Panic attacks 4.12.18

Its 4:30 AM on April 12^th and I can’t sleep. Nothing in particular is on my mind, but my thoughts are racing and my chest keeps suffocating me. I can feel the anxiety all throughout my shoulders and back. I do deep breathing to relax, it is effective in stifling a panic attack. I try to understand the thought that triggered this, as I attempt to go back to sleep. My mind probes around the thought, testing, circling, afraid to get too close and then again, my breathing constricts. I remind myself to relax, I pull my thoughts back, try to reign them in. I try to remind myself what it is like to sleep, but my thoughts are a race again, my breathing becomes shallow and quick. There is a pain in my back and in my shoulders. I wonder if maybe I am having a heart attack. I do deep breathing, I feel my shoulders relax, and remind myself I am ok. It is effective for a while, and I try to sleep, but I am afraid. These thoughts remind me that I am not always in control, that I haven’t always been. In the most terrifying way they remind me of flash thoughts of the past. Times when I wasn’t sure that I was sane. The thoughts come too quickly to be categorized and I can’t trust my senses to explain. There isn’t a plot, or storyline, nothing relevant, my breathing has become shallow again. I remember waking up from nightmares this way, feeling completely out of control of everything that mattered. I do deep breathing and adjust my posture. Maybe I am just constricting my air ways? The anxiety presses through my upper body, that dull ache that feels like a bruise within. I breathe into my stomach, I force myself to exhale, and then exhale and then exhale. The physical way I was taught to remind myself I have enough air. I am not hyperventilating, but the reminder that I have to tell myself this, causes me to be afraid. Too many thoughts, rushing in from elsewhere. Too many emotions and perceptions that are not mine. Too many voices, fear, too much information, downloaded at once, I am flooded, it is so painfully overwhelming. I remind myself to breathe, but I am not always sure I want to. This is the mood swing that happens after, that overwhelming feeling of loneliness. That shift to absolute abandon and sorrow.  I turn on the lights, hoping for reprieve, something to distract, and suddenly begin to cry, with worry, with pity for myself for these racing thoughts, for this openness that I don’t want to cut off, but can’t maintain. The websites say breathe, the say distract, they say sigh mantras. And I can’t help but recognize that this is my daily existence. That being this way requires these things, it does not ask. I am alone in my room with no one to call or ask for help. I am terrified that I am dying. I am terrified that my third eye has opened too much. That these thoughts are not mine, that I couldn’t possibly control them. That this body has forgotten me. That I will die this way.

I cry. I am no longer panicked, just full of sorrow. I can’t help but think something terrible has happened elsewhere. I scan the news. Who has died? Where has the war been escalated? I can’t possibly have this much suffering in my own body without it being from elsewhere. The news says nothing. It was never as accurate as the senses. My senses are all wrong. The ache is spreading, am I warm? Am I cold? Am I in pain? I move my cell phone away from my body. Maybe I am picking the thoughts up from there. I am so tired, time goes by, as I write. I wonder if it has been enough time. If I have directed the thoughts well enough to finally sleep. I probe a little, determined to write the thought down if it comes again. To give it a voice or a name so that it doesn’t pain me so, but all I feel is the ache. Some part of me wonders what terrible thing I must be denying with my blurry eyes, and did I do it? or was it done to me? (as I worried earlier today) And I know either way I’d rather it be that I am picking up what is not mine from the world outside me. What is wrong with me? Dear god I pray, take this, I cry, I can’t handle it. I make it a mantra as I breathe. I wonder if its time to go back to sleep.

Mindfulness and shame (5.30.18)

I was doing this mindfulness exercise where you breathe into a feeling, and open it up.

I had a brief memory of something shameful, a small dense marble in the bottom of my stomach. I explored it and it grew larger, suddenly I wondered if perhaps I was hungry. There was a weird pain there that I couldn’t place, and ideas of previous shame experiences came to mind. Where do I hold my shame? The bottom of my stomach continued to grow. I felt tension in my lower back, then middle back, then the knot in my back where I had that bronchial infection. The tightness and constriction of what feels like broken ribs. The grating against each inhale. I returned my attention to my stomach, reminded that this bubble is where I used to feel nausea, and there it was again. That bubbling over nervousness that I experienced so often when I was young. That worry, that things were not okay, and would not be ok. The insecurity, the pain that remained, creeped up from my stomach through my back and choked my heart. I got scared of the nausea, sudden images of the demons revolting, clawing and maiming their way through my organs, -the eruption - I couldn’t put back into place. I knew this feeling, I tried to breathe into it, tell it that I was opening, but I felt the saliva pool around my gums, and was reminded that this is how it felt so often. That hunger, that never-ending insecurity that felt like I was always about to throw up, the emptiness, the shame, the guilt and the unbearable hurt that continued to build until I prayed there was nothing left, prayed for God to take me, to end me, and inevitably broke down into tears, crumpled myself into a ball and wept. That defeat of childhood. I didn’t this time, I stilled my stomach, and turned my mind elsewhere, still too afraid that I couldn’t bear it.

