CharleneMac
06-10-14, 18:39
Count to 10, count to 10, count to 10!!!
My heart was beating too fast, my legs were going numb, and I didn’t know where I was. I need to get a breath in, why can’t I get a breath in? Omg I’m going to pass out, what if no one can find me? The dizziness was getting too much; I can feel the room closing in around me. Oh please god let someone find me, I’m going to die here and no one will ever know. My arms are going numb now. Oh god I won’t even be able to phone anyone, I’m paralysed. I need to run. Why can’t I stand up? I need to get out of here …. Now.
i needed to sleep, desperately needed to sleep. Exhaustion taking over from the other feelings. I can’t sleep; if I sleep then I’ll never wake back up again. How will he cope if he has to find my body here in the morning? It’s not fair on him, if I just don’t sleep I’ll be ok then once he wakes up then I can go to sleep and everything will be ok.
That’s pretty much how it feels. These panic attacks are like a poison that seeps through your body. You feel like the most helpless person on the planet and like your life is over. There and then … you’re a goner.
Then you come too, exhausted and disorientated but you are alive. All of a sudden a million thoughts go through your head … why me?? What did I do that brought it on?? Will it happen again?? Omg it is going to happen again. On and on the thoughts go and you really just can’t stop them.
Cue Mr Anxiety, lurking in the background waiting to take over. He stands there and laughs at you. He knows he’s winning and there is very little you can do about it. He’s urging you ‘go on, take the medicines. What you don’t realise is you’re going to be feeding me. IL become even stronger till the point you can’t cope and then I’ll just be part of your life forever’.
You question your own sanity ‘ am I going mad’ now people tell you that if you were truly going mad then you wouldn’t know about it but trust me when you are trapped in your own mind that’s exactly how you feel. You get trapped in such a cycle that you just can’t get out of. It pretty much goes like this …
· The first panic attack
· The thoughts ‘ I went to the supermarket before it happened’ ‘I had a few glasses of wine the night before’ ‘ I took my painkillers right before it happened’
· The fear “I go to the supermarket it will happen again" " I drink wine then it will happen again" " I take any medicine it will happen again’.
The results? You start avoiding things. You don’t want to go to the supermarket, you don’t want to drink that wine or take those meds. You start looking deeper into things. "Well what if it wasn’t the supermarket, what if it was just going out the house".
Before you know it your living in the house, too scared to leave and too scared to do anything.
But the panic attacks still happen. You really aren’t in control of anything and you start becoming depressed. You wake up in the morning with a knot of dread in your stomach. You look at the world and everything is a danger to you. I’ve often walked down the street and I’m convinced a car will come off the road and hit me, if its windy then obviously that tree is going to fall on my head.
In the car then it’s clear I’m going to be in a car crash and it’s going to be the biggest vehicle on the road that will hit me. Even in the house my fears are more profound. I went through a stage of being scared of my washing machine because when it was on spin I was convinced the drum was going to come out and hit me. I spent far too much time trying to work out the safest place in the house to be so that my family could have clean clothes!!
One of my biggest fears was of my house being on fire. It meant I couldn’t sleep; I was walking from room to room checking sockets and double checking them. I just couldn’t settle and at one point I had smoke alarms in every single room in the house. Can u imagine how that went when I burnt the toast?? Yep it was loud.
I’ve pretty much got an endless list of fears and phobias, some of them very real, some of them pretty pathetic. I mean how often will a plane land on your house?? Exactly!! But I’m convinced it is going to happen. Literally the world revolves around me, not in a nice way.
Now people without mental illness would read this and think ‘really!!’ but yeh … that’s pretty much the basis of someone’s life who suffers from mental health issues. We do not choose for this to happen, we do not want to continue living in the state but trying to get back out of it isn’t as easy as you might think.
Can you imagine that you were trapped in all of these thoughts but you knew that help was out there but it involves taking a tablet (ever read the side effects of these things?? we can’t even take a paracetamol without fear … how the hell do u think we can manage that). Then there are courses that retrain your brain ( cbt ) but to get to those courses you need to leave your house ( remember how scary we think that is ), we might need to get on public transport ( the bus will crash, there will be people with illnesses and I’ll catch them all ) then you get to the place and it’s a new person ( omg she thinks I’m nuts, she thinks I’m fat, I can see her judging me … she hates me ).
