So you're having a panic attack...

Everyone gets nervous and panicked from time to time. Sweaty palms before exams, slight trembles before giving a speech or elevated heart rates when you see that guy who once smiled at you in a way you think must mean he's as in love with you as you secretly are with him. Ahem.
Unfortunately, some of us have known the joys of severe panic attacks, which are apparently a natural 'fight or flight' reaction. Quite how that works is beyond me - my panic attacks neither seem like fighting spirit or an act of flight seeing as I tend to be found cowering on the floor, incapable of movement and feeling like I'm drowning. I've heard people trivialise and doubt the intensity of panic attacks before, I see your point - they probably look quite funny and seem a bit silly to onlookers what with the frantic breaths and runny nose - however panic attacks are commonly mistaken for heart attacks which perhaps illustrates how earth-shattering and terrifying they can feel. Research has shown that experiencing panic attacks frequently causes sufferers to be even more apprehensive, often avoiding situations that could trigger an attack.

Panic attacks come on suddenly, sometimes triggered by the most trivial of things and often with a feeling of intense terror and impending doom. Those symptoms are accompanied by shortness of breath, a pounding heart, dizziness, and chest pain and what I'd describe as walls closing in and crushing me. A barrel of laughs all round.

But what do I do when I'm feeling on edge? I've had a tonne of CBT and medication, have tried soothing music and hypno-recordings while I nap, and have read about bizarre breathing techniques akin to yodelling. I'd like to think these have made me calmer in general but I've no way of measuring that kind of thing. Ultimately once I'm having a panic attack I can't reverse it, nothing will make me 'snap out' of something that's gripping me by the throat but there are things I find help.

Understanding the condition has helped - I know that a surge of adrenaline is a result of this so called fight/flight conundrum and I have had all its symptoms explained to me. I no longer worry that I have an undiagnosed heart condition that is about to kill me. This means when I have a panic attack, although it's scary as hell, I know where I'm at and I try to let it take its course.
I try to remind myself that a high state of anxiety cannot last forever, most panic attacks only last for 15 minutes. I repeat that this will pass, this will pass, this will pass. Simple but effective.
The ever-famous breathing exercises which are admittedly different for everyone, and admittedly sometimes difficult to remember in the height of anxiety. Breathing though, is the key. I close my eyes, and breathe deeply into my stomach. I breathe in for 5 seconds and out for 3, and gradually work up to 7 seconds in and 5 out, but this does take a while especially when the instinct is to snatch as many breaths as possible.
Once my breathing's a bit steadier, I find a spot on the wall/ceiling-maybe a photo if there's one nearby-and focus on it whilst continuing my breathing just to give me something to concentrate on. Alternatively I'll go through the lyrics of a song over and over and hum that to myself. Usually it's Mama you've been on my mind by Jeff Buckley, for no known reason to me.

I know that a panic attack could come back at any point, and as much as I hate them I'm slowly growing to be ok with it, I feel like I'm anchored for any storms that blow my way.

Eating Disorder Revisited

This post could trigger some people. Please take care, but what I'll do is put all the tricky bits after a jump break, if you don't want to read anything that may upset you then stop there.

It comes as no surprise to you, I hope by now at least, that my relationship with food is not always a-ok. I thought I had everything relatively under control (aha I spend my life controlling myself) but living out this year - instead of in catered college accommodation like last year - is presenting me with new challenges. Now I don't mind a challenge, bring it on, but I won't pretend that I'm always enthusiastic about facing challenges related to eating head on. Some days, like today, are calamitous. Good word. Today was bad for specific reasons I won't go into now for fear of triggering someone but suffice it to say my diet was silly and that I'm now wide awake at quarter to 2 thinking about it incessantly.
 I can easily find myself wanting to throw things (preferably lots of pieces of paper-that always looks dramatic) into the air and scream 'To hell with this!' but that option isn't really there for me. If I run away from a problem today, I will only have to confront it tomorrow. I know I'll have good days and bad, but at times when every day is just plain average it quickly becomes demoralising.
The issues I'm having with food at the minute are complex. There are practical problems like how much I'm spending on food, it's so expensive-who knew? I tend to quell this worry by thinking that in the future when I am saddled with debt I highly doubt I'll be ruing the days I bought fresh meat and lots of fruit, more likely I'll be regretting buying quite as many jumpers/scarves. Seriously though, Durham is cold, I can justify those purchases.
Also fresh food needs to be used up quicker than I anticipate so perhaps some forward planning from me would help to map out what I'll eat when and ensure food doesn't go past its best sitting in my fridge. This could help get me to stick to eating full meals too, as if I've made the commitment in writing that I'll be eating salmon and veg on Thursday I'll be more likely to keep true to my plan and do it. The actual cooking of the food is fine, despite a few frantic calls home about how much spaghetti constitutes a portion. I'm impressed at my abilities, in particular my Thai Green lemongrass and ginger prawn curry. *Awkwardly waits for applause*

