🧠 Panic Loops: Engineering, Anxiety, and Learning to Breathe Again

🫣 The Surprise Visitor

Panic attacks are sneaky. For me, they don’t show up with a flashing red light. It’s more like a subtle hum that slowly gets louder. A whisper that grows into a roar.

Sometimes it’s triggered by a single thought. Sometimes it’s just the latest straw on an already broken camel’s back. But the shape is always the same: a growing sense of unease, a tightness in my chest, a racing heart, and a rising urge to escape… except there’s nowhere to go.

The panic isn’t out there. It’s in my head.

At that point, all I can do is acknowledge it. Breathe. Let it ride. Like a sprained ankle — it hurts, and you can’t pretend it’s fine. You just walk slower, gentler, and give yourself time to heal.

🧒 My First Panic Attack

I was a kid. I didn’t even have the vocabulary for what was happening. What I did have was this vivid imagery in my head:

A penny placed on my pinky finger.
Then a book.
Then a rock.
Then a car.
Then a building.
Then a bomb.
Then a mountain.

All stacked on the weakest part of my body, getting heavier and heavier, with no end in sight.

I didn’t know what a panic attack was. But I knew what pressure felt like.

💥 The Latest One

I was just… working. Another feature. No clear goal. No user problem. No measurable outcome. Just “build it because someone said so.”

Leadership wasn’t supporting us. The team was spread thin. And yet again, we were shifting focus away from the product’s original purpose — away from our own impact. Another distraction. Another unpaid loan in the form of tech debt.

And somewhere in my head, a quiet thought formed:
“This is wasting my time. My potential. My life.”

And that’s when it hit.

That’s the part no one tells you. Panic doesn’t always come from fear. Sometimes it comes from grief. Grief for all the wasted energy, the lost momentum, the leadership that never showed up.

It feels like murder by a thousand cuts.
Not dramatic stabs, just unconscious choices — the slow drip of ignored consequences.
Like leaving the water running while you brush your teeth, except the water is someone else’s life force.

🧨 Why Engineering Fuels Anxiety

We love to think engineering is logical. Rational. Clean. But under the hood, it’s often chaos. And worse — human-less chaos.

Engineering is designed to fuel anxiety. Why?

• 💻 You spend most of your time interfacing with things, not people.
• 🧠 You think in abstractions: systems, patterns, performance, pipelines.
• 📊 You’re measured in velocity, points, coverage, impact-per-dollar.
• 📦 You’re spoken of as “resources” on a roadmap, not humans on a journey.

And in trying to simplify everything — the codebase, the user flow, the delivery cycle — leadership often simplifies people too. Into stats. Headcounts. Review scores. Promotion packets. Token usage.

Short-term gains take precedence over long-term investment.
We ship before we listen.
We react before we reflect.
We optimize before we understand.

Engineering, at its worst, forgets that humans build this stuff.

🚨 What Panic Does to an Engineer

When you're in a high-stress environment and you're not naturally calm and collected? You're fighting uphill.

Panic turns off the part of your brain you need most:

• You lose nuance.
• You default to black-and-white thinking.
• You make quick, drastic decisions.
• You overreact.
• You lose the thread.

In other words: all the worst habits for an engineer — and especially for a leader.

🧘 How I Manage It Now (Or At Least Try To)

I’m not cured. I still get panic attacks. But I’m learning to manage them.

Here’s what’s helped:

• 🫁 Breathe and Acknowledge
  Don't fight it. Don’t hide it. Accept the wave. Ride it out. Just like a sprained ankle — no shame, just care.
• 🔎 Recognize the Build-Up
  It usually starts way earlier. A creeping dread. A mental fog. Learn your early warning signs.
• 🛑 Set Better Boundaries
  Stop pretending Slack is urgent. Close the laptop. Take the PTO. Protect your peace.
• 🗣️ Talk About It
  With a friend. A therapist. A teammate you trust. Panic thrives in silence.
• 🌱 Redefine What Matters
  Forget performance scores. Focus on fulfillment. On craft. On your why.

🤝 Final Thoughts

If you’ve ever felt that rising heat in your chest, that racing heart, that need to run with nowhere to go…
You’re not alone.

This industry doesn’t make space for feelings like these — but that doesn’t make them any less real.

And if we want to build sustainable, human-centered products, we need to build sustainable, human-centered teams. That starts with acknowledging the truth:

🛠️ Even the strongest engineers panic sometimes.
🫁 But they learn to breathe, reset, and build again.