Anxiety Attack.

This is off topic on my weight loss blog. Sorry. I'll probably keep it short because I'm posting from my phone instead of laptop. This post is more for myself than anyone else, I guess it's sort of a vent. One of my best friends has anxiety issues and she's usually the one I go to to discuss these sorts of things but she's a couple hundred miles away and I really feel like no one around me understands.

I have anxiety.
And I don't mean like "oh I'm nervous about this big presentation I have to make to my boss next week. Yikes!" No. I mean I have an anxiety disorder. Undiagnosed of course because talking about my anxiety gives me major anxiety. Growing up when I tried to talk to my mom about anxiety (and my sister tried about depression) she practically told us we had no clue what anxiety or depression is and we don't have it. This stemmed my irrational fear that if I tell someone something is wrong they won't believe me, doctors especially. I broke a bone in my ankle (small, literally does nothing) and left it for over a year because the first time I went to the doctor they said they couldn't find anything wrong (yeah the bone is that small. At the time it may have only been fractured and worsened from use those) they ended up just taking it out. But I didn't go back because I thought  they'd think I was faking an injury. Why anyone would think that I have no clue, but I still feel that way. Even with taking my kids to the doctors, if the problem isn't obvious (like an ingrown toenail or diaper rash) I think they'll just think I'm nuts.

So no, I have not gone forth to the doctors about this. I keep thinking I should because it's affecting my every day life. But I can't bring myself to do it.

If you are a human being you have probably experienced anxiety. Let me be very clear about this, having anxiety is different than having an anxiety disorder. And also, just because you have an anxiety disorder does not mean you will have panic attacks. ALSO, just because you have a panic attack doesn't mean you have anxiety. Confused yet? Everyone will experience anxiety in their life time. Situational anxiety. If you dont, you're probably an android or are lying about it. My mom has had a panic attack, which I believe is where her misinformation about anxiety stemmed, that unless I had panic attacks I didn't have anxiety. My mom however doesn't have anxiety even though she had a panic attack? An anxiety disorder is not a temporary thing. Situational anxiety is.

If I had to explain what living with an anxiety order was like...I would probably say it's knowing that impending doom is moments away at every moment of your life. I'm not always anxious, but I am a lot of the time. I have trigger, like most anxious people do, but a most of the time it comes unexpectedly. Typical triggers for me are obviously when I'm scared, a situation that would bring normal people anxiety will bring me anxiety and possibly panic attacks and then two years later I will still rehearse the situation in my head and get anxiety over it all over again on a nightly basis. I'm very strange with time, for example, if I have to be at work at 3 and it's 12 I will panic because I only have three hours to put on my make up (I wear only eye liner and light eye shadow except on special occasions), if Travis is supposed to watch the kids at 1 and it's 12:55 I will be ripping my hair out thinking that I'm going to be late for whatever I have to do at 2.  Police sirens and doctors are a trigger for me. Most of the time however my anxiety happens for no reason. I have yet to find a way to settle myself. There are no breathing techniques, no work out routines, no drink mixes, that can make me calm down. It's just impossible.

When my anxiety creeps in it is a constant feeling. Usually my stomach feels tight, I get hot flashes, and no matter where I am or what I'm doing I feel like I just need to go some where, like if I don't move RIGHT NOW whatever is behind my shoulder is going to get me. Imagine how stressful this is when you have an office job, or back in my school days where I have to remain seated and can't just get up and walk around like I feel like I HAVE to. Don't worry though, even when I do walk I won't feel any better so it doesn't make that much of a difference. I try to remind myself to breathe, because that seems to help everyone, but when I try to breathe it reminds me that I am breathing because I have anxiety and I am reminded of and feeling even worse about my anxiety.

When you make a mistake at work, you curse and repair the situation or move on if it's done and over with. Not me. If I make a mistake I immediately think I'm horrible at my job, I should have never come here, I have an easy job even a monkey could do it, I'm never going to get a raise, I'm never going to get a promotion, hell I'm probably going to get fired! I should have stayed at my part time retail job forever, I can't do this, I should know better by now, I'm such a joke. And so on. Two months later and I'm probably still panicking about that one time I answered the phone the wrong way.

If you know someone with anxiety, or are just reading this and think I just sound "over dramatic" that's exactly what it is. Problems that would tick a normal person off, will set me into a frenzy. Don't even get me started on the real issues.

Anyway. That was just a small vent about some anxiety type quirks. But thats not the point about this post. This post is actually to talk about tonight. Tonight I had the worst anxiety attack I've had to date. I have had panic attacks before. Only a handful of them. I live in an almost constant state of anxiety, sometimes when my anxiety is bad is where I discussed the tightness and feeling like I need to be on the move, and then there are the actual panic attacks. A typical panic attack usually lasts only a few minutes but can be a reoccurrent thing for hours.

Travis is going on a trip to see some relatives tomorrow, so naturally he wanted to see the kids today as he'll be gone a week. (We are not together but we have a decent relationship when it comes to the kids. They live with me full time, he doesn't get them over night but we have an open door policy. If he asks to see them other than when he watches them Fridays when I work the answer is always yes. So he usually sees them two three times a week.) I went shopping to get my supplies for veggie pizza (recipe soon I promise!!!) When I came back I was pretty high strung.

