Ten things I know about panic attacks...

This is you, trying to navigate the modern world with an ancient monkey brain. You're afraid of lions but there are no lions any more, so you're a bit confused, gawd bless you. 

An attractive young woman ran out of one of my events yesterday, after having what turned out to be a panic attack. She is, as so many panic sufferers are,  a highly intelligent, capable, and likeable person, and we chatted about the panic demons for a bit whilst she calmed down. She's not yet read an awful lot about this stuff, so I got to thinking about what I would like to have read when I first started getting to grips with it. Results below...   

Ten Things I Know About Panic Attacks 

1. Brilliant people have them. Oh yes. Some of the most beautiful, talented, courageous, hilarious, intelligent people who have ever stalked this earth have had panic. You're not weird, I promise. (Well, you may be a bit odd of course, but that's got nowt to do with the panic I'm afraid).

2.  They're not your fault! You've got to stop blaming yourself, and I'll give you three good reasons why...

      a) You're part-man/part-monkey (interestingly, or not, that is also the name of this not very good  Bruce Springsteen song). You're negotiating a modern landscape with an ancient ape-ish brain that is hard-wired to respond to the fight-or-flight mechanism. We are the descendants of some pretty alert and anxious chimps - the ones who heard a rustle in the bushes and thought 'it could be a lion, but then again, what are the chances, maybe it's just a stiff breeze?' all got eaten. We got the neurotic genes - tough break.

       b) Something in your past might have made this more likely. You may have had an unstable childhood, or been the victim of some trauma, or had a hypochondriac Dad. It's no-one else's fault either, but remember that outside forces have moulded you and made you the person you are today.

      c) You may just have a rubbish brain. Some people don't produce enough thyroid hormone (moi, for example), and some people don't retain enough serotonin. That's it. You didn't make it happen did you? Take it up with God when you next bump into him.

You've got to be easy on yourself. It's shit enough going through all this crap without the meta level of self-flagellation on top.

3. They go. And come back. And go again. If there's one thing I've learned I've from my boyfriend, it's how a wiggly line on a graph goes. His wise counsel is that a general upward trend on a graph is rarely straight - there are ups and downs and ups again. Whilst the downs may be lower than yesterday's ups, they're still higher than the downs a year ago - BUT - that's really hard to see from your perspective, seeing as how you're trapped in the graph.  

4. CBT really helps. My free NHS CBT course was hands-down the best thing I ever did for my panic attacks. 

5. You're not going to die. Or go mad. I PROMISE. Your heart races much faster than this when you're running (and that's considered good for you), and your breathing will not stop (your body won't allow that to happen), and will return to normal in a little while. I PROMISE. No-one has ever died of a panic attack, and no-one ever will.

6. Wishing them away makes them worse. Both in the instant they're coming, and just generally. The most suffering I ever experience is when I get furious and rail against them like a trussed up tiger, and my thrashing and rejecting ends up just tightening the knots around me. Some people get wonky noses, some people get IBS, some people get cancer, some people get panic attacks. You might have them for life, or they may go at some point. But you have to accept them for now, or you'll increase your misery exponentially. 

7. They're not all bad. All of this hardship has actually brought me a lot closer to both of my parents, and I've learned (well, am still learning) to be okay with being vulnerable. Which I've been told makes me even more likeable! Keep in mind that you're picking up some pretty good life skills here in the crucible, so you are in no way wasting your time or effort.  

8. They're funny. Learn to see the funny side of anxiety and panic (and there IS a funny side). Learn to laugh at fear rather than cowering from it, and by doing so - puncture its menace and remove its power.

9. You can cope. A large part of anxiety is fear of not being able to cope, to deal, to handle. But you have coped your whole life - all the way up until this very minute. Why would you stop now? You have the strength to cope with this, and anything else life throws your way. 

10. All of the above are really difficult to put into practise. And that's okay. As my exceptionally wise and beautiful friend told me - this is a process, it's not a solution. You may forget half this stuff, and not be able to put the other half into practise, but you're trying, and you're learning stuff all the time. Just accept that you're taking baby steps - this is not a race. 


Hey, new girl - you're doing just fine! Everything's going to be okay. It really is. 

x 

You gotta roll with the punches of outrageous fortune (as I believe Shakespeare once said...)

