The Traumatic Cycle Of My Panic Attacks
The ups and downs. The intense and less intense pains.
Sometimes, anxiety overwhelms me, leading to panic. Crashes into my soul like an unexpected tsunami wave.
Before I can come for a short breath out of one, I get drowned by the crashing of the next wave. But, of course, they’re not entirely unexpected — there are always signs, a pattern, which I fail to give importance to more often than not. Especially when it’s a never-ending cycle. Sucks, I know.
It always starts with an uneasy feeling, in the pit of the stomach, and then there is a blankness like the calm before the world goes kaboom.
Unfortunately, I have this deadly habit of falling in love with the calm feeling where I suppress any tiny sliver of emotion that attempts to break through — since that’s better than those overwhelming thoughts swirling my brain any day. Because, hey, it’s become second nature, and I could probably get a Nobel for suppressing the deepest and darkest feelings. I know there’s always an underlying reason, but I’m not able to figure out why this time.
This is the phase where I move around like a zombie. My mind is blank. I cannot think. My chest keeps hurting like my best friends anxiety and depression are stomping right in the middle of my chest. It constantly feels uncomfortable, but I get used to even that feeling in a couple of days. Then, I fall prey to my unhealthy food/books/series addictions — anything that will take me off from that sick feeling. My body expands and contracts based on my eating habits, leading me to crash into another set of middle-sized waves. I cannot focus, cannot work, or listen/respond to conversations with friends and family.
But you see, my body has a threshold too.
There’s a limit until which it can deal with the pressure. So it breaks. Gives up. It’s not like a dam breaking for sure. Except, at first, it feels like the puss slowly oozing out of your wounds, only to cut off your whole leg in a fraction of a second. The first part of the entire process lasts for a day, maybe.
I know. I always know that tomorrow might be the day. I can feel it in every pore of my body. After so many cycles of intense and less intense pain, I have now figured out what happens next. I feel helpless, though, and know I can’t stop what’s to come. I have tried, mind you, but the waves never stop. The frequency probably differs, but they never stop crashing, breaking me piece by piece — only to rearrange myself again to get ready for the next.
Read again, rearrange, not fix.
Then the D-day arrives. You think I would be ready this time, but I never am. I hope it won’t be so bad for once. I’m always proved wrong.
Until today, I can never guess what the final trigger is. Yesterday it was a conversation with family. Last month it was a scene in a web series. I still have to figure out that part of the pattern.
Panic joins the best friends anxiety and depression for their weekly party. The reunion, as my brain calls it.
Walls start closing around me. Eyes begin to water. I start wailing from the bottom of my stomach or heaving, not able to breathe, with intense stinging in my head. My back hurts so bad that I don’t know what to do for those moments. Everything hurts. And after what feels like aeons (it usually lasts up to 7 to 10 minutes), I slowly come back to normal with the help of my husband or by myself if nobody’s there at home. Sometimes it leads to vomiting. Sometimes it doesn’t. Again, I can’t figure that out. I sleep like a baby for at least 10 hours on those days because of exhaustion and body pain.
Then life becomes perfect. I can hear birds sing, feel the cool breeze on my face. I genuinely smile and am at my peak productivity. I can deliver up to 2 to 3 articles in one day, follow a routine and truly feel like I’m happy. And nothing wrong is with me.
This lasts for a couple of days, only for the anxious feelings to develop again.
You know which are the worst days in the whole process? The days when I succumb to the uncomfortable feeling from the intense happiness. I fear that the most. Once you surrender to the process, things get easier, but the transition from joy to anxiety seems the most difficult.
I have pinpointed the cause for my anxiety issues at every point in life, but now I have no clue, which is 100 times more frustrating than usual. Everything’s perfect. Great husband, family, I’m pursuing something that I love. I have sorted out multiple vital issues with my family, too. When I left my corporate job to pursue writing a month back, I thought this cycle would implode and disappear on its own…which never happened.
Probably it’s time for me to see a therapist…I don’t know. I had kept it as the last option, but there’s only so much you can postpone something crucial.
Writing this article helped. It felt therapeutic in a weird way. Putting out my most profound darkest process out in the open should scare me, but surprisingly it doesn’t. I have reached a stage where I don’t get the urge to run the other way as fast as possible while sharing emotions.
I have been writing, editing and re-writing the article over the past week — trying to reflect deep and procure exact words for what I feel. If you’re going through something similar to me, I would genuinely suggest writing it down. Pen down the whole process and see what comes up.
I hope it helps you as it did to me.
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