anxiety attack before, you need to realize that they do exist, and they can happen to you if you allow circumstances to rule it. If you can possibly help it, never allow a situation, including a job, to bring on an anxiety attack or a series of them. It’s not good for your health and it can spur on other illnesses if it lingers on for a long time. If you feel like you are going down this road, get help right away. It’s a very serious matter and can be life threatening.

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About the Creator

Kathy Lester

I'm a published author with two major publishers, a graphic designer, co-founder of Madcap Toys, a mom to three adult sons and a Nana to five grandchildren. If you like what you are reading, send me a gift or tip.

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