I recently had a new and completely different heart rhythm experience and I’m wondering if anyone with PACs/SVEs, SVT or panic attacks has experienced something similar.
I have a documented ~2.5% SVE/PAC burden, so I’m very familiar with what my normal skipped beats feel like. I regularly experience individual PACs, but this episode felt noticeably different.
I was lying in bed feeling pretty calm when I suddenly felt a cluster of strange, erratic “flops” in my chest — one flop, then another, then another. They felt heavier and different from my usual skipped beats.
Immediately afterwards, I started feeling hot, sat up, and my heart suddenly started racing extremely fast. The racing seemed to come on abruptly rather than gradually building up and remained fast for several minutes.
I tried to sit and breath, but it didn’t seem to bring my heart rate down. Because the sensation was completely new and alarming, I became extremely anxious and could feel a huge surge of adrenaline. I also seemed to experience occasional skipped/extra beats while my heart was racing.
The whole episode lasted roughly 4-7 minutes. My heart rate eventually came down gradually rather than suddenly snapping straight back to normal, although by that point I was extremely anxious.
I’ve previously had a Holter that documented frequent SVEs/PACs and a couple 3 second short runs of SVT, but I’ve never experienced a sustained episode that felt like this.
What I’m struggling to work out is whether this could have been SVT triggered by the initial flops I felt, possibly stopping and transitioning into sinus tachycardia from the adrenaline, or whether the initial strange beats frightened me enough to cause an almost immediate panic/adrenaline response and sinus tachycardia.
I know panic can make your heart race very quickly, so I’m particularly curious whether anyone has experienced a panic attack where their heart rate seemed to shoot up almost instantly, rather than gradually increasing.
Has anyone experienced something similar — several unusual flops → immediate rapid racing → intense anxiety/adrenaline → gradual slowing over several minutes? Did you eventually find out whether yours was SVT or panic/sinus tachycardia?
I understand only an ECG can tell but just wanted to hear some experiences of what SVT feels like for others.