The Disquieting Damozel

Thursday 13 #5. 13 Things I've Learned About Panic Attacks.

IF YOU LEAVE A COMMENT HERE OR ON THE HOMEPAGE, I WILL PUT A LINK TO YOUR T13 UNDER MY ENTRY ON THE HOMEPAGE (my blog doesn't do it automatically).

I worked for years at a volunteer counseling center where I encountered many clients who were suffering from panic attacks.  In addition, I've frequently talked friends of mine through panic attacks.  So I am not really sure why, following my discontinuance of hormone therapy after a hysterectomy, I was apparently incapable of recognizing that I was suffering from panic attacks myself. 

Panic, SSRI's, and Adulthood in the 21st Century: What are YOU on?

1. TO SPIN OUT OF CONTROL YOU FIRST HAVE TO BE IN CONTROL:  THE ORIGINS OF MY PROBLEM.  You know, I thought for a long time that I was handling adult life fairly well. 

When I first started being (technically) an adult, I didn't do so well at it; I was really behind the curve in working out how being grown up differed from being an adolescent.   I went on being a maturity-challenged child well into my thirties.   Fortunately (in retrospect, though I didn't see it that way at the time) I got involved in my early thirties with a much older man who had little tolerance for the liberties and excuses I was inclined to allow myself.  He and an older female colleague I didn't like at all were major forces in bringing me to maturity.  Painfully, though.

Antic Panic.

It took me months to feel like writing again.  I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I knew that something was.  I was frightened all the time.  I used to wake up at night shaking all over and in a cold sweat.  I often thought I was on the verge of dying.   I ought to have recognized the problem because I've dealt often enough with people in the midst of panic attacks, but I couldn't get my head around the fact that it was happening to me?  Where did it come from?  Why?  Nothing had changed.  Nothing was wrong.  But telling myself what I already knew didn't do a bit of good. 

Epilepsy. It's Like This: Bzzzzt!

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog on 09.10.2005]

Epilepsy.  People always want to know---even if they are too polite to ask me---if it feels as weird as it looks.

“What’s it like to have a seizure?” a young man currently under my tutelage asked me. “Is it true you can tell when one’s coming on? Does it hurt?” He had the right to ask as he’d just rescued me from being hauled off in an (expensive: $500) ambulance following one such episode, and he was worried.

[1]  'Ignore it and it will go away.' No, actually, it won't. I had my first seizure that I know of when I was a year old. I had some sort of viral illness. It might have been meningitis, but was never diagnosed as such. After that, I didn’t have any problems until I was in second grade; I had a seizure one day in school. I was doing a writing exercise and suddenly I couldn’t write anymore. I was terrified and started to cry. I didn’t fall down or anything; I just couldn’t write. My teacher was surprised because there was nothing she could see that would explain it. My parents were annoyed, as they thought I'd just had a bout of hysterics. My father was more annoyed when, following the seizure, my handwriting deteriorated completely and I went from making 'A's' to making 'C's.' It was as if I really had forgotten how to form the letters; eventually---several years later---I re-taught myself. Nowadays, of course, handwriting wouldn't matter so much; but it mattered then.