This is panic

This is the original post from 29th May 2009

Panic and anxiety is part of who I am. I do not intend it to be this way forever but I want to explain what this is.

It is the part of me that when you look at me is afraid. I suffer from a feeling that I will drop down dead of a heart attack or a stroke or that I will catch meningitis or I will stop being able to breath. I have a nervous habit of cracking the bones in my neck, arms and legs. I also suffer from a strange sensation that when my hair follicles open on my arms, it hurts. I mean it really hurts like I'm being stabbed with a needle in the area. This is not nice on my arms but especially not on my chest either.

That's just the initial wranglings. When that feeling sets in I am not sure what way is up or down.

When I have a panic attack, I will literally be scared that at that moment, my life will end. I will get shooting pins and needles up each arm and into my face and chest. I will proceed to hyperventilate which generally requires me breathing in and out of a paper bag until after about 10 mins or so, my breathing returns to normal. I am then very drained both physically and emotionally but I return otherwise to normal.

I do not know why this happens. I wish I did and could rationalise it all away so that I never feel like this ever again. I know when it started...I was 17 when I had my first attack. It was so bad that my thumbs locked into my palms and I ended up in A&E on a bed with a paper bag and not knowing what the hell had happened to me. That was about 8 years ago and whilst their frequency waxes and wains, they have not left me yet.

I was on medication for 8 months for it as well. The tablets helped in the long run but I felt a lot more subdued on them, like there was part of me that made me Anthony Russell being inhabited. When I started on them, I was in such a bad place that I was afraid of the medication that was meant to help me because of the side effects. Imagine the most tired you have ever been and multiply it by 10 then factor in the tablets cause insomnia. That said, Star Trek the next generation at 3am on BBC2 kept me sane and stopped me going totally insane.

That said I have learned a lot about myself through it. It taught me that being a man is not about machismo filled rubbish but facing the fear that I have and trying to move forwards. I cannot look back and wonder why me about it because there is no reason to pinpoit why it happens to me or anyone else or why I had to take drugs for it for so many months. It serves no purpose and provides no answers.

I'm not doing this for a sympathy thing but I wanted to explain it. It just occurred to me that I never really had. This is who I am for now and what I am working to change that.