I started getting these attacks in 2009 just as my music career was taking off. I'd be doing photo-shoots and started to feel like I was having heart attacks. Increasingly I found it difficult to step outside my flat. Things started to get better after I saw a therapist who told me I needed to make peace with my panic attacks.
It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the amount of reading and learning that I acquired along the way.