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.