I guess I blog now or something.
This week has been a bit crazy. Since posting the last
entry, I’ve basically had a 3-day 5-day panic attack, triggered by posting a blog
about panic attacks. Woo! It’s been interesting though because these days my
panic attacks are usually of the emotional variety.
My panic have two stages:
physical and emotional. Sometimes a panic attack is just all the feelings,
either straight up panic or crying or so much annoyance/anger that I am not fit
to be around people. Sometimes it is physical – crazy racing or skipping
heartbeat, inability to breathe, shakiness, vision loss, numbness. Sometimes it
is both. Lately (the past two years or so) its been more the emotional variety,
which is easier for me to spot and manage. I am good at rationalizing and
managing my emotions. You can’t rationalize your heartbeat into behaving
though, when it doesn’t want to, and that’s where I’ve been the last three
days. Four days? I think it’s day four five six. It didn’t really occur to me until
yesterday that it was a panic attack making me feel so shitty. It was just like
“oh. Ohhhhhhh. The racing heart shakey not sleeping thing… ohhh right I remember
this.”
My depressive cycles are similar, with this weird breakdown
of sometimes emotional (crushingly sad/alone/angry/wanting to die) and
sometimes more physical (so exhausted/overwhelmed I can’t actually get out of
the bed). Overall, I am not sure which I prefer, because again, I’ve gotten
pretty good at riding out the emotional ones. I can’t always make myself feel
better, but I can logic through it and sometimes even distract myself until I
ride it out. The physical cycles/attacks are hard though because I feel way
more helpless. My body will just stop when it feels like it – and I get
stressed that its happening, which just makes it worse. I’ll try to focus on my
breathing or something, which just freaks me out and makes me panic more. But
at least I don’t feel like the world is trying to kill me/I should die. It’s a
toss up.
One way I’ve found recently is to give myself things to look
forward to. Another thing I’ve learned in dealing with depression/anxiety is
you need really, really good, really understanding friends. Most of my friends
are some level of crazy. We all have anxiety/depression/other mental health
issues, and it makes it easier for us to sympathize and support one another. I am beyond thankful for my crazy friends.
Having good friends also means having friends who don’t flake. A big trigger
for me is disappointment (I think that’s true for most people, but some deal
with it gracefully while I turn into a pile of sobbing nutcase). I’ve learned
that I can help balance my depression by giving myself something to look
forward to, like fun friend events, but that it has to be with the right people
because if I am having a week where that is literally the only thing keeping me
going and someone bails , I fall apart harder than I would have without the
plans. SO I guess my ask is if you are want to hang, please be sure you can, because
the awesomeness of seeing your face might be the only thing keeping me hangin
on all week xo.
I started writing this last week and didn’t finish it…. I
don’t remember where it was going so, um the end!
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