100 miles

Before the start of the month I set myself a target: to walk 100 miles. And I did it. I know to anyone else it doesn't sound much. Recently for example when I have been on Facebook there has been a spate of people running and cycling for charity. Colossal amounts in one go. It puts walking 100 miles in a month well in the shade. Instinctively so do I. That is how people with anxiety disorder think. They do not hold up an "achievement" against what went before in their own life but always compare to others- the normals. And it never matches up. How could it?

So this is something I have been trying to change, mentally. Its important to do so. If I don't then what will happen is I will start to think I am getting nowhere and become reluctant when the time comes to try getting out and doing the CBT. So it is important not to compare with others but compare to your own life. Two years ago the most I walked in a week was 7.5 miles so even if I managed that for consecutive weeks, which I didn't, it would have taken 16 weeks to do 100 miles. In actual fact over the whole of 2011 I managed only 153 miles over the entire year. This year I have walked 650 miles so far. Its quite a jump.

These things though never run smoothly. In the second last week I developed a problem which flares up from time to time and is not worth going into but suffice it to say it stopped me in my tracks. For a number of days I was in a lot of pain and for a few days it was too painful to walk. At that stage I thought: typical. Its not the first time its happened. I was resigned to failure. But it passed and I pushed extra hard to get it done. So from that point of view its only right that I congratulate myself. Lets face it I am the only one who will. When I told my wife I had walked 100 miles she said: in a week? No, a month. That took the shine off it straight away.

After completing this I set another goal: 250 miles by the end of the year- not in a week. Of course my old complaint is fatigue. Fatigue gets really bad at times. Strangely its not as bad when I am actually walking but afterwards I am sometimes struggling to keep my eyes open. When I spoke to the therapist he told me I should be taking power naps, 40 minutes, each day to combat this. The trouble is I have tried and for me it doesn't work as my mind just keeps whizzing too fast as I lie making sleep impossible. All it leads to is growing agitation until finally I can take it no more and have to get up.

Something else that the therapist said rings true though. He said he had experienced this with his own anxiety  disorder which he has now recovered from and what he described rang true about it being more than tiredness and more like an inner strain. He asked: do you ever have a period where the fatigue is really bad and sudden it lifts. This does happen. Of late I have developed a theory on this. I don't think physically something changes unless its mentally driven. I think its another tiring mental loop. I think I feel fatigue and I constantly tell myself I am so fatigued and I cannot stand it and this wears me down making me even more fatigued and so making me think more and more about and so the cycle goes on. And that is probably why he told me that the best thing to do is accept it not matter how bad it feels. Just accept it and let it be and don't spend every moment focusing on it. So this is something I have been trying to do but its not the easiest thing when its constantly there. I guess another reason to try mindfulness.

But I keep plodding along and trying to keep pushing myself on in the hope things will improve and if I give myself some time to look back I see they have improved however small.

Confucius- "The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones."

Small steps leading to new roads and further from home, longer out in the world. On this score I certainly cannot complain. Just a big bit more patience required and continue to work hard on the CBT and starting to take more leaps into the dark. Like progress its a small bit by bit building of confidence too to take on new challenges and build on each new world that comes into being. Its a better place for sure. 

By Train: Step Two

There is not going to follow a series of posts on an agoraphobic's guide to travelling by train- unfortunately from my point of view. Very quickly I have moved from step one to step two but I expected that. I actually got here yesterday and with some distress got here again today. Both times waiting 60 seconds was as much as I could muster before scuttling off.

Hey, its a train! Now to get on it. Well not for a good while yet. I think even repeating this step is going to take some doing if I am honest and may have to give it a break over the weekends because I am finding that because I am pushing harder than I ever have been able to on the walks during the week I am heavily fatigued. My body is almost in shutdown. My hope was that in pushing way beyond what I ever have before my body would eventually get used to it and after a time the fatigue would ease and I'd find travelling greater distances not so tiring. Not so. The opposite in fact. It just seems to accumulate and snowball and every new day I think I feel more fatigued than I ever have in my whole life and definitely more than the day before. It got so bad today that I had to postpone my exposure at the usual time because as I tried to make my way out the door I felt I could hardly take another step. Really struggling.

So it may be I have to ease off with the distances I am doing. They are no big by anyone's standards but big for me. Last year I managed to maintain a level for a few months which was the biggest distance over a week for 4 years. This year I suddenly found myself managing 50% more than that which is a big jump but when I realised I was doing that every week for nearly 6 months and sometime before the weekend had nothing so therefore taking it easy after I decided to increase it 100%- from the year before. This is week 4 of that and as I said the fatigue just seems to be getting heavier and heavier.

