God, they are such a bastard! If its during the day and I feel a panic attack coming, I can literally tell my brain to shut up and it does. But when I get woken by one, I am so confused, cause I can't think when I first wake up, it just feels like the world is ending. Its horrible. Today I woke up at 6am and was like, ****, something is really really wrong, my arms are all wrong, oh god I think I'm dying. But no. I haven't had any for years, and now- I'm stressed cause I have finals exams next week, I am awaiting biopsy results for a potentially cancerous lump on my neck, apparently there is also something wrong with my lungs that needs further examination AND I have to try and sort a research project I need to do, in Brazil, that I am supposed to be leaving for in two weeks, only the doctors tell me I shouldn't travel. So my brain is taking out all this stress on me at night.

What do you guys do to get rid of the night time panics when you aren't even awake properly?

I don't really have any solutions sorry, just wanted to sympathise about panic attacks. I get my degree results tommorrow and had a bit of an attack earlier. I'm not going to bed until I've chilled out properly from it, because I can feel the anxiety in the top of my arms still.

I wake up very quickly, so I find the something that helps is to calm myself through breathing and focusing on relaxing all my muscles one by one. Keeping a glass of water by my bed is also good, because drinking water helps my attacks pass. I guess you just have to learn to convince your brain that you are being irrational. Stupid brains. Not much help sorry.

Good luck with the finals and I hope that all your tests come back clear.

Thanks! I often use the "drink a glass of cold water" trick as well- it seems to really help it.

I picked up my degree results this time last year pretty much- it was hell on earth. They said they would be up at 1pm- got all psyched up, walked up there, they weren't so they said to come back at 3pm. They weren't up then too because someone hadn't signed off on it so WE had to chase up the head of our subject and then he had to come down and sign them AND THEN they had to stamp them and by the time they came out at 4pm I thought I was going to be sick I was that panicked.

Good luck with yours! I swear you should get a reward just for surviving through uni finals (can't believe I went back for a masters).

Therein lies the problem - when I'm awake I find that I can control them much more easily, but as soon as I'm sleepy they sneak up...sneaky bastards.

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Yeah, its really frustrating. Its like, for ****s sake subconscious, give me atleast a few hours break to sleep...