@annedodrill44- I'm very glad that you aren't ill. Anxiety attacks and I go way back. I think that mine was triggered when I went to a University in CO and experienced incredible homesickness. After I flew back home I woke up next day and started gagging- or dry heaving. And for several years woke up every morning like that. I started splashing my face with cold water every morning and that would break it up, and if I was near a faucet when I was out and about I'd do the same thing.
When I went to a local University in RI I had to commute from Providence- About 45 minutes away. I drove down RT 95 dry heaving all the way on to campus.
Not that you have to have a major event in your life but mine went away after my first lobectomy. The fear of dying from cancer seemed to put things is a more realistic light. I'm not so much afraid of dying as I am of suffering. I don't want to die and after 3 more lung cancers I think about it, of course.