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....'

           

Anxiety hero trading card #6

#6 Samuel Beckett

'You're on earth. There's no cure for that.'

Vital anxiety statistics: Monsieur Beckett regularly suffered from palipations and strange feelings of suffocation, and had nocturnal panic attacks so severe that his elder brother had to sleep in the same bed to calm him.

Career highlights: I can't choose! Molloy perhaps. Watt. Murphy. Goddamn it, just read them all!

Why he's an AWESOME anxiety hero: I cannot uberemphasise this enough. Samuel Beckett is a genius and a maverick and a hero in all senses of the word. He hung out with Joyce. He wrote some of the best literature of the 20th century. He slept with Peggy Guggenheim. He was a courier with the French Resistance and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He risked his life for his Jewish friends, and smuggled his rations in to them when they were interred. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature and gave all the prize money away.

What you can learn from him: Fear, terror and existential anxiety can give rise to exceptional intelligence, humour and creativity. Panic attacks don't stop people from doing truly terrifying, brave, selfless things. Panic attacks don't make people gurning, pissy-panted scaredy-cats. Courage and fear can co-exist (I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating).

Best anxiety quote: Beckett described his attacks as 'sweats & shudders & panics & rages & rigors & heart burstings'. He also said... 'nothing is funnier than unhappiness...it is the most comical thing in the world'. 

Further reading: Everything he wrote. And you can read my final year dissertation too, if you'd like. It's truly FASCINATING and insightful and enthralling and will help you with your anxiety-related insomnia.

I own this poster. Beckett + letterpress = literary nerdgasm.

So, you're having the worst day of your life...?

I just thought I'd put together some emergency self-care steps for those days/nights when you really have been wrestling with the hideous dark panic demons, and you feel so anxious and bewildered you could chuck yourself under a truck. You can't do anything, you can't leave your house, you're having panic after panic, and you don't feel capable of even the tiniest thing. You're terrified, sleepless, and at your wit's end.

These are basic, emergency care steps that will help you back on the road to normality (and most of them were told me by my therapist when I was in crisis, so have official psych sanction).

1. If you have one, take a tranquiliser. Just take one now. Don't overthink it, just do it. This is an extreme and horrendous day - and they are specifically made for occasions like this. They will give you a small window of peace so you can collect yourself a bit, and give you a few hours away from fear, which will break the vicious cycle of fear-panic-more fear-more panic etc etc. You probably haven't slept very well, and these will give you space to do that as well (which you desperately need).

2. Drink a huge glass of water before you do anything else. You've probably been crying (which apparently dehydrates you more than you think), and dehydration makes anxiety (and everything) a lot worse.

3. Have a warm shower, rub yourself down with some nice lavender moisturiser, and get into some fresh, clean, soft cotton clothes (pyjamas etc). These tiny things you would never normally notice can mean so much when you're at rock bottom. Sometimes the pleasure of clean skin and clothes is all you're going to get in a day.

4. If you can't eat, try and drink a Complan (Ensure) or a smoothie. Just get even half of it down. The body produces adrenalin when your blood sugar drops below a certain level, so getting anything down will make you feel so much less jittery.

5. (This one's courtesy of my Dad) Do something small that gives you a sense of control and mastery. It can be absolutely tiny - doing the crossword methodically is what I did when I was beside myself with terror. It's something to do, it's something you know you can do, but it's manageable.

6. If you're on your own, call someone - family or a good friend. If you're with someone, explain what's happening - don't be ashamed - and get yourself a big-ass hug.

7.  Do whatever you need to make you feel good, and don't censor yourself. Watch gentle comedies if you can sit still. Hug your favourite soft toy (and don't feel stupid about it). Read your favourite kids' book. Call your mum. Leave the light on if you're scared and you need to. Don't judge yourself for regressing a bit - you're at rock bottom and you need these things, but you won't always.

8. If you're at this stage, go for a little walk. Round the block is fine, to get a magazine from the newsagents is fine. Don't worry, you'll be travelling to amazing places soon, but for today, a walk round the block is all you can manage, and it's enough for now. If you can't - DON'T WORRY. You're not going to end up housebound - you are just looking after yourself indoors for a couple of days, and that is OKAY.

9. Know that THIS WILL PASS. I know exactly what this feels like, I've been there, but I also know that I'm not there now, and it passed. You have to hold on, you have to be patient, you have to grit your teeth and BEAR IT, just like you would have to bear some sort of physical pain.

10. Check out the anxiety heroes here, and remember how many brilliant, beautiful, brave people have suffered with anxiety and depression, and remember that you are not alone. You're amazing and courageous for dealing with this, and you will come out the other side stronger. YOU CAN DO IT!

Nightmare on anxiety street...

'Yes, I look peaceful, but inside my head there's a hooded munchkin with a huge axe'

So here's the thing. I get nightmares. Loads of them. Really bad ones, like crappy B-movie horrors with slashing and blood and dismembered limbs (and excitingly, one even featured a crossbow and an arrow-pierced eyeball recently). Essentially everyone I love suddenly turns Voldemorty/Freddy Kruguer-ish and homicidal, and bloody death and gory destruction inevitably follow.

Which is hilarious, because I am a bumblingly peaceful, bunny-hugging liberal who cried when the big gingerbread man fell into the river in Shrek 2.

I've even stopped watching anything vaguely threatening or containing even the mildest of peril on TV - so essentially I'm on a diet of Octonauts and other life-affirming/non-death-containing cartoons, and STILL the slasher nightmares and sweaty sheets.

