The Diagnosis Headache: Part 2

The Roots: Trauma or something else?

There is a common understanding among therapist, psychoanalysts, social workers, and the like, that offering repetitive, nay, incessant apologies, is often a symptom of the trauma that one has endured. However, at the beginning of my relationship with my loving partner, I had never accounted for this rationale. For every little mishap, every perceived mistake that I made, I would profusely apologize; sometimes, I would even shut-off and leave a conversation fully, because I was overwhelmed with emotions that I couldn’t grasp; this was a behavior that my boyfriend could not understand, and in turn, watching my distress made him distressed. He had never given any indication that my actions, words, motivations, had created even the slightest amount of distaste for me. Likewise, I rationally recognized that he never gave a single indication that should have led to this amount of embarrassment and self-doubt. So, why did I feel this way? Where did these explosive bouts of raw insecurity stem from?

I would like to assume that the initial therapy sessions I had with my counselor were typical: we grazed over the main struggles that I wanted to discuss, we dove into a brief overview of the mental-health regarding my family history, and so on. And those subjects I fell into with relative ease. On the whole, I am fairly open about discussing my own past history, the shadows therein, as well as recognizing and attempting to dissect the generational abuse and trauma that has plagued my maternal side of the family (my father’s side is not nearly as “in your face”). For a multitude of sessions, my brilliant therapist would sit me down, and we would converse some rather disappointing issues, that would (more often than not) leave me in tears.

Digging down deep

I had no issues in crying before her or baring my broken heart to her; vulnerability is essential for connection and healing. There wasn’t much that I was unwilling to discuss; there was an obvious blueprint regarding life events that led me to where I was, particular scenarios that I will be forever doomed to remember. However, I will say, that the most earth-shattering revelations I had during these initial meetings, flourished from recognizing how many of my family members hurt, how long they suffered, and not understanding why nobody discussed these issues. The common behavior surrounding trauma and abuse was to sweep it under the rug; if we don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. The injustice, disrespect, and invalidation that came from this mindset was unfathomable to me. It’s no wonder why I felt so unheard, unseen, and tossed aside through my youth; this mentality was commonplace. Upon this realization, I remember leaving my therapy sessions, meditating on how truly shameful these circumstances were.

As I continued on with this therapist, we dove into discussing a multitude of subjects regarding my personal life. Sometimes our sessions felt more like having coffee with a good friend, than a client conversing with a mental-health professional. For that, I can say I felt lucky; my therapist’s all-around forthcoming, non-judgmental yet “take no shit” personality, made it all too easy to slip right into painful discussions without fear of discrimination. That said, the topic of our sessions shifted from family history and recognizable traumatic events, to my mood and how I was always seemingly “teetering on the edge”.

Building a Blueprint

The most logical explanation I could conjure up for my erratic mood was the trauma that happened to me when I was nineteen years old; that event will forever stain the years that followed, up until I was about twenty-five. It was so earth-shattering in fact, that I can recall the moments leading up to the life-altering news I had received about my mother’s affair; I will never forget it as the second out of two moments I had ever seen my dad cry. Understandably, the distress, the absolute fear of change, and my unwillingness to form deep connections with potential romantic partners (even friends) followed suit. It led to uncontrollable fits of panic, bawling, and intrusive thoughts…even suicidal ideation; in short, it was a…period of my life that wore the darkest shroud of grief and anguish, you could ever imagine. It led to controlling behavior and being overwhelmingly hesitant about relying on anyone but myself; it was behavior I was ashamed of, but could not rein in. It felt, at times, that I could not trust my own mind.

Obviously, I have trudged through that horrifically murky and obsolete area of my history, basking in the glow of survival; I was undoubtedly forged by the experience. That said, I couldn’t understand how it had tainted such small circumstances: when I would lose a game, couldn’t understand controls off the first attempt, when I would forget to bring something that I wanted to surprise my boyfriend with, when I would simply end a sentence incorrectly… there wasn’t an understandable correlation between such a massive trauma in my life and such minuscule mishaps. And though I could understand the fear of returning back to normalcy after being house-bound under quarantine, I couldn’t connect the dots between my parent’s divorce and fighting a panic attack off in an over-crowded restaurant; it didn’t make sense.

But, IS it just Anxiety?