  

YOU ARE BRAVER THAN JOHN WAYNE!

Yep, he may have been a big old lily-livered-lefty-hater, but I'm afraid (see what I did there) John knows his onions when it comes to cojones...if that's not a mixed metaphor too far

I was having tea (peppermint, natch) with an old work colleague of mine who also has serious GAD issues (which, incidentally, I only found out about because I 'outed' myself to him on a whim, and he shocked me to the core by revealing he TOO suffered horribly with it), and is going through a bit of a bad patch at the moment. As we swapped war stories in the meditation centre cafe (ha, natch again), he shook his head and said my advice was all well and good, but that I was much braver than him, so he wasn't sure he could take it.

And this was enough to pierce through my panicked haze and make me forget my trembling hands on my teacup (still staggering up the Prozac ramp) momentarily, and I proceeded to give him a very stern lecture about bravery - the gist of which I will outline now, but in a much more lucid and Cicero-ish manner than I managed at the time.

No. NO! Listen up, Woody! You think you're a coward because you can't do things other people do without batting an eyelid? Think about it. The very concept or definition of bravery entails fear - it doesn't make any sense at all without it. As some bright spark once said, 'bravery is not the absence of fear, it is the mastery of fear' (or somesuch) or as John Wayne had it - 'bravery is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway'. Let's be clear: there's nothing remotely brave in not being frightened at all.  Courage is peering into the jaws of the beast - whether imaginary or real - and walking forward anyway.

Consider the person who travels in to work on the tube of a Monday morning, blissfully chomping through a pain au chocolat and listening to a comedy podcast. Would you call them brave? Or courageous? Of course not; it doesn't make sense to, because they are not afraid. They may be easygoing, or relaxed, or happy, or peaceful, or any number of things. What they are not, is brave.

Contrast that with the person with panic disorder, who arrives at work at the same time as person A, and says 'hi' to them at the coffee machine. This person set out for work maybe half an hour before person A, and was pacing the house a full three hours before that. This person woke up terrified after a few hours sleep, and was so full of fear and dread they were sick before breakfast. This person cried before leaving the house, because they were so petrified of getting on the tube and of what the day would bring. This person walked to the tube anyway. This person got on the tube, had a panic attack, believed they were going to run out of air and die, and got off again a few stops along. This person took a pill, phoned a friend, cried in the corner, waited for half an hour, and got back on the tube again. And off again, and on again, until they finally made it into work to start their day.

And this person thinks they are a coward. This person berates themselves for being weak, and this person worships person A for being brave. 

This person is not a coward. What this person is, is an eedjit! This person is conquering terror and fear EVERY SINGLE DAY on top of living the life everyone else finds so hard! This person does ten rounds with a slavering hell-beast before breakfast! This person has fought more truly, genuinely courageous and brave battles than person A has had happy, hot dinners! This person needs to wake up, smell the bloody coffee, and realise they are SUPERHUMANLY, OBSCENELY BRAVE, and could by all rights wear a cape and undies on the outside by now! 

This person is you. So suck it up, SuperYou, and stop calling yourself a coward. Or I'll come round there and knock some sense into you. And you don't want that, because I've fought the kind of demons that would make Buffy drop her stake, wet herself, and run home crying to Giles.

'Just got to quickly wrestle these before work, won't be a sec....'

           

Prozac nation (is not my favourite nation)...

'YES! Yes I am!'

 

Greetings from a small, Viv-shaped Prozac nation!

My six months without antidepressants have been fairly hellish, so I finally surrendered and went to see my almost-hot psychiatrist who recommended a trial of Prozac. Cue much grinding of teeth and general nervousness. 'Me? On Prozac? Sounds so 'Girl Interrupted'! Why can't my brain do it itself goddamnit?! Why can't I just RELAXXX??!!' etc etc. Although pills aren't for everyone, there's no doubt that medication has provided a lifeline for millions of people around the world (myself included), and sometimes you've got to come to terms with needing a little help. See this article for a really clear-headed and inspiring take on an often maligned and misjudged thing.

