Hippie Den Mother

panic disorder sucks. if there are any of you out there that have a had a panic attack you feel my pain and for those of you that haven’t i hope to shiva you never will. on sept 30 2006 i had a panic attack and not a little one mind you. i had the full on, “im going to die, im having a heart attack at 23 convulsing on my bathroom floor” it didn’t stop for two weeks. it wasn’t that bad all the time but i lived in my bed in a constant state of panic and fear. what i was afraid of? i have no idea. i lost weight, my hair was falling out, i couldn’t eat and i was ecstatic if i could get 30 minutes of sleep a day. on october 2 i called my husband at work and told him, “i need help i think im going insane.”

my husband came home right away and we decided the best course of action was to take yahoo! up on their great mental health plan and call and get me to a therapist asap. i knew that something was going on in my head and knew i would need therapy at one point, i just didn’t think this soon. so we called and i spoke to a beautiful woman named pam. i will always remember her. she was the first person besides my husband to tell me i wasn’t crazy. i was hyperventilating so bad and crying and she stayed on the phone with me for an hour to let me tell her my feelings and find someone that could help me. this particular company has clinicians on the phone that you can talk to 24 hours a day and they also help you find long term health. pam sat and listened to all my fears-im going crazy, i think im having a psychotic break, i think im schizophrenic, i can’t eat, sleep and something that really bothered me, my hair was falling out. pam told me to get some ensure and drink that so i would still get vitamins and not to worry if i didn’t sleep just try to lay down and relax but most importantly she told me she was going to find someone straight away that would help me night i cold called 10 therapists blubbering and frantic leaving messages that said something along the order of, “hi. im going crazy and i don’t know whats wrong with me and i keep having panic attacks and im scared please help me.” at 9pm that night one of them called me back, marlene was her name. i liked her voice immediately. it was calm, confident and understanding. i explained to her what was happening crying the whole time. she told me that she would see me the next day and asked if i could wait that long. i told her that i thought i could. before we hung up with a plan to sort this whole mess out the next day (ha! if it was only that easy) she said, “this will pass. we will do whatever we need to do to help you. in 4-6 weeks you’ll feel a lot better.” i was temporarily relieved, this was just a hiccup and seeing marlene for 28 days it would be all better. that could not have been farther from the truth.

i looked on my appointment the next day with all the excitement of a virgin about to lose her virginity to her “soul-mate”, a child hoping to get the puppy on christmas morning or in my case, a person that was crazy that was on her way to get cured. when i showed up i just sat and cried and tore up my tissues into little squares of white. somehow the tearing made me feel better, if i was just doing something that was better than sitting with this feeling. marlene asked me if i would consider medication when she could diagnose the problem. i said absolutely not! being the hippie that i am, not even wanting to take advil for a headache i wasn’t about to get all tranqued out and numb. i would rather feel this horrible feeling than numb and ignore which i had seen too many times in my life. after three to five sessions and some survey/interview questions marlene diagnosed me with panic disorder and some slight ocd. but as 28 days came and went i was not feeling better. at this point i was becoming completely agoraphobic not leaving my house for anything and my marriage was starting to suffer. the first year of marriage is always a huge adjustment and just fucking hard without the added weight of my crushing sudden dependence on my husband and the shell of a wife and person that this disorder had left behind for him to face every day.

so for the next couple of months my panic attacks weren’t happening all the time but i was in a constant state of fear and panic with a huge grand mal panic attack only about once a day. its funny about the mind and body after be subjected to something so often it kind of gets used to it. it does but i didn’t. i was now not just scared, but mad. FUCKING PISSED OFF! what the hell did i ever to to deserve this? why the hell was this happening? i mean i had some shitty stuff in my child hood but never as something as terrible or soul crushing as rape or physical abuse. so what did i do to deserve this? why did the world hate me? other 23 year olds were out partying and shopping and fucking and laughing and here i was stuck in my bed having to drop out of my 4.0 semester while applying to ucla because i was losing it. and not just school, i was losing my husband.

