Back in 2008 when I experienced my first anxiety attack, I had no idea what was happening. In fact, for the first few attacks I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. All I knew was that I felt out of control, unable to calm down, and I was freaking out.

I remember feeling alone.
I remember having no idea what’s happening to me.
I remember losing perspective.
I remember feeling weak and fragile.

I don’t want to feel any of these things anymore, ever. And while I know that I probably still will, this app is a crucial way forward for me.

Limbical was created with two main goals:

1. Give myself a better understanding of what is happening to me during an attack. Reflecting back on attacks is always hard. My sense of time always gets skewed and a lot of things are happening very quickly. Giving my self an easy way to record my experience as it’s happening was key for me to better understand what I’m going through. 

I also wanted to track some more objective metrics of my attacks, a simple one being how long does attacks last. How long does it take me to completely freak out, and how long does it take me to calm down. Even now, 10 years later, while I do know it’s quick, I actually don’t know how quick it is. Is it 30 seconds or 2 minutes? Combining both subjective feelings and objective measurements, Limbical lets me record my attacks, and then look back at them after I’ve calmed down and better understand myself.

2. Build a community of people who all suffer from anxiety attacks, can share their experiences, and learn from one another. There are many forums and groups out there for anxiety support, but my goal was to create a data driven community, where you can look at other peoples’ recording and see how they differ from yours and how they are like yours.

Once I started building Limbical it became apparent that there might be a huge opportunity for research as well. If we all track our anxiety attacks on Limbical, we can create an unparalleled record of anxiety attacks, and that can be used to significantly advance research on anxiety and hopefully help us all.

It’s been almost 10 years since my first attack, and I’m doing much better. But still, the fear of an attack still runs my life to an extent. I’m fighting it almost everyday, pushing myself a little more each time, trying to be slightly less afraid each time. And now every anxiety attack I have is a learning opportunity.