Swim meet anxiety attack

Well, I'll give you the spoiler first--I did manage to swim two events beating my (admittedly conservative) seed times. And I met someone who put the whole thing in perspective--a cancer survivor. That said, when this kind of thing happens, all the perspective in the world sometimes doesn't stop it. And it feels very scary to have this happen amid strangers. Fortunately, another swimmer saw that I was in distress and helped me get calm. And bless him for it! I had missed an event I had planned to swim, and typically I like to get going as early in a meet as possible so I'm not just waiting and getting anxious. Having missed my event, I had a lot of bottled up nerves. There was a break after my event during which I was able to continue a warm-up, but not for long enough to really calm down. After the swimming started up again, I was feeling so close to melt-down that I wanted to just get away from the whole scene and forget the meet. But I also didn't partly because I'd already paid for it, partly because what would I tell my coach if I skipped out? Fortunately, there was a longer break before my next event, and I had some more time to swim, which also helped. When it was time for my next event, I was relieved mainly to be on deck and ready to go. At that point I didn't even care what my time would be. I just wanted to be there. And swimming the race though hard physically was calming mentally. After that, things went smoothly enough and I swam the next event w/out incident. A couple things might have been in play here: I'd just run hard the day before in a cross-country race. I didn't think that would affect me b/c the distance was relatively short. Also, I'm sloooooooow. Watching the other swimmers, I began thinking, "what am I even doing here?? These people have earned their right to swim in meets. I haven't." (This wasn't a championship meet, but people were turning in pretty fast times--way faster than anything I could do.) If I'd done that one I missed, even though the times were a lot faster than the one I'd entered as a seed time, at least I'd have done it and broken the ice, as it were. In retrospect, yes, much good, but if I'm to swim in more meets (I've done them before--but it's been a while), I need to prevent this kind of anxiety so I'm focused on my swim and not on the nerves. So, note to self--1. Don't miss events; 2. This too will pass; 3. Don't worry about what other swimmers are doing; 4. Perspective. Also I need to get faster. Yes, 2:03 for 100 free was better than my seed time of 2:09. But I still felt like a sore thumb when everyone else was doing sub-1:30 or sub-1:00 (although I didn't worry too much about the sub-1:00 people who are in a whole other class). This is what got me wondering if I had any right to be there. Yet my goal is to make a cut-off of an open water swim that I have my eyes on, so whatever way I can improve my speed, I need to do it. Interestingly, I don't get the nerves in o.w. swimming or in running events that I did in this meet. I think it's because the former two are in more spacious settings, allowing for more warm-up, more movement, less waiting. I seem also to do okay when there's a separate warm-up pool--but very enclosed, crowded situations feel foreign, since I didn't swim meets or participate on a team as a kid. Okay, 'nuff said! I'm looking to move forward, yet also need a strategy to keep me calm in situations like this. I left the meet certain I'd NEVER do another meet. But I won't let this experience put me off them. Just wondering if others have had similar experiences--and how have you dealt with them?