Therapy Allergy

 Not a real allergy but a mental one of sorts. Given my ever growing anxiety and panic issues I have been reaching for my CBT again as it served me well before. I know it can take me to where I need to go. The only problem is that in the early days, now, it feels like its doing more harm that good. Having to face the things I buried away is causing all sorts of anxiety problems. What to do though? If I don't do it then I will get worse but if I do it then I get worse short term but will benefit longer. No brainer but either way its a short term night mare and "short term" is a piece of string. It certainly won't be days, possibly will be weeks but could even be months. I feel drained and when you are drained it is hard to just put yourself straight back into it again. It feels like there is no respite.

Its good to talk

 

The old BT slogan of "Its good to talk" seems to be on my mind the past week or so because said mind seems to think the opposite. This is not new. Even in my better times this flared up. It may always have been there to some degree without me noticing it too much. Maybe what was once a minor iritation has been turned into a major agitation with the rushes of adrenaline I have experienced these past couple of decades. In fact I know it was always there but there is another reason I thought nothing of it and that was because the one situation I remember it I was not alone in that agitation. I am talking about feeling trapped in one way conversations by the way, I should have mentioned that. This is of course one I am subjecting the reader to at the moment but at least the reader can choose to stop "listening" without causing offence as I would be oblivious.

My Uncle Billy was the one. He was one of those relatives with a title that was not a true reflection of his relationship in the family tree. He was in fact my dad's cousin related by being the sons of sisters. So not my uncle but that is what we called him as there was no other title that fitted and to not use a title would have been too familiar for a child speaking to an adult family member. Anyway when I lived with my gran I used to dread him coming around and it was quite often as he didn't work and liked a chinwag. He also liked taking my gran shopping as he got a free lunch out of it and sometimes petrol money but that is another story. He was so laid back he was definitely horizontal as the saying goes and he had all the time in the world. So when he had you he did not let go. He wanted an ear and he didn't care who it belonged to. Usually it was about his holidays to America and it was delivered in excrutiatingly slow monotnous detail. He would go through each day, where he was, what he had for lunch, where he went next and so on. I used to be climbing the walls and it got so bad I started staying upstairs when he came around just to avoid him. I was not alone. Everyone did it. In the early days my gran would disappear to the kitchen to do something and I used to wonder why it took her so long. No one wanted to be the one who was landed with Uncle Billy because there was no escape. 

Right now in this week in particular I feel that trapped feeling amplified except Uncle Billy is long gone now. The source now seems to be everyone. As I said I have felt this even when I was doing well. Before my anxiety started we had a neighbour who was a female Uncle Billy telling me every detail of her shopping for example or what she did that morning. In fact the more I think the more I see there has been an Uncle Billy somewhere in my life. This recent crop started weirdly with another neighbour who lives in the flat that the original neighbour lived in. He is a lovely old guy but we have rarely said more than a couple of words over the past couple of years he has lived here because his hearing is so bad that he cannot hear what you are saying. That was until the other week when he stopped me outside as usual and captured me for about 15 minutes. He had gone private and I will spare the details I was not to just say he paid a lot of money to get his hearing back. So now he can have conversations and boy he can talk even if with his new good ears he hears but does not really want to listen. It was very much one sides. Then I felt it. The pang of panic- I am trapped, I need to get out of here. "I won't keep you". Good but still he went on and my agitation made me take a deep breath and start rubbing my hands and moving my feet back and forth. I needed to go and so I went rather abruptly but he didn't seem to notice and I have avoided him since. When I take the dog out I usually wait at the window for him to leave. I feel bad about it. Months ago I wished I could talk to him when I was not having daily panic attacks and now I can I need to avoid him. He has even resorted to puting notes through my door to tell me things like the one pictured above.

That I can handle. Its all the other stuff that has come along with it that is the big problem. 

The Queen

 Last week the Queen died rather suddenly and I think it brought a lot of shock to the land. As I said previously when Prince Phillip died I do not have any kind of opinion on the Royal family good or bad- except maybe for Andrew. But its strange when you are detatched and yet feel something quite strong. I did feel a great sadness when it was announced. My wife had the new channel on and at the time the updates were all about her ill health and her family en route to Balmoral. None of us knew she had died earlier in the day. Then Huw Edwards read out a statement and it didn't seem right at all. It was supposed to be an update on her condition, did her just say the Queen dies this morning? I shouted my wife who was in the kitchen to confirm it. And then I thought I heard him mention the King. What? But it was as I heard it. The queen had died hours before and the public were unaware as they prayed for her recovery and hence fourth her oldest son was not being referred to as Prince Charles but King Charles.

Its a surreal thing. I am 50 years old and I have only ever known a Queen of this land. There are people older than me who can say the same. Now we have a king. 

The Panic Cycle

 I have been doing my CBT every day for over 2 weeks now along with my walks but every day continues to be a challenge. From Friday the 19th August I have had at least one panic attack per day at home, sometimes several. Its not a good direction. And as expected it has brought with it a dread when I wake in the morning because I know that its coming. Strangely in some ways I am actually wishing it to come because although it can happen more than once in a day the usual way it plays out is to have one and then be fine for the rest of the day after. Its a feeling of just wanting it out of the way to get on with my day. 

It builds like a slow drip of adrenaline from waking and the uneasy sense of low level anticipatory anxiety creeps in. It dictates my day. I now have to leave my CBT and walks until the evening because doing them early was making me more anxious. It has been a very dark time I am afraid but at least this time there is hope. The CBT workbooks defintely help. I remember very well over a decade ago when this all started being afraid and in the dark not knowing what was happening to me and not knowing if I would ever get out of it. Now at least I know what I am experiencing and its just going to take time to change that daily situation. I am no longer wondering if this will ever end. I know it will, I did it before. It is just about learning how to deal with the panic attacks again so they don't overwhelm me and I have now managed that a few times. It is about learning a skill and practicing it until it is second nature. When that happens I will lose the fear and panic will stop happening.

Right now I am stuck in the anticipatory anxiety cycle. This is what makes a single panic attack a recurring panic attack. The first panic can be a one off- it is for a lot of people. For others the experience is so scary that the live in fear of another and it is that fear which brings the next one on. And so on, the self perpetuating panic cycle. For me on Friday the 19th I am experienced high anxiety which had been building for months. That day though it finally overwhelmed me and I went into full blown panic which knocked me for six. What to you do when you need to escape your own home? The following day the same thing happened and I had to walk for about half an hour outside trying to spend the adrenaline. And every day after it continues but there is some positivity even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Only twice since then have I been overwhelmed by panic. And better still I have had two days of bad anxiety lately but not panic. So there is some reason to be optimistic but it is hard to see that when you are spending your waking moments waiting to be terrorised by your own mind and body.