I did though get down to step 2 for a second day in a row and even watched the train coming in. Staying just a minute was hard and really staying for just a minute was pointless because that is not enough time for anxiety to drop- and it didn't. Why couldn't I wait longer? What is so difficult about staying in one place?

That is the eternal question and probably the root of my agoraphobia. In all things I have to do that I don't want to do or don't like doing but am capable of doing I try to get it over with as soon as possible. I cannot wait. If It needs to be done then I have to get it done as soon as possible. A few posts ago I wrote about the time I had the 2 week course in London and was dreading the flight back so much I paid £50 to get on it an hour earlier just to get it overwith. That was in fact my first, and last, flight since 1999 or 2000 when my now wife and I went went on our first holiday to Mallorca and I remember on the last few days of the holiday starting to think about the flight home and getting really anxious and wanting it just over and done with to the point that I just wanted the holiday over and done with there and then to get it over with. It did spoil those final days. It wasn't always like that.

All of this noting though does no good unless it leads to a solution. The first step to that would be identifying the real problem. That is simple. Some may say its impatience but its not really. The real problem is apprehension- anticipatory anxiety. As you can imagine the long the period of this the harder it is to stand and so its natural to want it over with quickly. That is what it is. And getting back to this exposure that is what it is here too and now that I have identified the real cause of my inability to wait its something I need to work on.

Why I am apprehensive about waiting? Its because I fear the further I am from home the more impossible I will find it to get home if I panic. Like if I am standing down near the train tracks there and already on the verge of panic. I feel the longer I stay there the more likely I am to panic and the further away from home I will be and the harder it will be to get home. In my head I will end up on the ground struggling for breath looking up at faces and hearing the approaching sirens in the background. Its never happened yet but I cannot find the belief within me that it won't happen. That is why I am impatient if you will to leave, apprehensive to stay and eager to just get back home again.

Writing it I see it looks stupid. Panic is internal so it matters not where you are located really. There is no magic anti-panic device at home. Of course its not as simple as that. What we think affects how we feel and how we feel effects how her body responds. If we see or hear something sad it may make us cry. I we hear or see something wrong it may make us angry. What is external to us affects the internal. But only through interpretation. Its subective. Panic is subjective. The sight of a crowd may bring elation in some, fear in others. So its about changing the interpretation and therefore the reaction to it. If all 5 senses were cut off, experimentally and temporarily, would it really matter where we were?

I guess what I am trying to say in a round about way is what the CBT says so simply: catch our thoughts, challenge the truth of them and change them with the truth. And that is not what I am doing. That is what I need to learn to do. That is why I cannot wait. Until I can start dealing with these mis-interpretations I cannot wait. So now at least I am sure where I have to concentrate my efforts.

By Train: Step One

Apologies for the image quality. I have not been taking my camera out so this was taken my crappy phone and besides that its not a place I like taking a camera ever since one day being stopped and questioned by police. As I said in my last post its not a place I want to hang about and risk looking suspicious- I didn't mind before being stopped.

Anyway step one in my eight step graduated exposure. I did know there was a 90% chance of getting here so I am not jumping up and down patting myself on the back for doing so. Step 1 takes me to a path that goes under a railway bridge and through out into proper woodland by a river- which stinks. It also forks off here to this little woodland path that leads to the train station. Its not a great image as I said and neither does it convey the atmosphere here.

Personally, and it probably is only me, I find it very claustrophobic there. Creepy even. Although I am doing this in the day you would not know it going in- coming out you do see the light at the end of the tunnel. Here the trees are so dense and from either side the reach out to each other holding hands and very little light penetrates the roof of branches. As you walk through- as I have in the past and will do again soon- there is an eerie silence mostly because sound is also kept out but also there is not much to make a noise down this part anyway unless a train is coming or going from the station. But in the silence there are little movements not seen my the eye and only heard. Birds and other wildlife. I haven't seen any wildlife down here but I know its there, I hear them.

Its easy to see why this way is not frequently used. I would imagine most lonely travellers and commuters arriving at the station at night leave by the main exit at the other side which is brightly lit and leading on to a main road through lots of housing. Down here there is nothing but the dark still creepy silence.

Today though that was not a problem. I got down here and so as not to just turn back or hang about I dipped my toe so to speak into the entrance of the path where I could wait a few seconds out of view. Then I legged it back home. Its a start.

