Calderglen

Years ago when my oldest daughter was a two or three, she is now ten, we went to Calderglen Country Park. It was a really great day out. Lots to do and see but the most alluring thing for me were the animals. Meerkats outside and in the hothouse monkeys. Its a place I've always wanted to return and as the theme has been these past couple of months I returned there- on Wednesday. It was though just a short visit as we were pushed for time before going to get the kids from school so there was very little point in paying to go in to see the animals- last time I was there it was free. Getting though there was a big thing. As you can no doubt tell from the splodges in the image above it was raining.

Not all good though. Really struggling today with panic which led to a rather scary episode. It stemmed from its only scary episode which is not unfamiliar and that is the dreaded abstract mental panic episodes which I have blogged about a couple of times in the past year or so. Very unsettling. I had one of those in the morning with those weirdly familiar yet nonsensical images, slowed down music I know but cannot put my finger on, sense of deja vu, feeling of impending doom, cold sweats and basically terror. At the time its scary and its only after I see it for what it is. Just another form of panic. The fight or flight response kicks in and sets the mind on high alert which in turn sets the mind racing and suddenly you can feel overwhelmed. Lots of things fly through the mind and its easy to get caught up internalising in all this temporary madness. Its all explainable and all part of a process intended to help. Its also over quickly- about the amount of time it takes for adrenaline to ebb away.

I always analyse these and I see the pattern. I see why it happens. It always starts with a feeling of deja vu then kicks off from there. Its always a very simple cause. This morning it was going into the kitchen and finding one of the cats drinking from a glass of water that was in the sink- later my wife told me she had let the cat drink from her glass in the morning so it had obviously ventured to the sink later in search of more. So that is a rare occurrence. No, actually I think its the first time. Not sure. What it was like though was the other cat drinking out of dripping water in the bath a few years back. Whatever it doesn't really matter. Its something vaguely familiar but rare. That brings on the sense of deja vu. I think this comes stronger with me because my life for so long has been in the same surroundings so there is very little that it is like that. When it occurs then it feels strange because really 99.9% of my day is the same. So it brings deja vu and because its something new also a sense of dread. Panic. The mind of course looks for signs of danger. It doesn't look outward because the source is not outward, it internalises. It goes raking through the banks of memories. Vague memories and dreams looking for a match and this is what I see in my head. I see this abstract collection of familiar things. More panic.

So I had one of these and this left me anxious  for the rest of the day. On the drive to the country park I started to go into proper panic which was expected because I was filled with adrenaline from the morning on top of going somewhere new. It was a real fight to keep it at bay and although I did I was actually glad in the end the visit was short. We then went to the school and picked up the kids and not long after I was home a second episode of mental panic. This one not from deja vu but instead from anticipatory anxiety. The reason for this is that the last few times I have had this it has happened twice in one day. So now I expect it and that expectation leads to it just the same as what happens with normal panic. More cycles. With another dose plus the normal panic in between I was in all honesty a wreck. Both mentally and physically shattered and then something else happened. Something new.

My wife had asked me if I could drop the boy off at his football but I had to refuse as I was in such a state and so she did on the way to picking up the oldest girl from a club. I was little with the youngest girl to take out at half four- an hour later. At some point I just freaked out. I felt I could not remember a thing. Short term memory loss. I got really scared and had to phone the wife. I cannot remember the last time I felt that scared. I honestly thought something had gone wrong in my head. It knocked me for six and to be honest only two days later to I feel its all passed which is the reason for posting this now. But I did not include this to scare people. The reason I post it is so that hopefully if someone in my position experiences the same thing I can in some way put their worries at rest. What happened was in fact a full blown panic attack. The reason I could not remember anything was because I was so caught up in worry over the two mental panic attacks and totally internalising so not entirely aware of what was going on around about me. Seeing without taking in. I was aware of my wife going but only aware as I was too caught up in my own  head and only when I suddenly snapped out of that did freak out- a bit like waking suddenly from a nightmare in bed. Even the lack of memory is not true. Shortly after this episode which again lasted about 20 minutes, and its no coincidence that is usually how long the peak of panic lasts too, I realised I had not forgotten everything. I knew where my wife was, how to get a hold of her, that I had to take my daughter out, where I had to take her and what time I had to take her. But all this was buried at the time beneath the worry I was consumed in. I was, much like my wife leaving, aware of it but not able to focus on it. As freaked out as I was at the time I now see it for what it was- just panic. And given all that had gone on that day its very little surprise it all spilled over in that way. Now I am fine and now I am sure it won't happen again- at least not to that degree. All that from a cat drinking water from a glass.