Yep so we know help is out there but how the hell can we get it when everything is out to get us!!
Then starts the inner arguments. You try and rationalize everything in your head. I’ve walked down that road a million times before and nothing happened, I’ve been on buses plenty of times and I’m still here to tell the tale. But then this little dark voice tells you ‘aye but that was before, there always has to be a first time for everything’ and you just don’t do it.
So yeh can you see the inner turmoil that we go through?? Well see there’s this little bonus called health anxiety!! Yup this is a beauty. So you have a headache … you take paracetamol etc., lie down and boom … it’s gone.
Here’s how it goes for a sufferer.
I’ve got a headache, right I need to take meds but I’ll take an allergic reaction, I won’t be able to breath, ill collapse and die. Right ok I won’t take the meds but I will go and lie in a dark room. Then the thoughts kick in … I’ve been having headaches a lot recently, maybe I’ve got something wrong with me, I think I’ll take a look online and see what it could be. Within an hour you find out that technically you should have died yesterday as you now have a brain tumour, possibly a stroke to go with it and maybe a blood clot just to seal the deal.
Now comes the visit to the docs ( we can do this sometimes if we are really lucky) so you sit down and you say ‘ hey doc I’ve been having headaches real bad’ and he says ‘ how are you feeling generally’ and you say ‘ aw my anxiety is bad yada yada yada’ and then he says ‘ it will be the anxiety that is causing it, here have these meds that you will never be brave enough to take ( he didn’t actual say that but that’s what we hear ) and everything will be better’.
So we walk out the room convinced that the doctor is all part of the conspiracy. He knows that there is some deadly illness but he just won’t tell you. So then you don’t take the meds … things get worse and the thoughts get worse.
This pretty much happens with everything and I mean everything. Sore leg? Blood clot. Aches and pains? Leukaemia or some other deadly illness. Sickness bug? Food poisoning. Headache? Stroke, haemorrhage, brain tumour, meningitis.
So yeh the head of a sufferer is a pretty busy thing and I can tell you it is very very exhausting.
Now leads on to how people see you from the outside. You see with this illness you get all manner of physical symptoms too. The whole body can get affected and it sneaks right up on you and u don’t even know it’s happening till bam … game over.
There is a million symptoms that go with it all, I won’t bother going into them all here but I will add them all in at the end. You will get exhausted just reading them … yep trying living with them.
So yeh, outsiders. The biggest symptoms ill focus on is the exhaustion and the cycle it involves because this is the biggest one that affects day to day life. So you have all these thoughts in your head, the anxiety is constant and every nerve ending in your body is frazzled. You try to sleep at night but the thoughts don’t let you. If you are really unlucky you get the nightmares to go with it. You wake up the next morning and you are exhausted. Not just a little tired … like you have lead weights attached to you exhausted.
So the kids have wrecked the house, there are breakfast dishes everywhere, your other half has left the dirty washing everywhere and there is a tide mark in the bath. Now anyone else would stick the radio on and get tore into it.
Not us lot, no we see a war zone. Your body physically cannot move. Your brain gets so overwhelmed with what needs done that you just cannot break it down into small tasks. Some of us might even try and get things done but it gets too overwhelming. You might think ‘I’ll just have something to eat for a little energy’ but since the ball of anxiety has taken up residence in there, there is very little room for food. So you try again and it’s just not happening. You sit down to try and get yourself together and bam … you fall asleep!!
You wake up horrified, nothing is done and everyone is due home. So you get yourself into a state, try and do what you can but there is very little energy to actually do it. Hubby and kids come home ‘mum where is my such n such’ ‘mum I’m hungry and I need food NOW’ ‘hey luv I thought you might have cleaned up today’ ‘what did you do all day’ ‘you went to sleep? Well that isn’t going to get things done’ … you get the general idea.