So what the hell is wrong with me? I've come to the conclusion that it's my anxiety (I lay all my troubles at anxiety's dark door). Or it's the pills I take to counter the anxiety. (It could also possibly be eating too much chocolate before bed, but I'm reluctant to accept that. Doesn't seem likely...)

People - is this a common anxiety thing? If so, are there any effective and soothing herbal tinctures you drink before clambering the wooden hill to Bedfordshire? Is there a particular sleeping position that enables fluffy dreams about winning races and hugging kittens?

This doesn't look remotely like my nightmares. This guy has good nightmares.

In which I come out of the Potter closet...

Ok guys. This is it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to come out of the closet. Today is the day I embrace a dark and shameful side of myself that I've been hiding from everyone apart from my boyfriend. 

Deep breath. Here goes...

My name is Viv, and I love the Harry Potter books

Now hang on, before you start protesting - I know you think this isn't a big deal, and that loads of people read them blah blah blah and anyway, it's all totally passe now in any case.

But I'm not loads of people. I'm a snob. I'm a big, fat intellectual snob. I did an English and Philosophy degree, and I worked in a bookstore for years and years, and I only read difficult, impenetrable novels with no punctuation, and no plot, and no ending (I did once have a guy come into the bookshop to try to return a book because he thought it was missing some pages at the end, and I had to break it to him that it just had a really shit and abrupt ending because it was avant-garde).

I have sniffed at the Potter sensation for years. I worked a Potter launch party and staunchly avoided even looking at the first page of the book. I fielded thousands of European students asking for 'arry potterrrrr' every five seconds of the day. I groaningly listened to millions of middle-aged women who said I really should read them. I avoided every single film and scoffed at my friends who went. I mercilessly tormented my boyfriend for having read them, and made him hide his shame (the boxset) in the spare room, on the very bottom shelf, so that my Samuel Becketts and Hans Falladas and Richard Yates' would not be sullied by association, and so that our guests would not think we were seriously mentally challenged or illiterate.

And then one night, one very dark night, I woke up with a huge-ass panic attack, and I couldn't sleep. And I was weak, and tired, and all my books loomed at me with their big themes and domestic rape scenes and I realised I had nothing non-threatening or comforting to read. And then I saw it - on the bottom shelf in the spare bedroom - gleaming at me in all its shiny foiled glory - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

I thought I'd just read a few pages to lull me back to sleep. I'm now on the second to last book, and I'm absolutely, helplessly, haplessly, hopelessly addicted. I'm also ten years late. Daniel Radcliffe is almost a bloody pensioner. Everyone has got over it. The kids who loved them are all grown up and getting into Beckett now. So it's just me, apologising to my boyfriend, admitting I was wrong (that never happens), and making excuses so I can go to bed really early and keep reading. Because I conscientiously avoided it all there have been absolutely no spoilers, so I genuinely don't know what's going to happen next. I'm in a fantasy time-warp.

Guys - they're amazing (I know you know this, but let me say it). They are calming panic attack fodder. They have all sorts of amazing metaphors about fighting demons and darkness and bad things. They are sublime. I am going to have a complete breakdown when I finish them.

But then I can start on the films...

Moral(s) of the story:

1. Sometimes (not often) I'm REALLY, REALLY wrong. About EVERYTHING. Apart from holiday camps
2. You should read them too (if you haven't already, which you probably have).

This post is humbly dedicated to my wonderful boyfriend who is most definitely NOT a big loser for reading children's books. Consider this a (very small) official retraction.

Sleep, sleep, sleep, PANIC!

 

It's 3am, and you're lying prostrate in your lovely bed. Deeply asleep - possibly alongside your long-suffering partner, possibly alongside your long-suffering microwavable-lavender-bellied stuffed monkey. There's a bit of drool on your chin. Probably (if you’re a bit prone to the old anxiety demons like me) having disgustingly, ridiculously horrific nightmares about kneecappings and arrows through the eyeballs.  Chickens are asleep on the roost, and small babies are snuffling gently into their softly-scented cream muslin things. A deep peace has settled gently over the land. And then...

BANG. You're awake, and suddenly transplanted smack in the middle of a panic attack. Your heart's racing, you're sweating like an overworked racehorse, you're going to lose control of your anus annnnny minute now, and it seems that death is basically upon you. You've got the whole works - pins and needles, disorientation, cold hands and feet, elephant on chest, and most of all, a HUGE TERROR LIKE THE SHADOW OF A GIANT SOUL-EATING MONSTER HAS APPEARED AND IT IS GOING TO KILL YOU SLOWLY, LIKE, RIGHT NOW, AND YOU WILL BE, LIKE, COMPLETELY DEADYBONES.

WTF?! How the hell does that happen you bastarding panic bastards? And what have you got to say about that CBT gurus, eh? No negative, catastrophic thinking going on there, just blissful unconsciouness and the occasional kneecapping.

Anyway, who cares about the wheres and whyfores.

You are having the nighttime panic terrors and you need JEEVES. I don't care if you're not English - this is the patented Aunty Viv's Wodehouse-Nighttime-Panic-Terror-Squeaky-Bum-Time-Cure and you're damn well going to take it and feel better. 

Read a few pages, you rotters...

...And before you know it, you will be back in the realm of the peaceful people, where shadows are just shadows, and the worst thing that can happen is that one's valet will go on holiday and leave one unable to pick out the right suit for Ascot.

NB: This cure also works with any sort of children's book. Don't think you're too cool for this - pick up some nice second-hand books you loved as a kid, and keep them by the bed (along with the sedatives, podcast headphones and placebo flower water)