I've Felt The Need To Write This Out For A While

Panic attacks: The doctors I’ve spoke to and the sites I’ve visited and every single definition I’ve looked at in every dictionary and encyclopedia tell me that panic attacks are a time of heightened senses for the fight or flight sequence. It is your body thinking there is a present threat in the vicinity and now you’re preparing for it. The part that really catches my eye though is where it says they last a maximum of about ten minutes. For anyone who’s ever had a panic attack you know that although the immediate adrenaline rush may last a mere ten minutes the panic attack takes you on for the rest of the day.

For me, panic attacks have become a part of my every day life. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t experience some form of an anxiety disorder. When I was a child I had night terrors, and I couldn’t stay away from home because I was convinced that my family would pack up and leave me behind while I was gone. And believe me there was never anything to give me this strange idea. As I got older, I would think that I was sick because my skin was clammy, my heart was racing, I couldn’t think straight, and I felt like I was going to throw up. This got so bad that my mom started talking to counselors, thinking I was being bullied into wanting to stay home (something I didn’t find out until just recently). Of course they didn’t consider an anxiety disorder; I was much too young and the things I was going through seemed like advancing stages of a social phobia.

The advancing years, I learned to shelter myself while still in public — I had to go to school after all. I became withdrawn, I had few friends, and I never participated in anything that wasn’t required. Even my friends came and went year after year because I wasn’t emotionally available. Let’s face it: it’s hard to be friends with someone if they won’t let you get close enough to be more than an acquaintance. I was like a piece of furniture in the background; I was there but I didn’t do or say anything.

The first time I went to therapy was when I was sixteen — far too many years to wait. I finally decided that something needed to be done when my stomach began to be eaten away by the acid that flared up with every attack, and antacids weren’t doing enough to help solve the problem. I learned relaxation therapy, and I was told to think happy thoughts. That’s about all they could do for me as long as I refused medication though. I hated pills. I hated the thought of something changing my mind. I feared that the pills would stop whatever it was that allowed me to write novels. In short: I was just plain scared.

So that’s where I left it. Therapy and no medication (except of course the two different types of antacids and the iron pills that I had to take because I refused anti-depressants). For a year and a half this worked for me. Being able to talk things out with someone who was not only paid to help me but also trained to help me kept me on an even keel.

Then came college. I was excited for college — in fact I can safely say that it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me — but it comes with it’s stressors. First move in, then thirty new strangers to live with, all new classes with all new teachers, and living in a dorm means never getting quiet peace. I was happy with my life now in this new place, but each of the stressors was eating away at me, just piling up in the background while I ignored them. And without a therapist to talk to every other week it was all just waiting to explode.

Finally I hit my brick wall. In the middle of my second class of the day, I became overwhelmed.
I’m going to pause here for anyone that has never had a panic attack to attempt to explain it to you. It starts with the heart; just a bit of irregular beating. Enough to get your attention. Maybe your jaw becomes tensed and you can’t, for the life of you, make it relax. Then suddenly you feel as if the wind has been knocked out of you and the pressure in your head is too high. Your skin goes clammy you get tunnel vision and it’s as if everything you’re hearing is very far away. Back to the heart: it’s now screaming at you, sending out signals that you must be dying to feel so horrible. As for your stomach, the acid is causing heart burn and paralyzing cramps, while at the same time it feels like it’s suddenly taken up trapeze. One minute it’s falling like it’ll never stop, and the next it’s in your throat, threatening to excavate the body. Then back to it’s plummeting fall again. You can’t stand straight because you’re so dizzy, and your legs are suddenly made of jello, unable to hold you straight and strong. You would catch yourself, but your arms feel exhausted, like you’ve just lifting something far too heavy for yourself, and carried it for miles. It’s four times the work it should be to lift them. Worst of all you can’t concentrate enough to operate your arms anyway because your mind’s been kicked up into a whirlwind of disorder that incapacitates you.

As you sit wherever it is that this attack came on, you begin weighing your choices while attempting to push away the nagging repeating phrase or thought or memory or action that brought this all on in the first place. Should you run to the bathroom in case you puke? No, just don’t move. If you don’t move at all, you’re fine.  Breathe in — but not too much because it hurts. Now out — I know it’s hard, but try. Forget about what happened. No one else is going to pay any heed to what offended you. They didn’t even notice how hurt you were by it. You have to let it go.

But it keeps replaying. Some comment or action not meant to be insulting but it is — or maybe you just see it that way because you’re stressed already and the paranoia has set it. The paranoia is the worst. It’s a hard one to beat, even with therapy to train you against it.
I got all of this in the middle of a class. Because I was so incapacitated by the attack, I stayed for the rest of the class. Then by taking sharp, even breaths, I made it back to the dorm. For two hours, I sat in my room silently crying and hoping my roommate didn’t notice. Then I went to my last class. This was a horrible mistake because my teacher did notice. Kind of hard not to when your student is crying through the happiest parts of Dead Poets Society.

That was the moment I decided I can’t make it on my own without anti-depressants. It’s either go to therapy my whole life and mostly feel like I have nothing to say to make them earn their pay, or take the pills. So I did. Over Christmas Break, I weened myself onto Zoloft. I was mostly miserable as my body attacked itself trying to get rid the new chemicals, but when all was said and done, I felt as though I could make it through normal life without breaking down. It was easier to talk myself down, and the paranoia eased up. Now instead of a panic attack a week, I could go full months without those days spent curled into myself on a bed trying to convince my own inner voice that it doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

I have a pretty severe anxiety disorder, so I know I’ll never see a life without panic attacks. I’ll always have that suspicion in the back of my mind deliberating what people really think when they see me in the middle of an attack. And I’ll always have those really bad attacks that take me out for the rest of the day. I might be able to avoid them for a long while, but they’ll always come again. That’s a fact.

All I wish is that when I was sifting through information trying to figure out what was wrong with me, I wish I would’ve seen someone putting an asterisk on the ten minute panic attack rule of thumb. Ten minutes before you can put together a comprehensible sentence again. Ten minutes before the sight of another human doesn’t bring you to tears. Ten minutes before your breathing with advance from hiccuping gasps.

But not ten minutes for a panic attack. The exhaustion that the drop in mood, the stomach discomfort, the head ache; that’s all for the rest of the day. Only a good nights sleep can really put you back on track. I spent many years thinking I was going through something much worse because that fact was never pointed out to me.

In all honesty, I’m not sure why I wrote this. It’s something that’s been replaying in my head for months; years even. I’m not looking for sympathy or anything like. I guess, if anything, I just wish I had found something like this when I figuring it all out. I wish I had seen someone who told me that I wasn’t cursed, and that everything was going to be okay. I wish I had seen that honesty and openness.

Hope you have a wonderful day, Mibbian who is reading this. You look lovely today.
Love Sheen