A friend of mine gets panic attacks periodically and they seem to just occur out of the blue. Despite being in a less than happy marriage, she's basically a fairly calm person with a philosophical attitude, not given to worrying about things and pretty much "going with the flow".
But then one of these attacks come on and she can't breathe properly, gets chest pain (this worries her because she actually has heart disease and thinks she is having another heart attack), gets a strong sense of impending dread and fears she is going to die. When it passes, she feels shaken and quite weak but after a few hours is quite normal again.
It seems an odd phenomenon and I can't help wondering if there's some biological basis to it when it occurs suddenly in someone who has not been conscious of feeling anxious.
Julia