This therapist, as bright as she was, had figured that my “on-edge” mood, my sporadic verbal onslaughts, the frequent fretting I felt on the daily, as well as my tendency to shift into an anxiety attack in overstimulating, uncontrollable situations, was “GAD” or Generalized Anxiety Disorder. From this diagnosis, she had offered me a variety of tricks to try and calm myself when I felt myself falling: journaling, walking, leaving an upsetting space, muscle exercises, and pelvic-flooring exercises. Furthermore, she wanted me to seek medical treatment (being prescribed medication) to help ease my struggle on this metaphorical tight-rope. I did as she asked, was prescribed an…interesting type of medication to assist my intense anxiety (when I felt it coming on), and I was also prescribed an exercise regiment, to physically ease myself.

There has only been one instance where I have used this medication and it came after walking for commencement at my university. The aftermath of the event left me reeling, exhausted, but unable to calm myself enough to sleep; I was still worked up from my experience, even though the occasion was meant to be joyous. I was aware upon finally finishing my degree, which took a decade to complete, I didn’t know a single person I was walking with. Likewise, though the campus wasn’t astoundingly massive, there were more people running around in caps and gowns, than I felt comfortable falling in the middle of. But, why did that make me so uncomfortable?

Finding the rationale

I can understand why getting on an airplane makes me uneasy, or why taking medications I have never tried before makes me nervous; I could rationalize the fear in my head, even if it was over the top, because it was based in some form of realistic, potential consequences. But what about in these moments, where I was walking for graduation, or sitting down in an overcrowded restaurant in California? My mind didn’t process the input the same way at all; there wasn’t a logical (yet irrational) blueprint that I could follow. It wasn’t until I received my ADHD diagnosis that I could make sense of these experiences, which blew my GAD diagnosis out the window.

The Circumstances of my Anxiety Attacks

There are seemingly two different explanations for when my anxiety attacks occur, and they both are circumstantial: one comes from a terribly disruptive, life-altering event, like my mother’s affair and my parent’s divorce, while the other comes from my nervous-system being overwhelmed. In short, one comes from immense emotional over-stimulation, the other comes from physical over-stimulation. I felt no fear while graduating from university, as there were no dark, looming thoughts hanging over my head, as I set foot on campus. What did throw me off guard was the sight of a sea of red caps and gowns, the soundtracks pounding through the speakers, the hundreds of people talking, laughing, crying. All of those sensations put me into a state of overload, of overwhelm, and my body started to panic. I felt all of the similar sensations that I would from any other attack I have had in the past: upset gut, shallow breathing, trembling in my knees, elevated heart-rate, wanting to vomit, feeling like I needed to run away…except the rationale was completely different. My nervous system could not process what my senses were experiencing at the same rate a neurotypical person could.

This same unfolding of events is exactly what happened to me when I stepped inside of that overcrowded dim-sum restaurant in San Francisco; you literally had to pull a ticket to be called inside, because it was filled to capacity with hungry souls. While I walked in with my boyfriend and his peers, I was assaulted with the onslaught of thunderous, unintelligible conversations, the symphony of cutlery clinking against each other, and the smell of unusual food that I had never experienced before. As we sat down, I was a little fearful of the language barrier and ordering food that I did not actually want, but more than anything, my brain felt bombarded with the countless people dining around me. Immediately, my head began to reel, my breathing got shallow, palms got sweaty, and my knee was bouncing so fiercely, that our table began to move. My partner looked at me, and he saw the tears pooling in my panicked eyes, and asked if I was alright. I responded “No” and he quickly understood my state; as briskly as I had sat down to order my food, I had ran back out the door, leaving my purse behind me.

Overwhelmed Nervous-System

With this realization about what can trigger my anxiety attacks, I formulated an understanding regarding my mood at equilibrium: if these anxiety attacks are in consequence to immense physical overstimulation and my inability to process the sensations at an “adequate” pace, then my normal upset must stem from how I process my surroundings on a typical, daily basis. That to say, I am always processing my environment differently than neurotypical people; my nervous-system is still struggling, and that heightened state alters my mood. This neurological processing, along with the Emotional Dysregulation that comes with having ADHD, creates a recipe for explosive, (seemingly) unpredictable, emotional outbursts. This map of understanding explains a majority of why I would break down in tears if I ever got derailed; I would expend whatever energy and focus I had, in this heightened state, to start or finish a task, which was already an issue. If anything, whether purposeful or otherwise, seemingly disrespected this effort, I would explode.

But what about RSD or Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria?

Well, that’s for another time.