Is this really a panic attack?

[bj8732]

I get a stabbing pain in the middle of my shoulders in my back that shots through my chest and heart giving me chest pains that goes up to my jaw making it a little difficult to swallow then up to my temples and hitting my brain with a blast leaving me with an instant terrible sound altering migraine.  I had a complete cardiac workup and that at is not the problem.  I am told I am having a panic attack but I panic once it starts because of the terrible pain that hits my brain when the traveling pain ends. It lasts until the next day sometimes and sometimes it is gone in the morning.  I can't believe my body would be attacking itself in this way. Everyone else feels panic first and I do not.

[Tonym124]

Hi,
These sound like horrible symptoms and must be really scary.  I think mammo is right.  It might be good to try some treatments/techniques aimed at panic/anxiety and see is this helps.  This would give more confidence that the symptoms are anxiety related.  What do you think?  Breathing exercises are good, as are some herbal remedies.  I've just been looking at herbal remedies that might help on my blog - panicrelief.co.uk.  Take a look and see if you can find something helpful.
Hope you're feeling better soon
Tony
panicrelief.co.uk

[mammo]

I would seek a second opinion, this doesn't sound right to me.  How thorough was your testing?  Anyone would panic with this, and the panic normally comes first with anxiety.
Anxiety can cause much of what you describe, are you generally an anxious person?  Did they give you anything to control the anxiety?  This would be the best way to either rule it out or confirm that it is anxiety. What are you doing when these attacks occur? Maybe with some more information we can help you out.

[ciqala]

Well I know it is common to just have physical symptoms of anxiety without feeling anxious, i'm not sure why that is, perhaps whatever is causing our anxiety is buried so deep we don't know and so it comes out physically. All i know is it happens a lot that people aren't feeling anxious but have physical anxiety symptoms like that, and it makes it even scarier.
It happens to me all the time, and it's very scary because anxiety mimics medical symptoms. I have had pains like that before as well, and days i swear i am not anxious over anything, and weird and frightening symptoms pop up.
A panic attack is just the panic of the anxiety symptoms we feel, at least that's how it was explained to me. And anxiety can make you feel like there is something wrong with your body, but there is not. I don't understand it either, because it feels so real, but that's what i was told by doctors.