It makes me wonder if its all just a build up too of getting out more. Its not easy and so the adrenaline is always filling up slowly in my body. With that latter episode in particular I cannot help feeling that the panic had to come out eventually after holding it at bay for so long. I also think holding it at bay is definitely not the answer. It needs flushed out if you will and since that flushing I have much better. Not a new theory but a conclusion I actually came to 3 years ago after a full blown panic attack left me feeling virtually panic free for a short spell after. Its very much a balancing act between pushing yourself and not pushing too much. In that respect time has to be removed as a factor. One of my biggest faults is trying to speed up the process which always ends in regret. Maybe of late I have been doing too much too soon. Maybe I should be going at a slower pace. Its difficult though when you feel you are making some progress to not want to push on. Enough of all that though.

It was strange being back at the country park. Strange because most places I have returned to have not brought familarity. Here it did. Memories came flooding back. There is a children's play park and even without seeing in it I asked my wife if there was a big wooden train there which she confirmed. I saw the big rope climbing frame I remember from the last time I was here. Then other things like an open square where the visitor's centre is and I remembered sitting on a wall with my daughter eating ice cream on a hot day. These are things I had forgotten about. All I remembered from there before going were the animals which we never saw on Wednesday. We will go back though, maybe with the kids, and have a proper look around. It was good getting back out there again.

False dawn

To put things into perspective from a year between 2010 and 2011 I managed to walk over 5 miles in a week only once. 5.5 miles covered in one week and the rest below the 5 mile mark. The 5.5 miles being termed by myself a very good effort. So I don't know why I thought it would be fine to do more than that in one day but on Wednesday I walked just over 6 miles in total. I felt horrendous and there was no going back.

For me there is a certain inevitability when I feel I have reached the peak of this mountain as I posted about last time. And that is that I will over reach myself and fall all the way down the other side. It has been all positive change of late and even strong hope of a road out of this. My high spirits though have been very quickly been brought crashing all around me and I feel I am back where I started all those years ago- constant high anxiety, weak with fatigue and panic attacks coming in cycles.

I have overdone it and as usual right on schedule with the worst time possible. Since that mountain of walks (by my standards) I have had a constant banging headache and can hardly keep my eyes open. All wrong. I pushed and pushed but not in the right way and this is the upshot.

It has coincided with trying to work out my problems with DWP and ATOS. As I said previously the GP refused to give me a letter and redirected me to a government department. After some problems I finally spoke to a woman this morning and spent the whole time in panic. She was a strange one. Very curt one minute and yet compassionate the next. She said she would reluctantly help but its not policy to help without a face to face. All the time I could hardly concentrate between this bloody headache and the panic. I could see the phone visibly shaking in my hand and I had to keep rubbing my eyes for the pain and all this was making me more and more tense and the head sorer.

I feel washed out now and feel all the good work has been ripped up and thrown in the bin. So I need to read to try to cope with this. I remember well Claire Weekes talking of setbacks being inevitable and not to fear them but learn to deal with them. The CBT guy says it too and said no progress will ever be truly lost. At the moment it doesn't feel like that. A walk afterwards with the boy was a struggle and then for the first time in a while a panic attack on the walk brought on by one of those abstract deja vu moments. It has left me feeling shattered and low. Jittery in a body filled with adrenaline and full now of self doubt.

Anyway. At the end of the call I was left little further forward. The lady said that there is no route to appeal based on not being able to stay out long enough- basically not route for the agoraphobic then. But I could appeal on the grounds of social preclusion. And there is always an irony. This may though need to be done after a medical which if I could do I would be able to go to interviews and not need to appeal. She also said my GP is talking bollocks and is holding out to get payment for a letter and that there is no onus on the DWP to contact him. So I have apparently to call him again but there is no way he will do it so I am not. And where that leaves the appeal I do not know but only know its adding more stress and anxiety.