So you end up phoning a take away because the kitchen is a riot and you just can’t face cooking. It’s going through your head ‘I’m lazy’ ‘I’m a useless mother’ ‘I’m a useless partner’ ‘what is the point in me being here, they are better off without me’.
Then you get the others who think they are helping ‘ just get over it’ ‘ u need to get out the house and stop feeling sorry for yourself’ ‘ you really need to make an effort I mean look at the state of things now’ ‘ you really should take the meds I don’t understand why you won’t’ … again it’s an endless list.
So when you hear these things it makes you more depressed that you can’t do things and you can’t get better for everyone else. Are you starting to sense a pattern here??
Now there does come a point where we hit rock bottom. We will go to the doctor and we will get meds. They might sit on the sideboard like an ornament for a few months but one day will come and we will take them!! This is where the fun begins because you see; there are loads and loads of different treatments and combinations. There is no one size fits all solution to it all.
So you start the meds … boom side effects hit you. They increases, yes you read that right … they increase the anxiety. You take a good few more panic attacks than usual; you literally cannot eat and spend the day with your face in a bucket wanting to throw up the little you have managed to eat. Then there is the sleep … insomnia is a big side effect. But don’t be fooled into thinking you will be able to get things done because they also caused severe exhaustion. So can you see why the meds are such a fear for us?? Yep no wonder!!
Now some people hit pay dirt and their first med will be the answer to their prayers. But for many sufferers this isn’t the case. It can take years and years to find the right meds and dosage and the whole time you get to go on the rollercoaster of the side effects on start-up, the results of the meds in your system and boy can these really really mess you up, then you have to withdraw from the meds and start on yet another !!
Does it still seem so easy to get over it and pull ourselves together?? No its not.
Once you get a few months or years down the line you don’t have a life that you recognise. You are literally a shadow of your former self, your relationship is suffering due to the situation and there is nothing you can do about it. You stop doing things with the kids and literally feel like you’re going to die with the guilt for what you are putting them through. You might still have family and friends left but you never go out to see them … you start to lose contact and you find that people you were once close to just aren’t interested anymore. You crave the reassurance and love from those who stuck by you but at the same time you feel so useless and unlovable you push them away.
Now I’m not saying that people do not get better, because they really really do. But there is a small amount of people who don’t. They get in too deep and develop illnesses like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome that take over lives and their body … but that’s a whole other story.
I wanted to tell my side of my story because I get very frustrated with people thinking I’m being self-indulgent, selfish, lazy, a drama queen and a hypochondriac. I can assure you if I could get out of this mess then I would. It is not easy and every single day of my life I’m fighting with all that I have to fix it. But you have to realise that the demon illness steals ever single bit of hope and self-worth from you. You no longer trust your own thoughts and actions. You no longer trust other people and you especially no longer trust the medical professions. If I could click my fingers and get better I would.
So I’m sleeping during the day? Maybe I had a panic attack that exhausted me or I didn’t sleep last night for the nightmares
So my house isn’t clean? Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted or my body is too sore to be able to do anything that day
So I don’t want to go out? It’s not because I don’t want to spend time with you
So I don’t want to talk to anyone? My inner demons have taking over and I don’t even want to hear my own voice never mind anyone else’s
The biggest problem is that we do have good days too. There might be days when we can get the house cleaned, there is enough energy to take the kids to the park, make a proper dinner for everyone, and maybe even go for a night out. But then there are the dark days where u can’t do anything at all. But you have to deal with people saying ‘ well you were fine enough to go out with such n such the other night’ or ‘ you cleaned up last week, what’s the difference now’ … you literally feel like banging your head off a wall. You can’t do right for doing wrong. You can’t keep everyone happy and you have this constant guilt to live with for letting everyone down whilst living with everything else.
So yeh … that’s a bit of an insight into what goes on. It’s really not nice and all we want is support and love to get better. I will add a few links and websites onto this for anyone looking for further information.
