Kerry Washington Opens Up About Suffering Horrific Panic Attacks At Age 7: ‘I Couldn’t Make It Stop’
10.08.2023 - 15:33
/ etcanada.com
Kerry Washington speaks candidly about suffering from panic attacks at age just 7 in her upcoming memoir Thicker Than Water.
In an excerpt shared by Oprah Daily on Wednesday, the “Scandal” star recalled how she “developed panic attacks at night” after hearing her parents constantly argue.
Washington wrote of the attacks, “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.
“This was not just a feeling. It was a sound, an internal beat, or series of beats, though they didn’t equate to music. It was the sound of terror, wholly unnatural and unconnected to the rhythms of my heart.
“I was dizzied with terror, no ground beneath me; it was crazy-making, endless. And sad,” she went on. “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,” stating that she was just 7 years old at the time.
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Although Washington pointed out that didn’t have an attack “every single night,” she “trembled at the possibility of it” even when her parents weren’t arguing.
“Lying in bed, I would race to fall asleep before the sounds would leak from my bones. I would force myself to try to have ‘good’ thoughts,” she wrote.
“I hated that the rhythm came from within me,” Washington shared.
“I hated that my own brain was not to be trusted. If I lost the race to sleep and got caught by the rhythm, I had no tools to escape it, no way of controlling my own brain as it conspired against me.”
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