But already I see another big problem and its something I should have talked about in the last post. I am not dealing solely with anxiety. Were that the case thing would certainly be much more straight forward. In fact I would go as far as to say with what I have learned I could quite possibly get on the road to recovery quite quickly. But its not just anxiety. I don't arrive at this point feeling physically fine but mentally apprehensive, again if that was the case I could definitely deal with this better. I arrive instead heavily fatigued. I arrive struggling to get a regular breath and feeling like I do not have the energy to go on. And here is an important point about this. My thoughts are not cast forward to where I need to go next. My thoughts are 100% consumed with the road travelled and worried about making it back home. Each step forward is a step further away.

This is more so the case with this graduated. The reason being is that I am walking downhill all the way there. Getting back is harder. Getting to that point of breathlessness downhill then from that state having to go uphill again is the bit I really find hard. I see the worry constantly churned out as I walk down there. This year I have been mapping all my walks and it has really helped. Have a look below at the walk this morning:

The map there show the route down to the train line. The next stage is to follow the rail line into the station. At this scale it looks so easy but for me it is not. The reason for posting this is the graph underneath showing elevation. The green X on the graph corresponds to the green point on the map. I basically walk from the bottom of the map down to the green spot. As you can see on the elevation chart it starts off level but then starts to go downhill. From that point I have an incline to walk up and this is what makes it harder- for me. Also noticable on that graph is how I pickup speed on the way back. That is something I have to work on. That is escaping. The only other point of note is that you will notice the green X is not halfway along the chart. This is because after doing the exposure I always try to walk some more- this time sort of South East. The reason for his is to prove to myself that even though I feel so physically shattered by the time I get to my destination that I feel I cannot go on that in actual fact I could have gone on. I hope over time that starts to sink in and allows me to push on.

Enough though of statistics and charts. I got to step 1 as planned and because I cannot wait there what I plan to do next is start edging bit by bit towards step 2. I am hoping I can do that this week but only time will tell. That is of course if there are no unforeseen circumstances but that is rarely the case.

The train ride

Its back to doing the CBT and this time I have been doing it properly. Having watched all the videos instead of just reading the books I see my mistakes and why I am struggling to progress. That said now that I understand how to do it properly does not mean that I will do it properly. I may still struggle- in fact I am sure I will. But at least I will know I am at least attempting it the correct way.

So I have decided to plan the impossible. No, not impossible. Nothing is impossible- well nearly nothing. I have decided to plan the improbable. I created a list of things I cannot do and must start working towards. This list contains 10 things and this is 2nd bottom of the list. And that list I might add is restricted to the close vicinity so it doesn't include the highly improbable and possibly on the list of impossible like getting on a plane or climbing Everest or taking a backpack through South America. Its all small fry in the scheme of things but giagantic in my world. Anyway, what I have decided to do is get on a train into the nearest town. Its something I just cannot see myself doing but that is hardly a surprise since I cannot even get to the train station at the moment and even if I did I would have to leave straight away never mind hanging around to jump on a train and all the rest.

When I say I have been doing the graduated exposure wrong up to this point I really mean I have been missing the point and that is probably why it took 3 years of it to get to the school as outlined in other posts on here. The most important part of the exposure is the part I missed out. That was waiting. Graduated exposure involves gradually making your way to a destination over time via a series of smaller steps. I got there in the end with the school run but what I was doing was getting to a point, overjoyed with that and leaving with anxiety stuck at a high level therefore actually reinforcing the belief that the place I had reached was still highly panic inducing- I left with high anxiety attached. What you are supposed to do is make your way to a point and then wait. Wait, observe, loosen, relax the stomach so that breathing is done naturally rather than forced, use the stomach as an anchor, let got of all the anxiety and let it just run its course. Adrenaline is short lived. You have to let time pass. Wait. Even a second more. And a second more. Wait. Wait long enough that you start to see the anxiety come down to a better level. Wait for that burst of adrenaline to spend itself. Another will probably come. Expect it. Wait. And watch how anxiety peaks and then slides down and then may peak again. Recognise its a burst of adrenaline. There goes another adrenaline rush. It will peter out if left to do so. And then when anxiety has sufficiently reduced you can leave the situation with anxiety at a lower level and therefore not add another memory of high anxiety at that point. This is theory. Once you feel that step is no longer causing the same level of anxiety, an uncomfortable level, then start heading to the next step and so on. Unlike what I was doing charging head first and internally yelling like a madman to get through it all tensed up with gritted teeth and furrowed brow.

