Actress Kerry Washington reveals that she used to suffer from panic attacks when she was seven years old in her memoir Thicker Than Water. In an excerpt revealed by Oprah Daily, she explained that she had “developed panic attacks at night.”
She explained that the reason for the development was overhearing her parents arguing after she had ended up falling asleep. She wrote:
“They manifested first as a rhythm of anxiety that encircled my brain, then evolved into a rapid pulsing, a whirling frenzy of metallic thumps, like those nauseating old spinning rides at a county fair.”
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She went on to compare the experience to “the sound of terror, wholly unnatural and unconnected to the rhythms of my heart.”
She recalled the terrifying moments, writing: “I was dizzied with terror, no ground beneath me; it was crazy-making, endless. And sad. There was something so sad about the rhythm. And I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t sleep. It was as though the alarms within me had been triggered and there was no turning them off.”
Although she clarified that she did not get a panic attack every single night, she “trembled at the possibility of it” even at the moments when her parents weren’t fighting.
