When Panic Attacks!
I woke slowly and with increasing dread. Barely conscious, I realized that I had woken into the beginning stages of a panic attack. Racing heartbeat, tight muscles, shortness of breath, and the sensation of imminent doom.
It’s a lovely way to wake up (I’m certain you can taste the sarcasm).
The problem is not that I just realized I was having a panic attack. It was that my body has been experiencing the symptoms for several minutes, if not most of an hour, before I roused from my slumber. Imagine you fell asleep, and instead of sleepwalking your unconscious mind decided to run a 5k then tuck your body back into bed again before your conscious mind woke. You’d be a little cranky, sore, and confused.
I now have to deal with a body on a runaway trajectory to a full-blown panic attack that will debilitate me for a minimum of half a day, and I’m already behind the ball because I wasn’t awake for the start. I couldn’t do my usual breathing exercises because I was hyperventilating. I couldn’t move major muscle groups because they were tighter than steel cabling. Fortunately, this wasn’t my first rodeo, and I’ve learned how to ride my mind when it starts bucking.
First, mentally curse. If my body is convinced I’m about to die I have a better time when I rage against the oncoming darkness. Also, cursing is a nice distraction and it helps to de-personalize my experiences. As a younger man, I felt experiencing a panic attack was a condemnation of me as a person. Cursing at my rebelling body turns it into an opponent, and opponents can be fought.
Second, find muscle groups I can move. My eyelids, fingers, and toes were available so I moved them as much as possible. Fluttering my eyelids, straightening my fingers, and curling my toes. After a few minutes I could twist my head, flex my forearms, and bend my knees. Panic attacks on the body feel all-encompassing, but there are almost always isolated areas that remain under conscious control. I can use Paired Muscle Relaxation on those areas and wait for the release of tension to move closer to my core.
Third, I ignored ALL my obligations for the day. This feels counter-intuitive, but I’ve found it's essential for getting me out of bed. In this fear state the idea of even driving to work is terrifying. Hell, the floor to my shower might as a well be lava, and my mind is trying its best to assault my sense of appropriate fear by convincing me that everything but my bed will kill me. So, I ignore everything I’m supposed to do and reduce my world to one, minuscule task. That task is usually - throw the covers off my body. Then - feet to the floor. Followed by - stand up. Each of these are insignificant, but there is no way I’m crawling to my shower, so getting my feet on the floor really is the most important part of the process. If I can get that process rolling, then I can stack small wins.
Fourth, I asked for cheerleaders. I’ve grown up in this regard. In my twenties I hid my perceived weaknesses. Now, I’m inclined to shine a spotlight on social media to the people I know care about me. This is easy because I only have to type out a handful of sentences as opposed to ten or fifteen texts to different people. Then my phone blows up with positive affirmations and reminders that people love me. This lets me engage the more logical part of my mind even while my lizard brain is trying to convince me that the world is on fire. I can focus more easily on the fact that people love me and read their encouraging words to balance my mental scales.
Fifth, listening to something hilarious. By the time I had gotten into my car my body was reasonably under control, but my mind was forecasting all sorts of terrible things that could happen to me that day. This is the second half of panic attacks - your mind is primed to fear and it starts guessing what else you should fear for the rest of your day.
My strategy is to override that chaotic path of thinking with a comedy routine that has structure. I know I’m going to laugh, this is good for the soul. Additionally, my mind has to spend energy to follow the comedian’s line of thought. Basically, I’m replacing my thoughts with someone else’s. I hadn’t listened to Ron White in a while and I knew his dry comedy was exactly what I needed. I spent my forty-five minute commute laughing and snorting my way through some of his best bits.
Sixth, I labored in the sun.
This is why I changed careers. For most of my professional life I’d go right from a panic attack to a computer. Now, I’m good with computers, spreadsheets, email, the Adobe Creative Suite. It’s not like I was trying to do work that I could not perform, but my work was almost exclusively a thought-exercise. Going back to my 5k analogy, how would you feel if you ran a 5k unconsciously, woke up, and realized you now had to run an ultramarathon in order to get paid so you could buy food? That is what I was doing in the realm of the mind. By the time I sat down to create a course or plan a clinic my mind had already ran the Appalachian Trail. As a groundman for a utility contractor, I spent all of yesterday moving my body, staying aware of heavy equipment, and hauling material to my linemen. My therapist couldn’t have crafted a better working day to reduce the symptoms of a panic attack.
If nothing else, this was an excellent stress test (haha - see what I did there?) for my body and mind. I know I will have anxious and depressed days in the future, and I’m grateful that the career path I chose makes it much more likely that I can overcome those bad days in short order.
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