Panic Attacks

This is not a precisely educational post. It's not about panic disorders so much as physical anxiety symptoms. You see, since I started the fall semester I've had two severe bouts of anxiety during my classes. I normally experience only minor physical anxiety and can go take my medication without anyone knowing but what I'm noticing now is that the times when I get full on panic attacks, I don't have that warning system. I also noticed that I get two distinct types of attacks.

Usually I just feel a warmness spread throughout my chest (I picture it in my mind as dripping food coloring in water, the way it spreads and permeates) but it seems that my panic attacks completely skips this.

The first is what I expect is a textbook PA: In this instance I had to give a 2 minute self introduction to my Japanese class. It started well and I recovered easily from my small stumbles. After about 10 seconds I started to feel very hot and somewhat confused. I couldn't remember anything at all and my body started shaking badly. The more severe my physical symptoms became, the less I could remember and the less I remembered, the worse my physical anxiety became. It just happened that my physical symptoms preceded my forgetting, though from the outside it would have appeared to be the other way around.

The second type is the more frightening of the two: During my second koto lesson, I felt very overwhelmed by the tuning process (13 strings!) and even after I finally got help, it didn't let up any. I suddenly became aware of how hot I felt and pulled out my folding fan. It's amazing how astute your instincts can be in times of duress. I just knew from the beginning that I couldn't (or shouldn't) move. I had had this kind of attack in the past, where I felt that I had to stay as still as I could, and when my roommate tried to get me to move I had an outburst followed by an hour long panic attack. I was physically incapable of using my legs or speaking. All I could do was cry and hope she'd come help me.

I recognize this sensation and was determined not to let it go that far. I couldn't go take my meds so I tried deep breathing and cooling myself. The deep breathing just made things worse and I eventually got as far as not being able to speak and couldn't keep a grip on my fan so I just used both hands to brace myself on the floor. Without really thinking about it I started slowing my breath as much as I possibly could, and my anxiety went down to a perfectly manageable level. I was able to continue after that without even taking the medication.

I now see myself as being armed with more tools to combat these attacks in the future. No matter what, I don't want this or anything else to control my life. What do you do to help yourself get through panic attacks?

Project: Emergency Self-care Kit

One of the most important skills for a person with a mental disorder is the ability to self soothe. When having any kind of severe episode, a person's ability to plan or figure out how to help themselves goes down drastically. That's why my aftercare therapist assigned us to create an "Emergency Self-care Kit."

An emergency self-care kit is a box or bag that you put together in advance filled with anything and everything that makes you feel relaxed and happy. Because you think about it before you have a problem, you have a clearer mind and when you need it you don't have to worry about what to do, just take it out.

Examples of stuff you can put inside:
A journal (don't forget the pen!!)
A cd of specially picked songs
Tissues or a hanky
Bubble bath
Chocolate
A favorite stuffed animal
...and anything else you think can help.

Optional: After you put it together, leave a comment with some ideas to inspire other's kits!

Let's have a talk about psychosis

As you can see I'm back and not dead, so it's time to get back in the saddle, so to speak. I've decided to talk today about psychosis. This is prompted by a post I read on another forum. Possibly more than any other disorders with gross misconceptions about them, I am very touchy about psychotic symptoms in the media. Whereas most mental illnesses are portrayed as exaggerated stereotypes of the real thing, psychosis is just the catch-all term for crazy (particularly violent crazy) and why not? Morphologically speaking, it sounds like it should be, right?

What it really is: Psychosis is a symptom of various other mental disorders that impairs a person's ability to accurately interact with the world and respond appropriately. The most common psychoses are hallucinations and delusions.

Who can get it: Lots of people. People who have depression, bipolar, and personality disorders, for instance, can have psychosis symptoms. On the other hand, Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, due to the symptoms being the main component of the disorder.

Delusions are when a person has an unshakable belief in something that could be possible, but is unlikely. A person suffering from delusions may, for instance, believe that a person is in love with them and take it as far as stalking the object of their delusion and/or attacking the person's actual love interest. It could also manifest as believing a person they see regularly is stalking them, so they make habits of taking needlessly complicated routes everywhere and never taking the same route twice. A delusion could even be a belief that you have supernatural abilities (more on this later).

Hallucinations are when a person experiences things no one else does. Possible types of hallucinations include visual, auditory and even smells. These can be frightening for the person experiencing them but most often are completely harmless. They become a problem when the sufferer loses the ability to distinguish what is and isn't real. Sounds like a lot of psychological thriller plotlines...

Brief Reactive Psychosis is a temporary affliction where a person has psychoses only in times of stress. These episodes may be as short as one day and as long as a month.

Treatment: Other than taking anti-psychotic drugs like Zyprexa, it seems that many treatments mirror those for depression. These can be found in the reference link for interested parties.

I used to regularly have auditory and visual hallucinations before I was diagnosed and put on meds. Nothing major, just a black cloud on the corner of my vision or short amounts of "white noise," as I called it. Not the same as the white noise on TV, I described it as many voices speaking all at once so you can't make out any single one. The auditory ones got steadily worse, then suddenly stopped. The last one was a flat sounding voice calling out to me. It scared me because it was the first time that a voice I heard was directed at me and not one I just happened to "overhear." My parents were there and saw me frantically checking doors and windows, even the neighbor's doors. I probably freaked them out, honestly.

These hallucinations stopped for over a year. Then this past spring when I reached the middle of the semester and I was panicking because I hadn't finished a spring semester in two years and didn't think I could do it, add in problems with my apartment neighbors, and I had two days of the worst visual hallucinations I'd ever had. I saw a man holding a large kitchen knife, a figure running across the room, and then an ant crawling on me (that I knew wasn't real because I couldn't feel it on my skin). It's enough to make a person paranoid. On that third day I still couldn't trust my eyes but there were no more after that.

My friends will tell you I am pragmatic and rational to a fault. Despite this, and because of my past psychotic episodes, I can't trust in the world that everyone else sees. I believed that those auditory hallucinations were other's thoughts, as the white noise only happened in crowded places, and that the voice that called to me was another consciousness reaching out to me. A part of me still believes that, after all, who's to say that it isn't true? Even my highly rational mind can't just rule it out. Am I delusional? Probably. But I'd love to see you try it without developing some kind of warped sense of reality!

Resource: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/psychoticdisorders.html