I've been taking them for a week now, and...guess what?! They've made everything much, much worse! You've got to laugh - it is quite funny. Apparently they can do that (i.e. make you feel like you want to jump out of your skin for the first couple of weeks) before they make you better. If they make you better. 

I'm so bloody anxious, I could gnaw off my arm. I've been teetering on panic a number of times a day, and just feel jittery and speedy. I had two days of really bad nausea, which has now improved to simply not fancying eating anything apart from beige food. With cheese on top.

I'm persevering, because apparently I could exit the tunnel into bright daylight any day now. Please hurry up that day!

I have to remember that:

1. This will pass.

2. Sometimes the darkest night is just before the dawn.

3. Whatever happens, I can and will cope.

4. This will pass (again).

It's been a long old time in the tunnel, and I really just want to feel a bit better soon.

Whilst I'm waiting, I am consuming approximate 1kg of Rich Tea biscuits daily, laughing at the brilliant Twenty-Twelve spoof documentary, having loads of hugs, trudging into work in the snow, and crying into my decaf tea.

See? There are always bits of sunshine, even when things are shitty. 

'It'll wash your blues away! Or make you feel so anxious you feel like you can't breathe! Yay!'

The interwebs can cheer us up!

' Gee whiz, now I've got these inspiring blogs to read I can cut down on the barbiturates  and unsavoury menfolk!' 

We interrupt this most fascinating of all fascinating blog streams about gallstones to bring you news of inspirational, anxiety-busting blogs and websites elsewhere in the world.

Firstly: XO Jane. Have I mentioned this one before? Sorry gents, it's definitely a ladies only one, this. Ladies - listen up. I've just discovered it - full of hilarious, sassy (I really hate that word, so why would I use it?), feisty (if anything I hate this even more than sassy, grrrr) and strident (ah, forget it) articles written by clever, funny women.  

Okay, so I've just somehow managed to make it sound really terrible (remind me not to write a review of your book if you ever publish one), so just go there and see. It's not remotely all about mental health, but there are some bits and pieces that are really pertinent to us worry-warts: Anxiety hero Sara Benincasa has written a great article on there about panic attacks, there's this one  and this one about depression, and even one about GALLSTONES, who'd-a-thunk-it?! 

Use the search bar - it's your friend. If you're in the UK it will probably try to steer you to the new UK version, but I personally prefer the US one (which still features a lot of the UK articles).

Nextly: The Big Scary C Word. It's actually a breast cancer blog that popped up on Huffington Post UK, but is such an inspiring and brave account of a young woman coping (well, hell, she more than copes) that it deserves inclusion in the push-up bra (uplifting, see what I did there) section.

 I initially internally shrieked with self-hatred after seeing how phenomenally well she was dealing with something infinitely more terrifying than anything I worry about, but then I realised - she doesn't have an anxiety condition! Or depression! Her boatload of shit is very different to our boatload of shit, but you can certainly draw a hell of a lot of inspiration from this woman's sunny outlook - I certainly have.

Nextly nextly: Panic about Anxiety. Summer Beretsky blogs at Psych Central about her agoraphobia and panic attacks. Loads of great, clear, honest (she doesn't hide behind anonymity, hmmm) articles there about anxiety in all its gnarly forms.

Question: Is an anxiety blogger blogging about other great anxiety blogs a little like a woman telling her boyfriend how gorgeous other women are and then giving him their numbers? Guys, guys - where are you all going...hang on, can I just.....guyyyyyys...? 

V x

Blogs: for when life feels like a metaphorical budgie is crapping on your metaphorical head

Half-full?! There IS no bloody glass!

'And THIS ONE'S CLEAN TOO?! Is there no end to the gifts and blessings God will bestow upon me?!'

ARGH, HELP - I CAN'T DO POSITIVE THINKING!

I realise this statement is ironic in itself. I can sustain the bright, sunshine-y thing for about half an hour, or during the day, but by the time I get home from work, I'm back in the land where everything is awful, where nothing will ever be right again, and where I am a dysfunctional, horrible poison wafting around the house and emptying vitriol over my boyfriend. 

