This is Panic 9 - relapsing

I am aware that the word relapse has certain connotations attached to it that are not pleasant. It speaks more of drug or alcohol addicts falling off the wagon rather than the context I mean it in here. I mean relapse as in having another attack after a period of relative stability. I wanted to use this post to have a look at how people deal with having a large attack out of the blue and how to get back on track.

I suppose to an extent I look at myself as a functioning anxiety sufferer. I have moments of high anxiety but they do not interrupt my sleep or my daily life so this past weekend was a real downer for me.

Looking back I’d probably indulged a bit too much on the Saturday evening. It was nice though, Chinese take away which I ate too much of, a couple of bottles of Perroni and watched Charlie Wilson’s War (good film) and repeats of Mock the Week before bed. Nothing new there, pretty average Saturday night for some I’d venture.

I woke up about 2:15am Sunday morning and I was burning up. The room felt like a furnace and it felt like the world was chattering in my head. I managed to get downstairs and into the dining room/kitchen and took a few good long deep breaths. I started having one of my moments where I thought a skin blemish was a sign of me getting septicaemia. I was awake for about an hour where I managed to talk myself off the ledge with a mixture of deep breathing, autogenic relaxation and a cup of chamomile and limeflower tea. I took a glass of water with me and headed back to bed. I am claiming a small victory as I managed to have all that and not wake anyone up.

I woke up feeling drained and a bit antsy still but felt ok after a bowl of Lidl own brand malt crunchies and a cup of tea. Having packed up all my stuff (I was on holiday last week), I hopped in the car. Now with 6 of us in there I was in a seat right at the back over the wheel arch in what in normal circumstances is the boot. Trust me, never a great place to be. I thought my stomach was ok but I felt nauseous very quickly which make me anxious and made me burp a lot. I tried to counter the panic by listening to an audiobook and taking deep breaths of air from the window. I got worse and worse as the journey went on, feeling more and more nauseous until I started properly hyperventilating. For some reason I was trying to fight the attack until I couldn’t get the words out, we stopped the car in a country lay by and I dived out onto the grass with my paper bag. Only when I got out did the pins and needles rush up my arms and face. I was breathing out of the bag with people gathered round me as I sat on the grass.

Now as ever, I am now feeling a lot better. Hyperventilation to end the whole attack lasted about 8 minutes if asked to hazard a guess. I got to my destination and sat down with a decent lunch and a cup of lemon and ginger tea which seemed to help. The annoying thing for me was that having done relatively well and not having had a full blown attack for about 3 months and if I am honest I feel a bit down about it.

Now those of us who suffer from an anxiety condition where attacks are (sadly) the norm, learn how to recover and move on from it. The issue here is how do we deal with the set back when we’ve come a long way? The idea is that we never want to have an attack again so what do we do now we’ve had one and feel like we have to start from square one all over again?

I personally try and have a loose attitude to timing when it comes to attacks. I obviously remember roughly when I have had one but I do not remember the exact date unless something else specific happened. I try not to have a mentality of an accident clock, “x days since last attack” and then resetting it when I have one. I can understand why people do that but personally I find the idea a bit restrictive. You end up in this cycle being obsessed with time and how many days and weeks and months you’ve not had an attack rather than just getting on with things.

The big thing for me is trying to reason out why I may have had an attack. Understanding the issue helps defeat it I feel. Allow a bit of hindsight (a day or so) and then think about the reasons why you had one. For me the attacks yesterday could be attributed to things like the argument I had with someone, the increased levels of alcohol in my system over the last week, the excess of food I ate Saturday night combining with being very over heated in bed. I don’t want to go too far into the ins and outs as to what was the primary cause because 1, there may not be one and 2, it’s possibly too complicated a process to try discussing inside 10,000 words here on TIP.

That said I feel it’s crucial to try and understand what may have caused the attack. Whilst on a superficial level “just because” may seem like an answer, it’s kind of glossing over the answer to me because there is a reason for most things. Now I admit that there’s no known reasons for many things (Why are the worst things for us those that taste the nicest? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Why do people watch Strictly Come Dancing?) but when it comes to human behaviour, there is generally an answer for most things. Now I am not saying that people need to go into pain staking detail and peel back all the emotional scabs for every minor incident but self examination helps me so I generally suggest it to people.

The only real advice I can give is what I have heard from so many people, “don’t beat yourself up!” Attacks happen. They happen for a reason. The best way to counter them is to not agonise about the fact that you had one and balling yourself up to try not to have one again but to work at changing the factors that caused you to have one. It is all merely a stumble, nothing more.