I had my first panic attack yesterday. I was sitting in CPR training at work. no big deal, right? They show a video during this training. In one of the vignettes, they showed a woman going to her child's crib. The child isn't breathing. TRIGGER. It was a serious trigger for me. Let me try to describe what happened to me. I saw the blue baby on tv and it was like I was instantly transported back to the night Kailee was born. I saw flashes of that night. I was holding her. Looking at her blue head, her blue fingers. her blue toes. As this was happening, my breathing must have changed because I couldn't get my breath. I tried to close my eyes and calm myself down in that moment, but I couldn't. At this point, the CPR instructor wanted us to begin CPR chest compressions on our "fake" babies. As I watched others in the room doing their "rescue breathing", the room started to close in on me. It was like the room was actually getting smaller and smaller. I felt completely out of control and I had started to cry. I left the room as quickly as I could and found a bathroom.
It took me over an hour to calm down. Thankfully, a friend (and fellow counselor) talked with me until I was finally able to feel like I had some sort of control.
I've never had anything like that happen to me before. I now know that it's a trigger for me and I will avoid videos with fake dead babies in them.