If something is wrong, I just find it really hard to believe that everything isn't 100% terrible and an utter catastrophe. I re-tread this miserable little neural path over and over and over again, and I despair of anything ever changing it (which itself is completely catastrophic and further grist to my specially patented self-pity mill). I get myself tangled into a net of woe and anger and fury about the situation, and about my inability to change it, and about how horrendous the whole mess is, and end up so beyond exhausted I can't even comprehend what exhausted means.

I have spent at least half an hour sobbing every day since about two months ago. I can never believe it when I read those twenty question interviews in the Guardian and they ask the person 'when was the last time you cried?' And they say 'oh, ten years ago when I watched Free Willy' or something. I would be like 'oh, five minutes ago in the taxi on the way to the interview, and before that, ten hours ago in the shower, and before that five hours ago when eating my dinner' etc etc etc ad nauseam. Will I ever get to the point where I can't remember the last time I cried? Can you get repetitive tear duct syndrome (RTDS) or early-onset blindness from too much YSL mascara in the retinas?

I've been googling positive thinking, and all I can find are these blogs with people who've got fibromyalgia and cancer and two amputated limbs and lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and a heart condition and a drug addiction and an abusive childhood - and they're all UNBELIEVABLY F*&KING POSITIVE! Which makes me think I'm a horrible, ungrateful, twisted little self-pitier with a black steam of smoke for a heart and Eeyore for a God.

(You can tell I'm desperate by the following sentence, which actually hurts me to type out) Do any of you have any mantras or sayings or prayers or anything that keep you upbeat and out of the asylum? I'm running through depressive treacle here and could do with your advice.

So far, the only one that has come naturally to me, was when I was curled up in the foetal position in the corner of my open-plan office, being watched by my colleagues, and crying with gallstone pain this Tuesday. It was 'This will soon be over and I'll be watching the Great British Bake-off with my boyfriend this evening, this will soon be over and I'll be watching the Great British Bake-off with my boyfriend this evening'

Which, I think you'll agree, needs some work.

'THE TOAST IS BURNED! My life as I know it is over. I might as well throw myself into the bin with it now and wait for the dustmen of doom to take me to the scrapheap of suffering'

A mean case of the 'shoulds'...

I WANT YOU to do everything differently and to not do that and to do that a bit more and feel grateful that you didn't fight in WWII and that you're not dying of cancer and to pull yourself together and stop being so much like that.

I'm in my twenties, but they're almost over.

I should be having fun.

I shouldn't be sick.

I shouldn't be depressed.

I shouldn't have to take medication.

I should be carefree.

I should be crazy and thoughtless.

 I should be spontaneous and capricious.

 I shouldn't be anxious. 

I should be able to do that easily.

I should be having sex twenty times a week.

I should look like that.

I should be a better girlfriend.

I should be successful by now.

I should make the most of this.

I should think about myself less.

 I should have more friends.

I should be more like her.

I should be almost ready to have kids by now.

I should go to that thing.

I should buy that thing.

 I should change this.

 I should read that.

 I should do that more. 

I should eat more of that.

I should take more of those.

I should stop staying should so much.

I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should.I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should I should.

ENOUGH!!

Am I the only one being pursued by a rabid Shouldasaurus?

'Hi, is that NHS Direct? I keep having recurrent and distressing thoughts that all begin with the words "I SHOULD" and now I've got a touch of self-hating hysteria. Can you send someone with a medical license over to the house straightaway?'

Brain - serotonin = WET CHAOS...

Just like this poor woman, my brain has fallen victim to moving and sentimental images, like fully-clothed sunbathing on LiLos, and Italian wedding dresses. 

My brain and I have had a falling out. There's been a slapped wrist (brains have wrists) and an official warning over negligence of basic duties. It's not being fed serotonin every morning with its cornflakes and has gone all mushy and sentimental and weird.

In the last two days I have cried in the following ways:

• When I flicked over to the X-Factor (eating dinner, urgently needed moving images) and listened to a mildly talented boy whose parents had split up (they couldn't even scrape together any real tragedy for the pre-singing story) sing a probably mediocre song, but in my addled state I just heard music, so was moved. I mean, multiple tears, not just A single, individual tear.