the most spectacular thing to ever happen to me i was destroying. now don’t get me wrong. it wasn’t like i started having panic attacks and my husband said, “peace bitch you crazy, i didn’t sign up for this. p.s. im taking the cats.” he was and still is the most supportive person with my disorder. in fact then and still sometimes i cry when i think about how much he loves, respects, cares and does for me regarding this disorder. i mean who do you think was holding me while i was convulsing on the floor? who do you think was grabbing the globs of hair out my hand and telling me i was still beautiful? who was there to just listen while i cried for hours for NO REASON? who did everything including putting me in the shower and feeding me because i couldn’t do it myself? all and more was done by my husband. i was bitter. this is not what your supposed to be fucking doing your first year of marriage! we were supposed to be having stupid fights over what color to paint the kitchen, and arguing over the toilet seat being left up and then making up and love all the time. we were supposed to go on little trips and stay in bed all weekend just talking about everything. not this. i pleaded with my husband to go to therapy too because i started thinking how i would feel watching this happen to him and doing everything how i would react. and i would be bitter, i would resent him and i would start hating him. i saw this start happening to my husband. i saw when the shift went from privledge to chore, abliging to reluctant, love to hate. he kept telling me nothing was wrong and that he didn’t hate me he loved me and he would go to the ends of the earth for me. i might have been out of if and temporarily unstable but i wasn’t an idiot. this was my partner lying right to my face but worst than that, lying to himself. i came to find out later that he felt i was take advantage of him. he knew i couldn’t control it but he couldn’t help feeling that maybe i could. he was so resentful that he had signed up for a supposed life full of happiness and sex and instead was saddled with this charge who sat in bed crying all day. thats the thing about panic disorder it doesn’t just effect you. if effects everything around you- your job, school, relationships, your body, your mind, your pets, everything. it bleeds into every part of you like currant into cider, heavy and inescapable. well needless to say the shit hit the fan with my husband and we got into a huge fight one night that ended with him on the phone gettting a therapist and me going in the next day to marlene and saying the words i should have said in the beginning, “give me the drugs !”

now i am not my any means advocating anti-depressants as an answer or a god send saviour. quite the opposite. i think using ssri’s need to be thought out and researched and not to be decided about hastily. this was january, i was agoraphobic, my husband as he put it, “was either calling a divorce lawyer or a shrink”, i couldn’t leave my room, use my phone, sleep or eat. i had tried to get by with just therapy and it wasn’t working. it wasn’t working because i wasn’t getting down to the real demons behind that door with the boxes piled in front of it with the 20 padlocks in the attic of my mind. every therapy session was just trying to manage the symptoms and not the cause. i decided to take zoloft and again wait for the immediate healing to begin! could you blame me my friends? by january i had visited 4 doctors and had my blood drawn at least 12 times. the only way i was able to get out of the house to these appointments was the thought that maybe it would be a thyroid problem, or maybe an irregular heart beat, or adrenal fatigue syndrome, or my birth control pills or my eating habits or my marijuana habit (which stopped the night of the first attack, along with caffeine and cigarettes) dear god i wanted it to be anything else than panic disorder and that same desire was the one saying, “great we get on the zoloft and its bye bye panic disorder and hello moving to the living room”

let me tell you something my friends, therapy is fucking hard. it’s tiring, difficult, scary and frustrating. even on the medication there were times i would go to marlene’s office and my body would start having reactions like a panic attack. i was going to keep it from her and then i remebered that i was there to fix myself and tell the truth and that i could say anything to her. so i told her one day, “coming here marlene makes me panicky.” she replied, “therapy is hard and so is facing the things we have to in here. but this feeling also means we’re probably doing something right.” it was like an exorcism every time i went in that office. most days i would come home from my 3 o’clock appointment and pass out for 3 hours, it was mentally, emotionally and physically draining. the zoloft did wonders though as far as my symptoms. within 6 weeks they were all but gone. i was left with something new though. i had the battered wife syndrome. i had been beaten so long and so throughly by this disorder that when i stopped feeling it all day every day i felt like something was wrong. i was worried that i would wake up from this dream and it would all hit me like those 0 down interest loans you get. you know the kind, “NO INTEREST FOR 36 MONTHS!!!!!” the thing is if you don’t pay it off in 36 months they tack on all the interest you WOULD have been paying. i got scared. it was so strange, since that first day i had been praying for it to stop but when it did i didn’t feel the adulation i had anticipated. i started doubting my therapy and asked both marlene and my psychiatrist if it was me or the drugs. i didn’t want to take them so i wanted to believe it was me but the change was such a marked one that they had to be doing their job. marlene reassuringly and nicely told me it was probably a combination of both and that i had made amazing strides. my psychiatrist gave the shit to me straight, “if people stop taking their medication within a year of being prescribed they have over a 90% chance of reoccurance of symptoms.” ok, so it was my little blue saviours doing their majick. but then something started to change.