I had gone to talk to my landlord and he wasn't there. While we were out shopping there was a shooting and the shooters fled (no one was killed thank God) but it wasn't more than a few miles from my house and Travis doesn't have a cell phone and I don't have a home phone so I couldn't call him to lock the doors. My anxiety tonight was actually for a valid reason, but I won't go into that as it's personal. But I was already high strung.

So travis was still there and I was trying fretfully to keep myself bottled up and it wasn't working. I have anxiety a lot so I usually try really hard to just keep doing whatever I'm doing but I could tell a panic attack was coming and the longer I sat there biting my lip the worse it was probably going to get. So I did what I always do when I can't even pretend to cope with my anxiety and someone else is with me. I went to the bathroom and sat in the shower. You have to understand, having no control over the way your brain processes things and losing it like this is not a very proud moment. This is something I've struggled with, and travis as a former fiancé and live in lover is the only one who has ever had to really deal with my anxiety issues. But even with him, he's only dealt with me when I'm having a lot of anxiety, not when I'm having an anxiety attack. And in any case he's not helpful either way.

I prefer my anxiety to be behind closed doors. Believe it or not there are actually very few who know I even have this problem, and even fewer who realize how severe. So I hid in the shower, but seeing as I had been home for less than a half hour and this was my third bathroom trip (1st trip to change tampon, second to make three loud thumps, third the anxiety) he came up after a few moments. In those minutes I was hyperventilating, clutching onto the bar in my shower for support, crying, the whole nine yards. My whole face is numb which has never happened to me before. I stopped I think twice but then just started right at it again.

He politely knocks on the door followed by a crude "are you taking a shit in there?" Hard to believe I didn't put a ring on that isn't it? I told him I was fine but he came in. Unfortunately with me not on the toilet there was only one other place I could be and he found me behind the shower curtains. I was able to quickly shut my faucets off and mute myself, but when he asked what I was doing I couldn't answer either or that would blow my cover, oh yeah, and I couldn't look at him either. But we have an almost 6 year history and he caught me.

Bless his heart, but the poor boy assumes everything is about him. He immediately wants to know what he did this time, starts on the "I don't know what you want from me Rachel" hoopla. He tries to be helpful and pull me up, tries to hug me, tells me to "come here" etc but that's not helping. When I'm having anxiety I don't want to be touched. I don't know why, but it sets me off more, I turn almost frantic trying to shrug away from his touch, push him away, ask him to please stop. Of course now it's no longer about me, I've damaged his ego and he's mad at me now. This was a typical issues in our relationship too. He threatens that if I don't get out of the bathroom and come back downstairs he's leaving NOW."

The hyperventilating has made me light headed and my feet feel heavy. I don't want to walk, I just want to sit, I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass out but I dont. I go to my bedroom and sit again before we go down stairs where I promptly begin chopping vegetables through my blubbering. Of course he wants me to "come here" and I tried to explain to him it's not him right now it's me, I just can't be touched and it's personal again (even though by now I've explained to him what I'm panicking about). "I don't know what you want me to do." And I told him nothing. Just sit with me for a minute. Don't touch me, talk to me, or look at me. But I like you being here. But he wants to talk about it. He can't seem to comprehend it when I say "I CANT TALK RIGHT NOW I NEED A MINUTE" which I do. I needed a few minutes which is why I had retreated to the bathroom but he couldn't grant me that.

Like I said, anxiety attacks (for me anyway some people may be different) are a very personal and private matter. Not only is it embarrassing, but also I know when I'm being irrational, over dramatic, or paranoid, it's not like I can shut it off, but I need to walk myself through this. There is only one person who can talk me down for whatever reason, that person is unfortunately not travis. But he's not good for just talking, if he's annoyed or I don't accept his first answer the response is always "well idk what you want me to do/say about it" and he gives up.

Anyway. When I finally calmed down I couldn't even see straight. It looked like everything was shaking or jumping in front of me and I could practically feel my heart beat on my face even though it was still numb. I've dealt with the hyperventilating, the light headness, once I had so much anxiety for a number of days in a row that I got physically ill and couldn't stop vomiting for those days. But the numbness in my face and the tingling in my fingers, the feeling like I couldn't walk, and the world jumping around, none of those has ever happened to me before and I'd be lying if I said it didn't scare me.

While I'm thinking about it I forgot to mention. "Calm down." "Relax." "You're being crazy/over dramatic" don't EVER say these to an anxious person. If we COULD calm down we wouldn't be sitting in front of you with our face in our hands hyperventilating. If we could just relaxxxx we would, we wouldn't hide in showers (again). We already know we are crazy but that doesn't help the feeling, that's like telling someone to stop loving someone else, you can't just STOP. If you want to get slapped by a person who isn't afraid of pain in their hands since they can't even feel their fingers those are the lines to use!


I guess this wasn't really a short post. But this is the worst and longest anxiety attack I've had to date. And even if it lost some details along the way I feel like I needed to vent this out. Please respect the fact that this is a very personal bit of my life, and as I've mentioned few people in my life even know that I have these problems.