If it takes me 3 years to take a train ride then so be it. I will be happy with that. I'd rather do it sooner but when you are at the point where it all seems too impossible to do then just managing it some time down the line would be a god send. When you are so overwhelmed with fear just thinking about it then its a nice thought to think one day it might be possible and every day you are taking small steps toward it. Its not just the ultimate end though that is important. The practice of waiting if achieved correctly can then be taken into other areas and that practice then becomes so natural that its a little easier to approach these difficult things. As I said though easy in theory, understandable, but very difficult in practice as we fight against habit of reaction with fear which is so natural now its trigger happy taking a long time to change.

So I have a plan. A plan to one day get me on a train to the nearest town. It won't be easy. This thing that millions do every day without thinking will not be easy. As I said I cannot even get to the train station so that is not a great start. I could of course use the car but I don't want to. This practice has to be done daily and our car is so old its very unreliable and I don't want this exposure interupted by car problems. Of course that doesn't mean there will not be other unforeseen problems. Already that is the case, and for some reason keeps happening, because as I go to start this a bug I thought was down to the kids returning to school has developed into a sinus infection and for someone who cannot go to their GP that is never a good thing. More so since its hard enough to deal with never mind what it can lead to like the throat and chest infection I had last time which was the most miserable period of my life in the last 5-10 years. These things affect my breathing and breathlessness is the number one problem for me when it comes to panic and anxiety.

Anyway, back to the plan. I have a few steps in this plan. Step 1 is achievable but not without a great deal of anxiety. Add to this its not a place I can stay and wait like I am supposed to so that is going to make it harder to get to the next step. Its a very secluded place but there are lone dog walkers usually and mostly female so I don't think its the best idea to be lurking- I certainly wouldn't like the idea if it was my wife down there on her own and some flustered weirdo was hanging about- very unsettling.

The plan then. It won't mean anything to anyone reading it but might as well include it as an indication of what I am doing and how I am breaking it up. Like the graduated exposure to the school I will include a post when I reach a new step. 

Lastly just a note about the lead image. It is of the train station and it was taken by me. So I have been there before, briefly. And driven there by my wife. It was February 2010 (even though I used it in a post in 2009! Should say when I started this blog I either didn't use images or took them straight off the web. When I decided to use my own images only I went back and changed everything retrospectively) and I thought it better to include that as it shows some of what lies ahead- though not greatly. Way off in the distance it may be possible to see a big building that looks like a little black square. This is the council building in the next town I want to get to. Even less clear to see is looking at the line of cars nearest the track there is a path leading into the trees down to a woodland path. The begining of that path, basically out of view, is step 2 in my exposure. So as you can tell its a long way off yet just getting there. Point 3 is one of the two benches between the tracks and the cars.

This, finally, is the plan...

1. Walk halfway to the train station.
2. Walk through the woodland path to the other side and wait. 
3. Walk to a bench at the station and wait.
4. After sitting on the bench have a walk around the train station (both sides via the footbridge)
5. Buy a ticket and get on the train to the small town to the West- get picked up at the other side by car.
6. After arriving at small town wait and then get picked up.
7. Instead of getting picked up buy a ticket for the return journey.
8. Instead of going West buy a return ticket for the big town to the East and complete the journey.

So there we are. 8 steps to do it. They all look increasingly hard from where I am right now and a long way off. There are some concerns but I with deal with them if and when I get to them. On steps 5 and 6 I need my wife to be available and the car on the road. Not always possible which could be a pain as this is supposed to be done daily but I will work around it somehow. Then there is the question of cost. Its not an expensive journey but we don't have disposable income to go throwing around on train journeys. That will no doubt become a factor if it gets to that stage. No point in worrying about it at the moment until it is an issue that needs to be addressed. People like to do things different ways. There are many who would prefer to do this with a support person which is understandable. I'm just one of those who don't as I prefer to go at my own pace and not be distracted.

So here I go....

In Print

OK, it wasn't put there for its artistic merits and really if you submitted anything that had a kid in school uniform then it was going in but still a little proud of having something in print. I took it and it was outdoors so it will do for me- for starters. The thing is a year ago I could not have taken it where it was taken so its a little progress. I'm having it anyway. Below is the original...

