I’ll probably never be totally sure (since i started treating my anxiety before i started thinking about these episodes, so i never described them to a shrink), but I believe I used to disassociate during my worst bouts of anxiety. I thought of them positively, because the incidents meant i wasn’t having a panic attack, but they were just a different symptom of the same problem. My memories afterwards were vague or nonexistant. What I do recall is feeling slightly apart from myself the whole time and doing things on autopilot.

It also used to be a relief when a period of intense stress dulled into depression. Even if I still couldn’t cope or do anything, at least I didn’t feel anything, right?

None of that is really great, turns out. It wasn’t that I’d gotten over my anxiety in the short term. It was just a new manifestation of it.