 On the whole I'm fine but I worry about how varied my diet is, in a way I suspect other students don't have to. If I have a day, or worse a few days, where I don't eat much I get intensely anxious that I'm getting ill, whereas my housemates given the same situation could just accept that they weren't particularly hungry. Some days, like today, I struggle to eat meals and instead just snack aimlessly in the hope I'll eventually take in enough. Obviously that's hard given the nutritional value of most snack foods. I can see that some of my habits aren't healthy, but don't necessarily know how to fix them, and quite frankly can't be bothered with the effort. If I can coast by like this, then should I? Equally - I worry that when I go back home my routine is going to be thrown way off course, having just settled into one here.
Overall I feel I've reacted to the stresses this term has given me pretty well, in fact I've gone full circle and have been eating more when I'm stressed than ordinarily. Shocker. I can't help fearing that as my tell-tale troublesome familiar stresses peak over the next two weeks (academic stress is the absolute worse for me) I won't be as successful with managing it. I can feel it happening already but don't feel able to do anything about it. Accepting a relapse as an inevitability seems like I am an utter failure though. I am so tired of it that I could cry. Hard times indeed.



This is why today was bad, don't read if you're going to find it difficult to see what I ate today, please please please.

Dwindling Motivation and Poorly Skippy Hearts

I am really struggling at the minute to even get through a day without wanting to nap or curl up into a ball and pretend the world doesn't actually affect me.
Perhaps it's because it's the holidays and there's nothing much to do although I have internship work to be getting stuck into and could/should be reading up early for next year's degree course.
Perhaps it's because I am perpetually shattered considering it's currently 2am and there is no hope of me being able to sleep due to my mind whirring like a machine this trend will likely continue.
Perhaps it's because you know what I am fed up of doctors having had 19 doctor/nurse/psych/hospital appointments since coming back home at the end of uni and I am weak and feeling oh-so grandly sorry for myself.

It's bizarre.
I have always been a hardworker.
Not even that, I've always been a work-herself-to-the-bone worker (yes I understand the cringe of the to-the-bone reference) and yet I've found myself so.....meh....about doing anything.
Then I sit here.
Lay here.
At night and mull over how useless I am for wasting a day.
A day that could be used to be a better person. A smarter person, a happier person, a prettier person, a more popular person. Somehow.
I have no motivation to leave the house.
Or to be happy.
Or to eat healthily. And with that I wonder why do I even need to care about eating healthily? Should I care about eating healthily? Is this a bad thing to care about?

I'm not even sure how I feel.
I hate doing nothing.
But right now I don't want to do anything.

The doctor fandango is exasperating. I feel like I get passed from person to person to person, and that more often that not they see eating disorder and blame whatever I'm seeing them about on that. I've now been given tablets for my stomach which has been causing problems for years now but I can't even motivate myself to take the pills. I'm still waiting for someone to take my heart seriously. It trembles and skips and flutters and pounds and pauses and tightens, not like panic attack palpitations, like it genuinely forgets how to beat properly. It does this for maybe 15 minutes at a time every few days. It's starting to scare me, but worrying about it won't help.

The Big Black Cloud of Low Self-Esteem

self-es·teem

 

noun

1.

a realistic respect for or favourable impression of oneself; self-respect.