So that is my happy post of the day and thought I might as well get it out my system and out the way. I need to get my head together and tap into that inner strength again. I hate feeling so feable. I don't want this any more than having to rely and be held to ransom on benefits which I need to maintain my family in this small shitty flat. Life could be better. Time to regroup. Sometimes I really do wonder whether its all worth it. What kind of existence is this?

Nightmares in day time

I should have seen it coming because there was something not right from the moment I got up this morning. There was something gnawing at my mind which although I could not put my finger on kept filling me with a sense of dread. In snatches that were hard to hold I got the impression I had been woken at some point by a nightmare that I could not recall but was playing over and over still somewhere in the shadows of my mind.

And as the morning went on the feeling of impending doom got stronger and stronger. Its a horrible thing. There is nothing to focus on and challenge, just an abstract feeling constantly nipping away at the grey matter. But I should have seen it coming because its not the first time. However infrequent it is too frequent and maybe becoming more frequent- the last time I blogged about at the start of February so nearly a 3 month break.

My hope was that after the boy was dropped off from nursery and we went for a walk it would go of its own accord as a product of being stuck indoors alone thinking introspectively as I do which is the breeding ground for all negativity. And so we went. Freezing cold wind right in our face and the driving rain so I could not stay out too long for the sake of the boy but it was not shifting anyway. It just kept coming at me.

When we back home it finally hit and just like last time. It started with a brief moment of deja vu and then I was staring all too vividly into the face of it and it scared the daylights of me. The boy was oblivious. As he sat playing the Wii I was rooted to the couch with my head burning and coming out in cold sweats shaking with fear. As always I cannot actually say what it was except now I have the suspicion it was the memory of a weird nightmare that had woken me during the night and as always ambiguous images along to a tune which is playing far too slowly like I am watching something in slow motion. I must point out however that the actual content of these things I have called "fever moments" are not actually scary but they come on so strongly that I get spooked and the fight or flight system kicks off so basically I am in panic.

So I have been reading the CBT book about obsessional thoughts and I am glad I did because it explains it so well. Its just panic and there is a reason for it. Firstly with anxiety, via fight or flight, the mind is in a high state of alert looking for danger and this is how these mental manifestations occur. Anticipatory anxiety does that- in my case the sense of dread from a nightmare I could not recall (until later) and the fear of it returning- the fear which in fact brought it back to the surface. And even with all that the memory in visuals and sound is not the problem. That is true. As I said the content is not actually scary, just weird. But the importance and meaning attached to it is. The reaction. Then there is the point. The point where if you accept it then it will die down because its the reaction which fuels it- just like a panic attack. I had noted this point before and its maybe my problem solving nature that is the cause but there is a point where I sense I must let it go and yet I can't. I have to see it face on and try to rationalise what it is when I know that is the wrong thing to do but I still do it. I keep noting this and so when I read the following in the book I knew this is really what I am experiencing and going through the process keeping me stuck:

"The thought comes in to your already sensitized and tired mind. It creates intense fear. Because you don’t realise that it is simply part of the fight or flight response you attach a great deal of importance and meaning to it and take it very seriously. You then either think even MORE (in an attempt to solve the problem) or try to BLOCK the thoughts which increases your focus on the thoughts which increases your anxiety which leads to more thoughts - a cycle of fear.

As always it dies down but then your memory of the experience keeps it ticking over in your mind - you fear that it will return so this increases your ANTICIPATORY ANXIETY. Not surprisingly it then returns. You need to understand this CYCLE OF FEAR clearly before you can begin to change it."

That is exactly it and I am attempting to solve a percieved problem when in fact its just a jumbled up memory. That is all it is. Thoughts, sounds and images jumped together in a bizarre mess which are not actually scaring but because I add fear because it is foreign (add undue importance) then I end up panicking and getting freaked by it.

As strange as it may sound after a little episode like that I feel shattered physically. Yes there is an explanation for that too which I will leave you with. But I just wanted to say one last thing. Understanding is key. Knowledge is power. I wrote this post not to scare anyone but in the hope that if anyone reading this has experienced something similar then they may also be able to see through it and not add worry that it is something wrong with them and in doing so keep it recurring. Its just panic. Its nothing to worry about and with understanding and putting that understanding into practice with acceptance and non-reaction then it will vanish. It is at root just a form of obsessional thinking...