• Watching some terrible documentary about athletes and how-hard-they-trained-for-the-Olympics-and-how-happy-they-were-that-all-their-hard-work-had-paid-off-and-how-it-was-all-worth-it-and-how-they-were-really-pleased-to-represent-the-country-and-how-grateful-they-were-to-their-coaches-who-had-been-through-it-with-them-from-the-very-beginning-and-most-of-all-to-their-families-who-always-believed-in-them cue Coldplay.

• Watching the last 3 minutes (literally) of Masterchef Australia where the winner was crowned. I want to clarify that I had not watched ANY of the series, so this was a record tear release from a standing start.

• When someone's pastry tore on the Great British Bake-off.

• At several slow-motion sporting montages calculatedly created to cause maximum heartstring damage by the BBC

But here's the clincher:

• I CRIED WATCHING AN 80s RE-RUN OF THE CRYSTAL MAZE. When a girl managed to get a crystal. That's all. When she took it back to the team they all cheered and I felt my eyes moisten.

And I said -  'ENOUGH!!!! The Crystal Maze??? Really, has it come to this? You are genuinely moved by a 20 year old re-run on Challenger? What is happening up there in the control room Mr Brain? Are you pulling the wrong levers or something? Are you drunk? Are you asleep at the wheel? Do you need a defibrillator? What do you want from me?!'

How long does it take brains to get back to normal after a number of years being chemically enhanced, I wonder...

Oh no, don't, I can feel them forming. Look at her eager face. Oh God, it's too late. What a moving display of ingenuity and problem-solving. Pass the tissues please.

It's my self-pity party and I'll cry if I want to...

This is actually a photograph of me, taken only yesterday

Hi guys. I'm throwing a self-pity party today and you're all invited (apart from my boyfriend, who has been attending the pre-party for the last few weeks and needs to go have his own one now)

Here are the facts:

1. My vertigo/labyrinthitis symptoms have come back. Having labyrinthitis was the thing that triggered all my panics in the first place, so I'm really freaking out. It's been three weeks now, and it's not going away.

2. I've now completely tapered down off all my anti-depressant (still on Lyrica, but needed to rekindle my libido which was brutally exterminated by the Citalopram soldiers). Forum on the web suggests the vertigo is a symptom of coming off the SSRIs, so maybe it's that. Lots of frantic Googling later, and I still have no idea if it is or not.

3. I'm meant to be going on holiday with my boyfriend to NY, LA then Mexico in two days time (the wedding of one of my best friends in the world), and it looks like I'm too dizzy and sick to go. It took 6 months of 'will I, won't I' , some weird hypnosis, and a handbag full of benzodiazepines to be comfortable enough with even TRYING a long-distance flight again, but when I finally did, I felt brave and was looking forward to it. Now I can't go and I feel utterly bereft.

4. I booked non-refundable flights

5. I had an ultrasound today to see what was causing my chronic indigestion, and it turns out I have gallstones. And I need to get my gallbladder cut out of my body. With a scalpel. And rummaging in my insides. And general anaesthetic. 

There are no words to describe how much this freaks me out. Having lived in Britain for almost ten years now, I said 'oh, really? Well, thanks, thanks so much, yes, wonderful, great, okay then - thanks again' to be polite, and than ran outside and cried and had to sit down outside the hospital so I didn't faint. And then I started worrying poor expectant mothers would freak out at the sight of me thinking I had lost my baby or something, so I had to move myself along. 

6. I have cried every single day for the last 3 weeks. This may be down to coming off my pills, which may mean I need to be on them FOREVER and will become a female eunuch and lose my boyfriend and have to live somewhere as a panicked, atheist nun.

7. I'm scared my stones are going to explode.

8. I'm scared my boyfriend is going to run away with a beautiful, healthy Mexican lady who never panics and doesn't have gall-related-belching.

9. I'm scared and sad about being scared and sad and I'm driving myself and my poor boyfriend CRAZY. I'm trying to find it funny, but sometimes it's just not. Now I'm crying again. I'm like a strange, leaky, worried, burping, dizzy, bilious beast. 

Okay, some of those last ones weren't facts.*

Vx

* This is what CBT teaches you, to be able to distinguish between facts and thoughts. Pah. Go away sanctimonious CBT - I'm having a pity-party, and you're not invited.

'I really loved my gallbladder. It was my favourite innard'