A few minutes later, I was still feeling it. It is back to a marble, only this time sitting just below my diaphragm. I asked myself what is it I want in this moment, and immediately knew that I wanted someone to comfort me. To take me into their arms and comfort me.

The mental image I have of myself is naked in blankets on the mattress at my Mom’s house after Becky and I broke up. Completely vulnerable and feeling incapable of even dressing myself to face the world.

I tell myself, you’ll have to learn to swaddle yourself, to give yourself that comfort. But behind that I still wish I had someone else to do it. I know I would want to do that for someone else, to take their brokenness up and show them that they are safe, that the world hasn’t really fallen apart, that their heart will mend and they are still worthy. In bits and pieces, I’ve tried to do that for others almost every day of my life. But as I told Courtney, I don’t think the loneliness and the hurt will go away until I find a way to mend this hurt that seems so vacuous. I see it now, that black hole, I can tell it is still there whirlpooling despite all my numbness, my boundaries, my attempts at acceptance, my attempts to lash out. And all the things I’ve tried to throw into it to close it up. From sugar, coffee, sex, porn, violence, learning, escape, faith and friendship, work and amicability… and all those good person traits. But it won’t really close up unless I recognize and heal it.

Hehehe or maybe I actually am hungry.

I picture Esfegione crumpled on the ground, his heart broken, the great terror clawing through his insides, his desire to stay near the ground, something safe and hard, as the dreadful abandonment shakes him. To know you are so abysmally worthless. To be discarded so easily. And even if you wanted to, you couldn’t blame them, they are the air you breathe, the sun, your reason for existing. 

I was thinking about the lengths I would go, sometimes safe, sometimes crossing boundaries to assure someone they were worth it. Like, my greatest fear in daily life, is that someone I love would feel that way, and my second greatest fear (by a tiny margin) is that I will again.

Friday

I am having a hard time applying to jobs. Part of it is not being excited, and really enjoying the sunny weather and time to stay up all night. Part because I feel unprepared in that I haven't technically applied for my license yet. Part of it is because I'm just scared and nervous.
We are celebrating my graduation this weekend. Low key family style.
I kind of feel like a fake.

Someone wrote me this morning. I responded with a lot of my thoughts on them, rather than what they shared. I wasn't nervous until the day continued on and on without a response.

Life and relationships are so weird.
What am I gonna do next?
Portugal?
South East Asia?
South Africa?
Buy an apartment?
Buy some chinese food?

Keep eating salads because I am worried about my health and maybe want to have a family some day?

Keep writing a book no one wants to read?
Hmmmm.... probably I should get a massage and do some meditation.
Walking around the lake with good music is a spiritual experience.
I have no mind. Probably gonna stay up all night playing games, and then get lonely at some point around 8-10 and feel like I will never find anyone.


Life is weird eh?

M names... and truama

I should be writing my trauma part 2 paper. I've been dabbling in homework on and off through the day. I find the trauma stuff to be really hard to stay focused on, but also interesting when you are in it. However, reading research studies of effective treatments is boring and exhausting and no where near as interesting as the stories, and the stories make you cry, and the crying makes you tired, and then its hard to do homework anyway. So I have left myself tomorrow to get it done. I have the references, and some notes, and the majority will come from websites even if I wish it were another way. The truth is that no one has a good explanation for how and why people get better. We have hopes, and we have people who drop out of the studies. We have people who get better, and often they find their way through a sense of purpose and the help of people who care for them.

I find myself lonely tonight. I don't know if it just the fact that I didn't really see anyone today, or the fact that I have been studying trauma. Or the fact that I have a crush on someone and when I see them it feels nice, and when I don't, I feel like it doesn't make any sense... but I am wishing we had infinite amounts of time to eat waffles and explore the tiniest muscle movements of the face. I am wishing I had more time to ask questions, and sit with the answers, and then ask more questions. And sometimes, though I am trying to avoid it, I also wish I had a seat next to her instead of across.

And none of that makes sense of course, because reasons. Checklists make no sense. Red flags make no sense. Attraction and chemistry make no sense. Logic is not a real thing, rationalizations are just mental chatter.

A potential new friend asks me to hang out and we talk about all these things that I ALWAYS WANT to talk to people about, but instead of being excited, I am putting up walls left and right internally. These red flags are abundant. All of these words sound right but something isn't right here. So by the end of the night, I am actually ready to be alone. I'd rather be, and she is inviting me into her life, and I am... not vocal enough to say no.

But then I look at these situations. And in so many ways they seem similar. On paper one could make the argument that this new one is a great situation, better than the other certainly. I could learn a lot, and invest in new ways, and it makes so much more logical, rational sense... and yet, I am wary. Meanwhile, this other person, who I should be wary of... hey, please text me more. I want to hear about everything, even if I don't respond. stupid.

I don't even have the right words for this. This tone is all wrong. Its short and mean. But somehow its also... true.
What do I want?  I want that feeling. I don't want the reality, the reality is that things would end up awful. And of course in the middle of this I get one of those texts, and it is meaningful and wonderful. And then I know I am vulnerable to this...
and I want to say, can I please just have this part without consequences? And I know the right answer is NO, that is not life, and I need to wake up.