"What makes one thought obsessional and another not is the IMPORTANCE and MEANING you attach to the thought.When you DON’T attach a great deal of importance to a thought it won’t cause you any distress. For instance, even when you are feeling anxious you will still have many ordinary day to day thoughts - ”I should eat something”, “I have to get ready to go to work” - and so on.. but these thoughts won’t become obsessional unless you add undue importance to them.

With panic disorder the thoughts might be something like..
“I am going insane” or “I will never be able to stop these thoughts”

Because the perceived MEANING and IMPORTANCE of these thoughts is frightening this activates Fight or Flight sensations. We then try to BLOCK or AVOID the thoughts but the paradox is that the more you try to block thoughts the MORE importance you attach to them and so they increase as does your anxiety and fight or flight sensations which leads to even more thoughts.

You can also become quite fatigued. It’s like waiting for something bad to happen for hours or days at a time - it’s no wonder you can feel exhausted."

Mind of madness

Its just after tea time in this cold flat. The kids are on various electronic devices in their own little worlds. My wife is playing a game on her laptop, in her own little world. And I am entrenched, unfortunately, in my own little dark world. Typing does not feel right. I am so jittery that the fingers feel twitchy, the arms twitichy too. Concentrating is diffcult with an omonous threat hiding beneath the black cloud shrouding my mind.

It happened 3 months ago and I noted then it had happened 3 months before that point and now 3 months on it has happened again. Makes me wonder whether its a cycle. I am at least thankful that it happens so infrequently because it really knocks me for six.

Its been a while since I have had wine because it doesn't seem to agree with me. In my part of the world people talk of "the fear" in relation to a bad hangover. Its a horrible feeling that everyone who has ever had a rough morning from too many excesses the night before can relate to. Its a feeling of impending doom that you cannot put your finger on and makes you feel very shaky. In actual fact its a mild panic attack but doesn't become panic disorder as it is not irrational and people can see its because of how they have made themselves feel and goes when the hangover goes.

I didn't have a hangover but I did have a bottle of wine last night because I was alone watching the kids and had a relaxing Friday night. As I said the first time for a while and this morning I remembered why. I felt two things: fragile and vulnerable. This increased into high anxiety shortly after getting up when the kids started to play up and added noise, crying and fighting to it. All avoidable, all will be avoided in future. But no hangover and I knew I had to accept it, let it pass.

But then something happened. Something that has happened. Something not nice. Its very hard to explain or even understand but I will try my best to. It happened 4 hours ago and lasted at peak no more than a minute or two but even now leaves me shaken. Something I first remember experiencing pre-anxiety when I had a bad flu bout for over 4 weeks in 2003. Like a fever and it never happened again for some years after.

I was sitting and no doubt lost in thought inside myself when something started to come to mind. Something really familiar but which I could not clearly grasp. I was filled with a sense of deja vu yet at the same time whatever it was was completely foreign. There is something about it. Something I have experienced before. Like its been buried under the surface and has suddenly reared but was buried for so long that I vaguely remember it but cannot place. Maybe in dreams. Maybe a recurring nightmare I never recall on waking. But as I move closer to it I get that feeling that I do know it and the closer I get the more terrirified I become.

There are images and there is sound. There is a tune on a loop but its slowed right down. Its familiar and I can't help feeling its from a computer game. Really slow, unbearably slow. Then these faces come into my mind and that is when I cannot help myself as I move closer. As much as I can feel terror growing and as much as I know full well in that moment that it would be in my best interests to mentally get the hell out of there I move closer determined to see what it is. Its like its luring me in and I follow.

Its just out of reach so I apologise for the lack of clarity. Its hard to explain. But at the point I feel I am just about there and can just about place it so can then note it and analyse it later I come over really cold and start coming out in a sweat. The mind goes into overdrive and panic is full blown. In that moment it feels like something has mentally snapped. It feels like I have been pushing on the wall and its cracked. In that moment I am fully in the mind of madness and its terrifying. Again though I cannot describe specifically what "it" is. It just is.