It Started

I was sitting there feeling fear run through me as I lightly bounced about in the seat and what I remember most was how loud the noise of metal grinding against metal was as one carriage rose and the other would fall. It was fear I had not felt before. Not on a train any way. Even although I had been in a train crash 13 years before never in the many times I had been on a train after had I felt fear. Not just fear but irrational fear. In fact I never felt or thought much about the journey other than noticing people and what might be blurring past the window. I always found travelling by train relaxing. Its how we got to Amsterdam earlier that year and how I travelled alone from Paris to Bordeaux 4 years earlier. How I travelled to Suffolk a few times a year each year for holiday with my uncle and aunt. How we went up to Inverness for new year. The list goes on.

So this was irrational. Very irrational. I wasn't sure where it had eminated from. But the noise of the train was so loud on that short 20 minute journey from my town to Glasgow. I felt vulnerable. It did not feel safe. It felt like it might come off the rails at any minute and thoughts on this and other disasters fired through my head as the noise grew too loud to stand as I sat agitated praying for it to be over soon. No doubt somewhere in my subconsciousness that train crash had been pulled out the archives and I was somehow reliving it.

It was some time in 2002. I remember feeling strangely weak and breathless on the walk to the train station and somewhat lightheaded. I remember when I got off that train I felt overwhelmed by people and noise in the city as I struggled about slowly trying not only to find my way to where I had to go but trying also not to move too quickly as to get out of puff. I found the place I had to go for the exam and after going through the door I was greeted by a big stair case. I could feel fear peaking. Thoughts returned to weeks before in Edinburgh on the week long study course for this Database Administrator exam. And that moment when I ran up the stairs and found when I got to the classroom I could not breathe. More than that actually I actually felt I was suffocating and there was some invisible cling film over my nose and mouth. Something that I think has stayed with me ever since and certainly played into that moment. So I took things really slowly taking one step at a time at the pace of a 100 year old man. Little did I know that although I would not have my first panic attack until 2 years later and the agoraphbic inducing full blow panic attack for another 4 years the road to this current situation has started. It started there.

The year I went to Prague by bus with the woman who the following year would be my wife. All good. No anxiety but also maybe a reluctance to go out too far. It was something that was becoming more common. I was finding myself less inclined to venture. On a holiday with a friend in Tenerife much to his frustrations I never left the complex at night except for once and on that occassion I felt so uncomfortable I cut it short. But in this year 2002 I had gone to Prague by bus as I said. And also the course I was doing meant I'd had to fly to London, stay there for 2 weeks and fly back again. I had, and still have, a fear of flying so the travelling was a nightmare. Coming back the apprehension over the flight was so bad that rather than spend an hour in the pub at the airport dulling my fear with alcohol I paid £50 to get an earlier flight, only an hour earlier, just so I could get it over and done with. Fear while travelling, train crash and episode of not breathing ( or at least feeling that was the case). Every little thing holds hands and creates a chain of events to a destination.

Fears maybe came easier. I remember years before doing my back in going out the door to work and could not move for a week. Around this time despite it not being a problem for all those years it started to creep into my thoughts creating fears. Such a simple thing causing immobility and pain. I had gone down the stairs and as I remembered I had a bin bag to take out I turned and grabbed it as I descended, got a few steps, felt a stabbing pain. came out in a cold sweat and had to sit down straight away. In the end I had to crawl up the stairs and through the flat to get to bed. But now I was starting to think: what if? What if something as easy as that happened at work? How would I get home (it was 30 miles drive)? What would I do? How stupid would I look laying in a room full of people on my back unable to move? Then other things. I started noticing being ill at work and getting annoyed. Started feeling ill when they showed signs of being ill. Wondered if I'd get so ill I would struggle driving home or get stuck on the road somewhere. Then I started to notice I felt weird going out at lunchtime. I found it difficult to walk too far without getting out of breath. I found just walking a short distance I would feel off balance. I was starting to feel heavily fatigued all of the time. At my desk in the afternoon I would feel on the point of sleep and so would have to go for a walk in the fresh air but this again brought the problem of getting out of breath.

Getting out of breath or getting no air started to become a real problem. Even just sitting at my desk I would sometimes feel I was getting no air and I spend many times in the cubicals trying to unblock my nose convinced it was block. It drove me up the wall so much one day that I drove out to the chemist at lunch time and got a nasal spray to use when it happened. But it all accumulated: breathlessness, fatigue and worry. Worry over finding a new job. Worry over getting the sack as they had no work for me. Worry over how to fill my day. Aside from worry there was the tediousness of it all. Sometimes 2 hours to get to work sitting mostly in traffic to spend 8 hours at a desk with nothing to do and then that same journey back home. I started to feel more and more fatigued.

