Friday 7 March 2014

A brief yet good moment of triumph

I'd like to open up briefly, reveal a further level of vulnerability and layer out what I've literally just gone through.
Not only because I think it might make a further interesting read, but mainly because it was a triumph over an anxiety attack which I haven't had in a while.
I seem to have stopped having them and refuse to allow them to enter every again.

Before I begin, as I spoke to a selection of people this morning, I would like to state that this attack was not brought on by any one I spoke to. It was merely the act of trying to juggle a selection of tasks and time which were my choice to do. 

I haven't had an anxiety attack in a while. The feeling of loss of control, the room spinning, trying to make order of things and feeling like I'm losing time. Because I have a sense of distraction, I start concentrating on something, then realise I've forgotten that other particularly important thing and begin to freak out because I should have reorganised better.

Today, I realised I had a number of things to juggle and instead of looking at them one at a time, I made the mistake of trying to look at them all whilst my adrenaline was high (raised due to potential work stuff happening).
I began to feel that if nothing could be rearranged and if I did things in a certain way then I'd miss that and fuck that up and I would make the wrong choice and oh hell...oh hell...oh hell.

Panic attack initiated at 5%....no, reorder reorder! at 10%....oh god shitshitshit...20%...

OK STOP. Push everything out.

Force myself to sit on the sofa, ground myself (as once instructed by a friend of mine), open my eyes and force full awareness of my surroundings (see what was physically before me and not what was on my mind), then breathe: count of 4 in, count of 4 out.
Look at the clock for reference and do this for a couple of minutes.

Start feeling oxygen returning to brain.

Start to relax

Feel the 'conundrum' cautiously return: 'can we come back in now?'

Find myself looking at the clock for reorganisation, yet lower panic. Ok let's try again. I've got that at that time, but if I do this then that, I won't have time for that.

Ok...Ok...can I re-arrange that.....yes...yes I can. And that would actually work out better with that.
Ok....rearranging possible, thus giving me more time to do this.

Ok that works. *Urgent spike hits* as my brain reminds myself why I panicked (almost a way of forcing me to appreciate my having worked things out): It's sorted! You're doing what you need to do. It's your life. It's sorted.

Relax.

All this in about 15 minutes.

After effects: I've now re-found the reason I was excited (which caused the adrenaline spike) and focused on that.

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