· http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/articles/symptoms
· http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/
· http://www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/
· http://www.samaritans.org/
· http://www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk/bspace/CCC_FirstPage.jsp
My heart was beating too fast, my legs were going numb, and I didn’t know where I was. I need to get a breath in, why can’t I get a breath in? Omg I’m going to pass out, what if no one can find me? The dizziness was getting too much; I can feel the room closing in around me. Oh please god let someone find me, I’m going to die here and no one will ever know. My arms are going numb now. Oh god I won’t even be able to phone anyone, I’m paralysed. I need to run. Why can’t I stand up? I need to get out of here …. Now.
i needed to sleep, desperately needed to sleep. Exhaustion taking over from the other feelings. I can’t sleep; if I sleep then I’ll never wake back up again. How will he cope if he has to find my body here in the morning? It’s not fair on him, if I just don’t sleep I’ll be ok then once he wakes up then I can go to sleep and everything will be ok.
That’s pretty much how it feels. These panic attacks are like a poison that seeps through your body. You feel like the most helpless person on the planet and like your life is over. There and then … you’re a goner.
Then you come too, exhausted and disorientated but you are alive. All of a sudden a million thoughts go through your head … why me?? What did I do that brought it on?? Will it happen again?? Omg it is going to happen again. On and on the thoughts go and you really just can’t stop them.
Cue Mr Anxiety, lurking in the background waiting to take over. He stands there and laughs at you. He knows he’s winning and there is very little you can do about it. He’s urging you ‘go on, take the medicines. What you don’t realise is you’re going to be feeding me. IL become even stronger till the point you can’t cope and then I’ll just be part of your life forever’.
You question your own sanity ‘ am I going mad’ now people tell you that if you were truly going mad then you wouldn’t know about it but trust me when you are trapped in your own mind that’s exactly how you feel. You get trapped in such a cycle that you just can’t get out of. It pretty much goes like this …
· The first panic attack
· The thoughts ‘ I went to the supermarket before it happened’ ‘I had a few glasses of wine the night before’ ‘ I took my painkillers right before it happened’
· The fear “I go to the supermarket it will happen again" " I drink wine then it will happen again" " I take any medicine it will happen again’.
The results? You start avoiding things. You don’t want to go to the supermarket, you don’t want to drink that wine or take those meds. You start looking deeper into things. "Well what if it wasn’t the supermarket, what if it was just going out the house".
Before you know it your living in the house, too scared to leave and too scared to do anything.
But the panic attacks still happen. You really aren’t in control of anything and you start becoming depressed. You wake up in the morning with a knot of dread in your stomach. You look at the world and everything is a danger to you. I’ve often walked down the street and I’m convinced a car will come off the road and hit me, if its windy then obviously that tree is going to fall on my head.
In the car then it’s clear I’m going to be in a car crash and it’s going to be the biggest vehicle on the road that will hit me. Even in the house my fears are more profound. I went through a stage of being scared of my washing machine because when it was on spin I was convinced the drum was going to come out and hit me. I spent far too much time trying to work out the safest place in the house to be so that my family could have clean clothes!!
One of my biggest fears was of my house being on fire. It meant I couldn’t sleep; I was walking from room to room checking sockets and double checking them. I just couldn’t settle and at one point I had smoke alarms in every single room in the house. Can u imagine how that went when I burnt the toast?? Yep it was loud.
I’ve pretty much got an endless list of fears and phobias, some of them very real, some of them pretty pathetic. I mean how often will a plane land on your house?? Exactly!! But I’m convinced it is going to happen. Literally the world revolves around me, not in a nice way.
Now people without mental illness would read this and think ‘really!!’ but yeh … that’s pretty much the basis of someone’s life who suffers from mental health issues. We do not choose for this to happen, we do not want to continue living in the state but trying to get back out of it isn’t as easy as you might think.
Can you imagine that you were trapped in all of these thoughts but you knew that help was out there but it involves taking a tablet (ever read the side effects of these things?? we can’t even take a paracetamol without fear … how the hell do u think we can manage that). Then there are courses that retrain your brain ( cbt ) but to get to those courses you need to leave your house ( remember how scary we think that is ), we might need to get on public transport ( the bus will crash, there will be people with illnesses and I’ll catch them all ) then you get to the place and it’s a new person ( omg she thinks I’m nuts, she thinks I’m fat, I can see her judging me … she hates me ).