The feeling of being frozen all over and coming out in sweats its not nice. Its alarming and panic esculates. The unreality floods in and I am disconnected with those around me. I need to escape from everyone. I get up and go out the room and realise I cannot run from it and I really need to sit down so return back to where I was. The moment is over but I feel I am still in it because I am in a full blown panic attack where nothing feels real and I feel I have lost it.

As I said I am affected a long time after. There is a threat. There is a sense of impending doom. The reality is that I am full of adrenaline. I am so jittery and when I sit calmly and look I can feel the adrenaline making my limbs buzz. That is why I am jittery. And the reason its going on so long is the sense of impending doom is anticipatory anxiety because I feel fragile and vulnerable to another episode.

Even the moment itself is really just panic. In fact if I am honest its really "just a sensation". It bothers me to say that because it feels anything other than something so simple in that moment of terror. But that is what it is. Its all explained in the books. There are various mental manifestations in relation to anxiety and deja vu is one of them. In fact here is the official list according to some body who feel they know:

MIND
Deja Vu, a feeling like you've done or experienced something before
Desensitisation, depersonalization
Fear of going crazy
Fear of losing control
Fear of impending doom
Feelings of unreality
Frequent feeling of being overwhelmed, or that there is just too much to handle or do..
Having difficulty concentrating.
Obsession about sensations or getting better
Repetitive thinking or incessant ‘mind chatter’
Underlying anxiety, apprehension, or fear
You often feel you are carrying the world on your shoulders

All in there as you can see. Panic can be a scary thing. It leaves you full of doubts. I am full of doubts at the moment. Am I mad? The reality is I am not but that is the thing, its difficult to convince the anxious mind of anything.

So its just panic. Just a sensation. Just some thoughts. Scary as hell though.

The bottle of wine last night I think brought this on but the truth is that its hard to diagnose a trigger and equally futile as knowing the cause makes no difference to sorting the problem. It could just as easily be the fact I am getting out more at the moment and pushing myself to the verge of panic daily without going full blown if I can avoid it. This is like a slow drip of adrenaline which builds over time as I have experienced in the past.

But what has not helped is that I have not done the CBT for a good while. Because I am getting out more I feel I am on the up so no longer need to work on the anxiety. This is of course wrong. Once the panic comes like today it really knocks the stuffing out.

So more problems that could be avoided. I have to work hard. As much as I struggle to convince myself at the moment this will pass and it will pass fairly quickly even though I feel as if its a permanent state. Its hard to believe anything else when my mind is still racing and my body shaking with the jitters. Raw fear. But it will pass and when it does I must get to work on this.

I also have to face those things I have been putting off. On Monday I need to fill out that AtoS form and send it back before the 11th. I also need to write a letter to the credit card company in the hope of at the very least as a loyal customer of over 20 years getting that 30% interest rate reduced that they have been bleeding me dry with for 15 years- don't want to even contemplate how much interest I have paid in that time. Other things need addressing too. I can no longer bury my head in the sand. 

The time is now...

Altered States

I'm feeling proud of myself for small victories. 11 weeks now of 10 mile walks. God, some people twice my age can walk that in the one go. For me though progress. I have only reached that level twice before and both those times were in 2009. The first time I only managed it 2 weeks in a row and the second time 3 times in a row. 2010 and 2011 I never got anywhere near that in a week and this year I started off struggling to break the 2 mile barrier over a week never imagining that I would get to this level for almost 3 months. Its important to give yourself a pat in the back otherwise you just keep taking on the negatives. But I do keep it in perspective. Anyone reading this would think 10 miles in a week: so what? Rightly so, in my world though it means something.

Some cruel tormentor though is at work always looking to slap me down. I logged on to Facebook this morning to look at what's going on in the lives of people I have not seen for over a decade mostly. And there was a post from my dad: 6 mile walk this morning. Slap down. Twenty years my senior and in the last year hospitalised after a heart attack. 6 miles. I struggle to get a mile under my belt. I think: what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I struggle to do a mile and he with his seniority and ill health can do 6 times that? Something is wrong. Of course its that old question for me of how much is agoraphobia and how much is fatigue and how much of the fatigue is caused by the anxiety and how much of the anxiety is caused by the fatigue and so on.