I did not see the link but this was about the time I started going to the GP sure there was something physically wrong with me and getting nowhere. I even went to a chemist for a free diabetes test as all the symptoms seemed to match. I was going to the shops and getting more and more out of breath just trying to get there even though its only quarter of a mile away. And then I started to find myself getting more and more agitated in the queues until I was eventually bordering on panic. So nothing felt right and that was why I was back and fourth to the GPs but they could find nothing wrong.

And then one day I remember in 2003 going to the shops with my wife and holding my daughter in my arms, who was a few months old. Something scarey happened. It was really hard to describe. Everything that should have been familiar just felt alien. I felt totally detatched from it all and like I was seeing it from another dimension or something. I remember it clearly as we were just walking through the doors. People were walking not in slow motion but slower and the lights seemed too bright and the sounds were all mixed into one great murmur. I had to leave. I had to get home. I left my wife seething rightly at being left with no explanation to shop with a baby in her arm while I just left as quickly as I could. I was convinced something bad had happened. Something to do with my brain. This was not normal, it was as abnormal as it got. I was scared out my whits. When I got home I just crashed face first into the bed and intent in ripping my head apart for want of a better plan but instead fell into a deep sleep.

I should say as scary as this was the reason I am posting about all these things is the CBT. I have been doing that the past few weeks and its sinking in now. I am understanding how panic works, develops into a disorder and is maintained. With this all these things have been resurfacing as if showing me my own route to where I am now. But not only that showing me exactly how and why they happened. Take that episode there as an example. As I said it scared the life out of me. It would scare the life out of anyone, believe me. When your mental health, your sanity and maybe your ultimate mortality all are put into question out of the blue I think even the bravest and most fearless of people would flinch. Now though I see it for what it is. Its a symptom of anxiety/panic named unreality. Although I could not see it at the time there would have been a lot of anxiety building up. I already said getting to the shops had become a problem and queuing was getting me very uncomfortable so there would have been a lot of anticipatory anxiety. Also I did have a lot of worry. I thought I was seriously ill at the time and the doctors were just not finding it. I knew something was wrong. I had very little sleep because the little one was up crying 2 or 3 times a night. All this and more brought it to a head in a panic attack. Lots of things can happen in a panic attack. Its fight or flight and as I just said effectively when it happened with nothing to fight I took the flight option. I could go through every function of fight or flight but will only say what was relevant here. One symptom is that the pupils dilate to let in more light and it creates a kind of tunnel vision in order to focus more attentively on danger and this in turn makes the outside would seem unreal because its familiar yet strangely different. The mind goes into high alert looking for danger so that brings a sort of sensory overload and this is well noted in some people who have come through real dangers where they have felt things sort of slowed down in the moment but related it to the danger. Simple fight or flight. So that is all that was happening but because I did not now this it scared the shit out of me. 

Anyway these things started to snowball. All these little memories that I had forgotten about are now popping back into my head as if mapping a path. In 2004 I remember again carrying my daughter and getting panic. We were at a bridge and had gone down the side to get near the water. I had to carry my daughter, who was about 1 at the time, up the steep slope and as I got to the top I had to put her down with a bout of breathlessness sure I was going to go blue in the face and need an ambulance. We started to walk to the next town just a little bit away but I felt so bad we had to turn back and go home.

I remember at the funeral of my wife's friend's son panicking as the doors were closed and locked in the crematorium. I remember standing in the soundproof box at the church for my wife's gran's funeral glad to be away from the congregation and the relief later when my father in law told me he was going to ask me to carry the coffin but could not see me. I remember the panic standing up in front of the congregation at my daughter's christening and the fight not to leave. I remember being at Blairdrummond Safari Park in 2005 and trying a swing with my daughter and my whole balance turning on its head scaring the life out of me- again. In fact everything was scaring me. Panic in a traffic jam in Manchester and sitting at the back of the church on my own near the door during the christening using my other daughter as an excuse once again at church. I also remember the first panic when my parents visited and after leaving the room to calm down on bed falling asleep- twice that happened.

Oh I could go on and bore any readers to panic so I won't. The point is for anyone going through this in time you will see all the little things that built towards it. What I was begining to wonder what is the point of it all? Why do I need to know? But I guess its to show it for exactly what it is. And maybe even also to show that these things were done very easily so in theory can be done as easy. Its also though worth noting that this is therefore not one big thing but hundreds of little things all congealed together in a sticky mess. And it can be undone. Bit by bit like it started it can be undone and I think it is why I am seeing these things because at the same time now I am starting to see those things I could not do a year ago which I can now do and maybe its like a sort of regression back to the old self. Or at least a new better self.