Obsession

by AmazingLadyBird

When women are found dead on the coast of San Diego after a week of being kidnapped, the BAU are called in to help. With little evidence, and a weak connection between the victims, the team struggle to find the UNSUB before he kidnaps another woman. Set in season 5, no pairings, rated T for safety. [Updated June 2018 to respond to a review]

20. Review Response

Hi all!

So, this isn't an update on the fic exactly... I just don't check fanfiction or my email linked to fanfiction very often, so my responses are usually late, and I only just noticed a recent review by Lily which I wanted to address for transparency and accuracy. If this doesn't interest you, by all means click away. If you want to read it, go for it.

If you disagree with whatever I'm saying, or feel I portrayed anything badly, and want to discuss it, I'm up for that! Please could I ask you to log in before you review, or send me a PM, so we can discuss without me having to write a post like this and slap it on to the fic.

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Dear "a PhD psych student",

Thanks for reading the fic! It's cool that you're doing a PhD in psych - I did a masters with a focus in psychiatric disorders last year which I thoroughly enjoyed and have been debating going into more.

Now, I don't claim to have done a perfect job of representing anxiety disorders, because even as I read over this fic now, almost 4 years after it was written, I know I could do better / describe it better now, and even THEN it wouldn't be a good representation because anxiety affects everyone differently. The reason this fic exists in the first place was to help me cope with things I was going through myself.

If you don't mind, I'd like to go through your review point by point as there are several aspects I disagree with.

Firstly, you say: "Anyone with any kind of anxiety disorder can have a panic attack." I don't think I said anywhere in this entire fic that you can't have a panic attack in any other anxiety disorder. I only said that panic disorder is characterised by having panic attacks for no obvious reason.

Then you say: "Panic disorder is when you avoid places where you've experienced panic attacks in the past because of anxiety that one will happen again." I'm sorry, I just plainly disagree with this entirely.

Panic disorder is described as:

1) "an anxiety disorder characterized by reoccurring unexpected panic attacks" - wikipedia

2) "an anxiety disorder where you regularly have sudden attacks of panic or fear. Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety and panic at certain times. It's a natural response to stressful or dangerous situations. But for someone with panic disorder, feelings of anxiety, stress, and panic occur regularly and at any time, often for no apparent reason" - NHS Choices UK

3) "The common thread between most anxiety disorders is the panic attack. However, when panic attacks are experienced out of the blue, without an apparent trigger, this is classified as panic disorder. People living with panic disorder often feel fine one minute and totally out of control and in the grips of a panic attack, the next" Anxiety UK dot org

4) "The first panic attack may be associated with a stressful episode but gradually the attacks become dissociated and occur 'out of the blue'" - Patient info UK

5) "Panic disorder is diagnosed in people who experience spontaneous seemingly out-of-the-blue panic attacks and are very preoccupied with the fear of a recurring attack. Panic attacks occur unexpectedly, sometimes even when waking up from sleep" - Anxiety and depression association of America.

What you're describing sounds more like agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is "the avoidance of exposed situations for fear of panic or inability to escape" and can arise by "associating panic attacks with the places or situations where they occurred and then avoiding them" - NHS UK.

Agoraphobia "usually develops as a complication of panic disorder" (NHS). It's estimated that about "1 in 3 people with panic disorder also develop agoraphobia" (Patient info UK). Perhaps this is where the confusion comes from?

Finally, you say: "You don't just randomly start freaking out". Well, let me start off by saying, thanks for equating panic attacks to "freaking out", that's really helpful and not at all belittling or condescending or harmful to the perception of an already trivialised (but seriously debilitating) condition. Honestly, if it wasn't for this comment, I might have let the whole review slide.

Furthermore, go back up to the five definitions I've provided above. I think you'll notice that all of them use words like 'unexpected' or 'sudden' or 'no apparent reason' or, my personal favourite, 'out of the blue'. So yes, 'randomly' is a good description.

Sincerely,

I was diagnosed with panic disorder 4 years ago.