I spend most of my days repeatedly mulling over negative thoughts about myself, and continually feel like I am just 'not good enough.' What it is that's indicative of my unsatisfactoryness (no, not a word, but we'll go with it) varies on a regular basis, it's sort of cyclical. Be it my academic pursuits, my body, my general appearance, my mind, my social life, my job prospects or anything else that can be applied to me I promise you I've felt like it's unworthy of the slightest bit of praise. I've never really put my finger on why my self-esteem is frankly non-existent but it's probably (partially) due to my perfectionism. If it's possible to get a better mark, to be prettier, to be funnier, to be kinder or more liked then that - in my head - is a sign that I'm nothing special.
It would be a relief to have one day where I'm not weighed down by the burden of disliking myself, or wishing I were a different person altogether. The number of times I've dismissed compliments or refused to go out because I don't want to be seen/spoken to is mounting up as time goes on. Having low self-esteem wears me down, I wake up already ill-equipped to face the day with a cloud of self-loathing looming overhead and it makes me more vulnerable to low spots and panics.
It was when I was completing a CBT exercise recently, that asked me to focus on one thing I was proud of and happy with about myself a day that I realised something that could be a bit of a game-changer....*whisper it now* I actually do quite like a fair few things about myself. Shocking.
My hair, though not what it once was -sigh, screw you eating disorder- is alright, actually. My skin, though not perfect, is quite good, my eyes are ok, although I kid about wanting a nose job there are no glaringly obvious faults with my face and my body is pretty well proportioned. Tall and slim. People go on about wanting this sort of figure all the time. And yeah, I wish my chest were larger, and I'm really not keen on my arms, but am I ugly? I don't think so. I'm ok. Ish. Whilst I've never thought of myself as intelligent people tell me that's the case, and I've achieved academically, if that's what you choose to measure it by. I love my degree, take pride in my work and got a 2:1 for first year *fist-pump*. I've got friends and a boyfriend, who I'm happy-as-larry with, and I am eventually learning to like the person I'm becoming.
It seems the problem I've had has always been what other people thought of me, or rather, me second-guessing what other people thought of me. When I get down because of my appearance it isn't because I particularly dislike the way I look, it's because I dislike what other people may think of me. I don't like that other people may think I'm a bad person or that I'm stupid or annoying and I take that worry and extend it to the assumption that people do think badly of me, they must think badly of me.
All this focus on what other people think is tiring as hell. Especially when in all liklihood I slip past without them noticing my bad hair day/that I mispronounced Morgenthau. Plus if someone doesn't like me, for whatever reason that may be, do I really want to spend copious amounts of energy worrying about that and trying to change his/her mind? Do I want someone in my life if they're going to be negative? Of course not. So if I apply that to myself...do I want the negative part of my brain in my life if it's only going to be negative? No ta.
I've never liked the techniques I'm sometimes told to use of telling yourself 5 happy affirmations a day or sticking positive I-love-myself notes all over the place, it just seems too self righteous. But maybe I could start detaching myself from other peoples' opinions by focusing more on me and what I want, not running through 'oh but what will people think?' before each trivial decision I make.
Wisdom done and signing off for the night.
xx

'The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.' - Mark Twain

 

East/West split for Depression and Anxiety

I've been an avid follower of PostSecret, which incidentally you should definitely have a gander at, for many years and so I follow the account on all-powerful twitter.

PostSecret invites anyone to send in their secret anonymously on the back of a postcard. Once a week a page of about 20 secrets is posted onto the internet, with secrets ranging from beautiful to frightening, saddening to funny.

ANYWAY
To bring me onto my point
The PostSecret twitter account recently tweeted a link to this article which details a study showing that Anxiety is more common in the western world, with Depression more prevalent in the East.
Obviously I clicked on it, I can't control myself when I see a title as interesting sounding as that. And I was really intrigued by the findings, especially seeing as the surveys done to reach the conclusion seemed incredibly extensive, with over 480,000 people taking part. (Not like those cosmetics adverts you see that boast 94% success rate and then tell you they only tested 30 people) What was probably most interesting was that the leaders of the research were very quick to point out the difficulties in gathering data relating to mental health, and stressing the point that, actually, we shouldn't jump to conclusions about what the study really shows. People still, no matter where they are in the world or what their cultural or situational circumstances, don't always give honest and reliable responses when asked about their mental health.
Tricky one.
Check PostSecret out, and come back to me, I miss you when you're gone.

Video of the day...Dealing with Anxiety, by Anna Akana

'Something internal controlling and dictating your life...that's a shitty way to live.'