Yep so we know help is out there but how the hell can we get it when everything is out to get us!!
Then starts the inner arguments. You try and rationalize everything in your head. I’ve walked down that road a million times before and nothing happened, I’ve been on buses plenty of times and I’m still here to tell the tale. But then this little dark voice tells you ‘aye but that was before, there always has to be a first time for everything’ and you just don’t do it.
So yeh can you see the inner turmoil that we go through?? Well see there’s this little bonus called health anxiety!! Yup this is a beauty. So you have a headache … you take paracetamol etc., lie down and boom … it’s gone.
Here’s how it goes for a sufferer.
I’ve got a headache, right I need to take meds but I’ll take an allergic reaction, I won’t be able to breath, ill collapse and die. Right ok I won’t take the meds but I will go and lie in a dark room. Then the thoughts kick in … I’ve been having headaches a lot recently, maybe I’ve got something wrong with me, I think I’ll take a look online and see what it could be. Within an hour you find out that technically you should have died yesterday as you now have a brain tumour, possibly a stroke to go with it and maybe a blood clot just to seal the deal.
Now comes the visit to the docs ( we can do this sometimes if we are really lucky) so you sit down and you say ‘ hey doc I’ve been having headaches real bad’ and he says ‘ how are you feeling generally’ and you say ‘ aw my anxiety is bad yada yada yada’ and then he says ‘ it will be the anxiety that is causing it, here have these meds that you will never be brave enough to take ( he didn’t actual say that but that’s what we hear ) and everything will be better’.
So we walk out the room convinced that the doctor is all part of the conspiracy. He knows that there is some deadly illness but he just won’t tell you. So then you don’t take the meds … things get worse and the thoughts get worse.
This pretty much happens with everything and I mean everything. Sore leg? Blood clot. Aches and pains? Leukaemia or some other deadly illness. Sickness bug? Food poisoning. Headache? Stroke, haemorrhage, brain tumour, meningitis.
So yeh the head of a sufferer is a pretty busy thing and I can tell you it is very very exhausting.
Now leads on to how people see you from the outside. You see with this illness you get all manner of physical symptoms too. The whole body can get affected and it sneaks right up on you and u don’t even know it’s happening till bam … game over.
There is a million symptoms that go with it all, I won’t bother going into them all here but I will add them all in at the end. You will get exhausted just reading them … yep trying living with them.
So yeh, outsiders. The biggest symptoms ill focus on is the exhaustion and the cycle it involves because this is the biggest one that affects day to day life. So you have all these thoughts in your head, the anxiety is constant and every nerve ending in your body is frazzled. You try to sleep at night but the thoughts don’t let you. If you are really unlucky you get the nightmares to go with it. You wake up the next morning and you are exhausted. Not just a little tired … like you have lead weights attached to you exhausted.
So the kids have wrecked the house, there are breakfast dishes everywhere, your other half has left the dirty washing everywhere and there is a tide mark in the bath. Now anyone else would stick the radio on and get tore into it.
Not us lot, no we see a war zone. Your body physically cannot move. Your brain gets so overwhelmed with what needs done that you just cannot break it down into small tasks. Some of us might even try and get things done but it gets too overwhelming. You might think ‘I’ll just have something to eat for a little energy’ but since the ball of anxiety has taken up residence in there, there is very little room for food. So you try again and it’s just not happening. You sit down to try and get yourself together and bam … you fall asleep!!
You wake up horrified, nothing is done and everyone is due home. So you get yourself into a state, try and do what you can but there is very little energy to actually do it. Hubby and kids come home ‘mum where is my such n such’ ‘mum I’m hungry and I need food NOW’ ‘hey luv I thought you might have cleaned up today’ ‘what did you do all day’ ‘you went to sleep? Well that isn’t going to get things done’ … you get the general idea.
