Kerry Washington reveals the severity of her panic attacks in new memoir ‘Thicker Than Water’

“Scandal” star Kerry Washington has written a memoir “Thicker Than Water” and in it, she reveals the devastating panic attacks she suffered from at a young age due to the volatility of her home life.

In an excerpt published in Oprah Daily, Kerry  writes that her parents were constantly fighting - about finances, absences, and directions – causing Kerry to become the focal point of the family. “When they fought, I took it as my failure, and felt like it was my job to fix it,” she writes.

She writes that listening to her parents fight at night is what triggered such a strong reaction from her that she now knows they were serious panic attacks. She goes into detail about how they manifested and what the experience looked like for such a young girl.

 “I developed panic attacks at night. They manifested first as a rhythm of anxiety that encircled my brain, then evolved into a rapid pulsing, a whirling frenzy of metallic thumps, like those nauseating old spinning rides at a county fair.”

She continues, “This was not just a feeling. It was a sound, an internal beat, or series of beats, though they didn’t equate to music. It was the sound of terror, wholly unnatural and unconnected to the rhythms of my heart. I was dizzied with terror, no ground beneath me; it was crazy-­making, endless. And sad.” 

“There was something so sad about the rhythm,” she adds. “And I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t sleep. It was as though the alarms within me had been triggered and there was no turning them off.”

“I was 7 years old,” she writes.

With an incredible eye for detail and precise prose, the actress and activist writes about the gutting experience for a child to try to fall asleep each night before the arguments and fighting began, and how she only ever managed to sleep from exhaustion, rather than peace.

“Lying in bed, I would race to fall asleep before the sounds would leak from my bones. I would force myself to try to have ‘good’ thoughts,” she writes.

“I hated that the rhythm came from within me,” she continues. “I hated that my own brain was not to be trusted. If I lost the race to sleep and got caught by the rhythm, I had no tools to escape it, no way of controlling my own brain as it conspired against me.”

Writing that the panic would take hold of her muscles and tendons, she says she tried several techniques to calm down, like poetry recitals or singing.

“Sometimes, I would rock my body back and forth, vibrating, rattling, trying to drown out the pulsing noise and regain control of my body. Sometimes I would put my head under a pillow, trying to ignore the fact that the torture was coming from within me,” Kerry writes.

“But only exhaustion would override the rhythm, lulling me to the dream state beyond my fears. I would fight the haunting rhythm as it rose in me, often having to compete with my parents’ fights in the next room. If my inner rhythm won, I was tortured by the tempo of my own obsessive brain; if my parents’ arguing won, I was trapped by fear."

Dropping on September 26, the memoir “Thicker Than Water” will follow Kerry as she came of age, found the right direction, became an acting sensation, and then followed her passion into activism and advocacy.

Earlier this year, she told People that, "Writing a memoir is, by far, the most deeply personal project I have ever taken on. I hope that readers will receive it with open hearts and I pray that it offers new insights and perspectives, and invites people into deeper compassion — for themselves and others."

The outlet reported that the book’s press release promises to offer, "an intimate view into both her public and private worlds — as an artist, an advocate, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, a wife, [and] a Black woman."