Thinking today I am begining to wonder if fatigue isn't more of a problem because to walk around my block is one third of a mile and were I to attempt doing it 18 times in a row I doubt I could manage past the 3 so that is not agoraphobia. I would start to get anxious but only because I would get breathless and unsteady and weak and feel the need to get back home and rest. Anxiety from my agoraphobic state is definitely a big issue as I know from car journeys but I also have to start accepting that fatigue is as big an issue.  If suddenly I lost my agoraphobia overnight and was anxiety free I still think I would have trouble walking far and attempting any kind of physical exercise. What I also have to remember is that before the anxiety problems started it was fatigue that led me back and forth to the GP without any resolution despite the numerous tests. Just a note.

This is been a strange old week. For the first time in what must be at least 8 years my wife and I spent as few days alone. Her parents took all 3 kids up north last Sunday and my wife went up to get them on Friday. It was strange. Strange being together and finding that with time on our hands there was not much we could do with it together- she could on her own. But for her a welcome break as I have had plenty of time on my own but this was her first time. That is the price you pay when you don't have family living nearby. I doubt, unless I can get myself well soon, there will be another period in the near or distant future until they start leaving home.

That brings me back to guilt. They are growing so quickly and I look at the oldest who is still but a toddler in my head and think she will be 10 next year. All 3 have never known any different from the now- crammed in a small damp ridden flat with no garden and a dad who doesn't work, doesn't go out, won't go to see them in plays at school and won't go weekends away with them. A dad who may very well be as well not being there, what difference would it make? If only this was enough to get me well. If only that will power was enough. Its the kind of thing that has sent me many times out the door headlong into panic and pushed through it with gritted teeth determined to get to that point I keep reading about where the panic subsides and instead finding it increasing more and more until I can take no more, come scuttling home and am of no use to anyone for weeks and sometimes months after. So frustrating.

But any road to recovery starts at least, and usually with, small steps. I wonder if a really disturbing episode is a step in that direction. When I say disturbing I mean disturbing to me at the time because I could not seem to handle it but on reflection now nothing to worry about. On Monday I had this strong sense of deja vu but with it came a sense of dread and I could not get it out of my head. The reason on reflection was probably change. My day never changes and yet here I was with my wife and no kids and it seemed to take me back a decade and unsettled me. I remember reading in a Dr Claire Weekes book once how people in a situation such as I am in can find even subtle change very hard to deal with but until Monday had never experienced it to my knowledge- though if I look back I probably have. What it did was lead to full on mental panic which is basically like a sensory overload giving a sense of unreality which if I am honest is scary even when you know what it is. I really could not get to grips with it at all but by the Tuesday it was gone. I say it could be a step in the right direction as I see it as an extreme of something else I have been experiencing lately.

Over the past few weeks and to a lesser extent over the past few months I have been experiencing weird flashbacks. Well not weird but just out of place. What they are is actually flashbacks of normality. I could be at the laptop reading or typing and see a bank of Scotland in Edinburgh where I used to withdraw money when I worked there. For a moment I see myself as a passenger in a certain street in Perth from when I lived there and a street I had forgotten about. More and more of them come. It makes me wonder if its my mind trying to make sense of it and trying to stitch back the normality that existed for so long before the agoraphobic days of my latter years. I have become so introspective and so cut off that I see it as the mind starting to build paths to the world that exists outside of the bubble I have been living in and the begining of piecing reality back together in some ways a bit like what might happen to someone who has been in a cell for 10 years and finds the outside world daunting but over time it all starts to come back and the fear of it is lost. Just a theory but one I am hopeful of as I know that I cannot just go from this existence straight back into what I once termed normality.

So positives of sorts. Also in mentioning there mental panic I was given thought to look back at the actual panic in my life of late and have to say I cannot remember any episodes. Strange but good. Last weekend was the closest right up to the arrival of my parents for the first time in a few months but it went much better than expected and then the following day I had the inlaws for a much longer time at home. No panic. Not entirely anxiety free experiences by any means and still fleeting panic with the constant threat of it going full blown but no actual panic attack. So good. More positives. I have to note these things and try to use them to spur me on. What I have learned is that I cannot rush this. I have to keep at least maintaining what I am doing and when time comes to increase things it will come naturally and gradually. I just have to go along with it and pick up every little tiny positive and pin it to my chest to remind me I could be heading in the right direction however far off the end in sight still seems.