Great news… not. They’re from my dad. The panic attacks! HE’S HAD THEM SINCE HE WAS A TEENAGER. (I had had no idea.)
Dad thinks it’s some kind of congenital brain malfunction that sends out bad signals to the old adrenals. (He doesn’t call them “panic attacks,” of course. He has the same strange judgement against panic disorder being a “mental illness” that I used to have. But his episodes sound the same as mine: double-beats, skipped beats, rapid beats, sweating, adrenaline, the works.)
Today I had a little surge during my morning commute, but it was brief and I was fine until after lunch when all hell broke loose. My heart was racing and I was so terribly uncomfortable… I kept leaving my desk to walk around the block. I couldn’t just ignore the episode because my heart was beating so hard I couldn’t NOT be aware of it. I’d tell you what my BPM was, but I was too chicken to count it. Take my word for it, it was just absurdly hard and fast. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. (It was what your pulse would be like after sprinting as hard as you could for a hundred yards, but I wasn’t doing anything.) My breathing was too fast, trying to get oxygen into my rapidly-circulating blood. I felt amped and freaked out – that’s the adrenaline and/or attendant hormones – and I just wanted it to stop so much that I was stuck in a negative feedback loop. I’d think it was easing off, then my chest would hammer and I’d have a little spike of “oh shit, it’s NOT over,” and that would be enough for my brain to tell my adrenals that I was afraid of something, and then there’d be another hormone flood.
Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
I must have sat down at my desk and gone back outside at least six times. Finally I gave up and paced ’round the block again and then I sat in my car. The attack eased up a little after ten minutes of my mental litany (“You’re not dying. Your heart is strong. This is inappropriate application of fight-or-flight hormones. You’re not even in PAIN for chrissakes. This has never killed you before, and it won’t kill you now. You don’t even really think you’re dying, you’re just reacting to all the symptoms, which while uncomfortable are neither painful nor harmful. If you were gonna drop dead you’d’ve done it by now. You’re hyperventilating, which isn’t helping, by the way.”). I went back in to sit at my desk. Jordan took one look at me and blurted, “Are you okay?” (I said I wasn’t feeling well. He said he was sorry.) By now I’d been fucking around with the stupid thing for 45 minutes. I tried to do a little work but all I could do was fidget and bounce my knee and try to breathe normally… Finally I just grabbed my purse and walked out.
I visited the chiropractor – sometimes it helps quite a bit to get my ribs and neck adjusted – and, feeling like an asshole, I gave up on feeling better. I was amped and exhausted; it’s hard work maintaining that level of intensity and it makes me feel drowsy. I drove home where I waited it out, then I meditated a wee bit, then napped. When I woke up all the symptoms were gone… for about an hour. Now they’re back. Mild, but still there. This has been a shitty week as far as symptoms go.
Having done tons of ‘net research on this crap, I’ve learned that the old school approach is to consider panic syndrome a mental problem and treat it with antidepressants and therapy. The new pardigm is that there’s some underlying physical malfunction that creates the original symptoms, but then the sufferer develops fear of the attacks themselves and that anxiety is what causes more attacks. It becomes a mental issue, but not a mental illness. (Having suffered numerous panic attacks, I’ll tell you that being afraid of them is SO a normal reaction. They SUCK. Believe me. You really do feel like you’re gonna die. A lot of people actually end up in the emergency room the first time they have one because they feel so terribly unnatural and scary.)
Anyway, this guy thinks the offending brain structure in question is the amygdala, part of the lymbic system, which controls panic responses to dangerous stimuli. He says:
Anxiety disorder and panic attacks are not mental illnesses, they are behavioural conditions. They’re caused by a tiny change in the way the brain handles anxiety signals from the sensory organs.
The ‘anxiety switch’, (the Amygdala), is either ‘anxiety ON’ or ‘anxiety OFF’; when the switch is anxiety off it can be activated only by real danger, when it becomes ‘stuck on’ it can produce anxiety disorder symptoms, panic attacks, OCD, PTSD and phobias.
The symptoms of anxiety disorder are so real and so frightening that they can cause us to become scared and wrought with anxiety and panic attacks.
I don’t like the term anxiety disorder. Your increased anxiety isn’t actually a disorder (the word disorder suggests illness, panic attacks and anxiety are not illnesses!). The Amygdala has become ‘re-set’ at a higher ‘resting’ level of anxiety and it is this that causes your condition, whether that be General Anxiety Disorder, Panic Attacks, OCD, PTSD or phobias. This ‘re-set’ happens through a process called Operant Conditioning – it’s the same process that happens when you learn new activities – like driving or playing an instrument – learning through repitition.
This is why the slightest anxious thought or sensation sends you into anxiety and/or panic attacks mode. It’s why you don’t cope with normal situations like you used to, it’s why you have constant anxiety disorder symptoms or panic attacks (anxiety attacks), strange thoughts, pains, sensations, phobias and emotions…
The idea that you can train yourself to a better operational level is a fantastically hopeful one, but the question remains: what the hell caused the problem in the first place?
I wasn’t stressed out or unhappy when I developed these symptoms. Now that I have them, I’m very unhappy about them, yes – but what was the beginning? The beginning, I’m convinced, was a plain old physical malfunction. Can behavioral therapy fix THAT for me?
*wanders off, muttering obscenities*
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