So you end up phoning a take away because the kitchen is a riot and you just can’t face cooking. It’s going through your head ‘I’m lazy’ ‘I’m a useless mother’ ‘I’m a useless partner’ ‘what is the point in me being here, they are better off without me’.
Then you get the others who think they are helping ‘ just get over it’ ‘ u need to get out the house and stop feeling sorry for yourself’ ‘ you really need to make an effort I mean look at the state of things now’ ‘ you really should take the meds I don’t understand why you won’t’ … again it’s an endless list.
So when you hear these things it makes you more depressed that you can’t do things and you can’t get better for everyone else. Are you starting to sense a pattern here??
Now there does come a point where we hit rock bottom. We will go to the doctor and we will get meds. They might sit on the sideboard like an ornament for a few months but one day will come and we will take them!! This is where the fun begins because you see; there are loads and loads of different treatments and combinations. There is no one size fits all solution to it all.
So you start the meds … boom side effects hit you. They increases, yes you read that right … they increase the anxiety. You take a good few more panic attacks than usual; you literally cannot eat and spend the day with your face in a bucket wanting to throw up the little you have managed to eat. Then there is the sleep … insomnia is a big side effect. But don’t be fooled into thinking you will be able to get things done because they also caused severe exhaustion. So can you see why the meds are such a fear for us?? Yep no wonder!!
Now some people hit pay dirt and their first med will be the answer to their prayers. But for many sufferers this isn’t the case. It can take years and years to find the right meds and dosage and the whole time you get to go on the rollercoaster of the side effects on start-up, the results of the meds in your system and boy can these really really mess you up, then you have to withdraw from the meds and start on yet another !!
Does it still seem so easy to get over it and pull ourselves together?? No its not.
Once you get a few months or years down the line you don’t have a life that you recognise. You are literally a shadow of your former self, your relationship is suffering due to the situation and there is nothing you can do about it. You stop doing things with the kids and literally feel like you’re going to die with the guilt for what you are putting them through. You might still have family and friends left but you never go out to see them … you start to lose contact and you find that people you were once close to just aren’t interested anymore. You crave the reassurance and love from those who stuck by you but at the same time you feel so useless and unlovable you push them away.
Now I’m not saying that people do not get better, because they really really do. But there is a small amount of people who don’t. They get in too deep and develop illnesses like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome that take over lives and their body … but that’s a whole other story.
I wanted to tell my side of my story because I get very frustrated with people thinking I’m being self-indulgent, selfish, lazy, a drama queen and a hypochondriac. I can assure you if I could get out of this mess then I would. It is not easy and every single day of my life I’m fighting with all that I have to fix it. But you have to realise that the demon illness steals ever single bit of hope and self-worth from you. You no longer trust your own thoughts and actions. You no longer trust other people and you especially no longer trust the medical professions. If I could click my fingers and get better I would.
So I’m sleeping during the day? Maybe I had a panic attack that exhausted me or I didn’t sleep last night for the nightmares
So my house isn’t clean? Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted or my body is too sore to be able to do anything that day
So I don’t want to go out? It’s not because I don’t want to spend time with you
So I don’t want to talk to anyone? My inner demons have taking over and I don’t even want to hear my own voice never mind anyone else’s
The biggest problem is that we do have good days too. There might be days when we can get the house cleaned, there is enough energy to take the kids to the park, make a proper dinner for everyone, and maybe even go for a night out. But then there are the dark days where u can’t do anything at all. But you have to deal with people saying ‘ well you were fine enough to go out with such n such the other night’ or ‘ you cleaned up last week, what’s the difference now’ … you literally feel like banging your head off a wall. You can’t do right for doing wrong. You can’t keep everyone happy and you have this constant guilt to live with for letting everyone down whilst living with everything else.
So yeh … that’s a bit of an insight into what goes on. It’s really not nice and all we want is support and love to get better. I will add a few links and websites onto this for anyone looking for further information.
· http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/articles/symptoms
· http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/
· http://www.moodjuice.scot.nhs.uk/
· http://www.samaritans.org/
· http://www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk/bspace/CCC_FirstPage.jsp