I just had an hour-long panic attack, right here in my own office. IN THE MORNING. (I usually enjoy adrenaline hell in the evening, in the privacy of my own home.)
I had to leave my desk and walk around the block. I poured out almost a whole latte and filled my water bottle instead. While I interacted normally with everyone who came to my desk, I was experiencing a hidden fear that THIS one would indeed become a REAL heart attack.
My nervous system has totally gone to shit. Fuck this noise.
Panic Attacks and Anxiety is a good article (even though a paragraph about actual fibrillation made me have to get up and walk around the office for a bit because I was overcome with a wave of intense fear) and the doctor’s understanding of how people can resist thinking they’re “just” having panic attacks is heartening:
“People often resist or deny a diagnosis of panic attack. Some people cling to their physical symptoms, convinced that they are pointing to a heart problem or something similar. They have trouble believing that it’s actually the nervous system that is causing the symptoms. They may feel that there’s a stigma attached to the diagnosis of panic attack, as there often is to mental illness — that it’s somehow humiliating or implies cowardice, moral failure, or weakness of character. They’re afraid I’m telling them that it’s all in their mind.”
(That’s because there’s lotsa literature out there that says, “It’s all in your mind.” !!! In fact, there’s an amazing amount of shit on the web that says it’s from bad parenting or the stress of living in the city. Total bullshit. It may start as a mental disease for some, but for most I think it’s a learned fear reaction to a suddenly and very fucked-up nervous system.)
“But it’s not really like mental illness or delusion — it’s as if your whole body were being jolted with electricity, with nervous impulses gone out of control in a kind of short circuit or feedback loop. It’s like an involuntary discharge of the autonomic nervous system — a strictly physiological response that is not subject to your mental control or caused by your thinking process. In fact, people sometimes say that they were feeling very calm before an attack, or not thinking about anything particularly stressful or emotionally jarring. Sometimes they protest that it can’t be “nerves” because they weren’t really under stress that day. But it doesn’t necessarily take a stressful incident to set off a panic attack. Rather, stress to the nervous system builds up gradually, over a long time, and finally reaches a limit and spills over in a sudden overload.
“A similar thing can happen in some people with heart problems — a nerve network in the heart muscle can suddenly start to generate amplified signals, in a kind of neurological feedback loop. This can go haywire and cause fibrillation: the heart stops beating rhythmically and just vibrates.
“Panic attack is a true physiological syndrome, which people should accept and take constructive steps to correct.”
Constructive steps, sadly, include becoming a total roo: cut the toxins, period. Caffeine, sugar, alcohol. NICOTINE. Junk food.
I know you all know this already, but I don’t want to know it. I come from a loooong line of drinkin’, smokin’ rednecks, and I don’t want to be a delicate goddamned flower. I don’t want to be afraid that going to the bar on New Year’s Eve will give me complete neuro-chemical meltdown, I don’t want to eat at Noodle House (the food SUCKS!), or wear Arctic-rated coats in April because I’m weak and timid and so c-c-cold, I don’t want to pop suppliments every day because there’s something wrong with me, and I don’t want to be one of those people that people like me look at and think, ‘she should have a damned drink and relax already!’
Continue reading So I've Officially Diagnosed Myself →
If you haven’t eaten peanuts in a very long time, you might have forgotten how weird they are. Some peanuts are perfect examples of peanuthood, and they look just like an infinity sign and they have two perfect nuts inside.