out of my fog of panic disorder like stepping out of the house the night after hard partying and e i was able to notice the changes. i was growing, changing, maturing, conquering. i looked at things differently, i felt comfortable with myself. i stood up to people, did things i wanted to do, had less rage. a lot of what panic disorder is about is cognitive distortions. there are 10 and i did every single one of them. as per wikipedia they are:

1. All-or-nothing thinking - Thinking of things in absolute terms, like “always”, “every” or “never”. Few aspects of human behavior are so absolute.
2. Overgeneralization - Taking isolated cases and using them to make wide generalizations.
3. Mental filter - Focusing exclusively on certain, usually negative or upsetting, aspects of something while ignoring the rest, like a tiny imperfection in a piece of clothing.
4. Disqualifying the positive - Continually “shooting down” positive experiences for arbitrary, ad hoc reasons.
5. Jumping to conclusions - Assuming something negative where there is no evidence to support it. Two specific subtypes are also identified:
   • Mind reading - Assuming the intentions of others.
   • Fortune telling - Predicting how things will turn before they happen.
6. Magnification and Minimization - Inappropriately understating or exaggerating the way people or situations truly are. Often the positive characteristics of other people are exaggerated and negative characteristics are understated. There is one subtype of magnification:
   • Catastrophizing - Focusing on the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or thinking that a situation is unbearable or impossible when it is really just uncomfortable.
7. Emotional reasoning - Making decisions and arguments based on how you feel rather than objective reality.
8. Making should statements - Concentrating on what you think “should” or ought to be rather than the actual situation you are faced with, or having rigid rules which you think should always apply no matter what the circumstances are.
9. Labeling - Explaining behaviors or events, merely by naming them; related to overgeneralization. Rather than describing the specific behavior, you assign a label to someone or yourself that puts them in absolute and unalterable terms.
10. Personalization - Assuming you or others directly caused things when that may not have been the case. When applied to others this is an example of blame.

i was raised in an environment as a child that was always very black or white. you were either perfect or a failure, you either got an A or you didn’t, you did what was right or you were wrong. i was also taught all the other 9 distortions at a young age and like a brainwashed cult follower i worshiped at the alter of the distortions without realizing the damage or the fabrication. its so hard to unlearn something you didn’t even know you did. it wasn’t until i got to college and started hanging out with my friends that i realized my thinking about situations was a bit off. my friend kate is always my good measure of this. i would say things sometimes and she would say, “what the fuck are you talking about?” not in a mean way but in an actual curious manner. she had no idea how or why i thought some of the things i did and i couldn’t understand why she didn’t. it’s hard having panic disorder and living by cognitive distortions. it’s not something like cerebral palsy, blindness or lack of a limb. in those cases people understand, as much as they can, and say, “well they can’t help it…” that wasn’t the case for me. i can’t tell you how many times i was told by family members and perfect strangers, “just pick yourself up by the bootstraps, fake it til you make it!” i was told that i needed a job, that i was just bored, maybe if i lost some weight and exercised, and to just plain knock it the fuck off. that’s why im writing about this. for those of you that suffer from something like this or other little known disorders i am here to tell you, i understand. I REALLY DO! i think those people in my life weren’t cruel or malicious even though i wanted that to be it, they just didn’t understand because disorders like this are often swept under the rug. you know i was told by my therapist 40, 50 years ago the doctor would have given me valium and told me to go home and have a cocktail. and this disorder is also so shameful and embarrassing. you don’t want people to know because it’s scary and you feel insane and hollow and alone. well my friends you are not alone. i am here. there are those of us that have been through this and like me, still going through this. i will battle panic disorder the rest of my life. it’s a constant struggle to live in the present and not fortune tell. it’s hard not to label myself a loser because at this point in my life im not college educated. it’s hard not to think when one bad thing goes wrong that my whole day is ruined. but there is help out there, there are people that are going through the same thing. for me i also did and do a lot of relaxation techniques and meditation. i even have a safe place that only i know about in my mind that i can go to any time i’d like. and now whether i like it or not if i decide to do something i don’t want to do but am afraid of what people will say or think i start getting panicky.

when i was first going through this i came across a personal account of panic disorder (which i can’t find-arggg!) that gave me hope and made me realize that i was not alone. and so i write this post for those that have this disorder or for the friends or family members of someone that does. help that person, don’t brush it away and get some help. its out there, you just have to ask.