What a HORRIBLE ride!

It's been one of those days where you wake up feeling great and you do your normal routine, feel like a million bucks, and then start driving down the highway and feel completely disconnected from life. Here comes the PANIC!

How miserable it is to feel as if your brain is being weighted down. Everything appears so surreal, like it is all just a dream. You try to talk your self down saying things like "it's okay you are not going to crash and kill people. You are not going to fall asleep for unknown reasons and crash. You are not going to go blind while driving. This is real, take deep breaths and realize you are being irrational." None of these ever work of course. Sometimes I think "just hold on until you get off the exist and then you can take a klonopin". I don't take them while I am driving-That would cause a problem!


You feel your heart pumping faster, literally feel your blood pressure raising (it feels like you are swelling up), fingers, toes, tongue, or some other part of your body starts tingling, and then the shakiness from being on edge, and then BOOM here it is. The dreadful moment of a full on panic attack! Concentrating on anything but irrational thoughts is out of the question. Calming down will not happen for about 20 minutes, and even then your blood pressure will still be high. When you panic it feels like the world is coming in on you through a tunnel. It is eating away at your security, your confidence, and your motivation. It is disturbingly horrifying, especially because deep down you know you are overreacting and NOTHING has or will happen.


How do I deal with this?
I stay for the ride. I have no way of escaping this panic attack unless I am in an area where taking klonopin is acceptable and not dangerous. It is the longest 15 to 20 minutes but it will end. I just keep saying "this will pass" over and over again. Swallowing the lumps of fear, trying not to shake too badly. Eventually it will end. However, this panic attack will make you not want to do the activity that caused the panic attack to begin with. For me it can be driving, social areas filled with people, or having to talk about something medically serious.  It's one of the toughest things I deal with besides manic episodes.
It started when I was 19. I was singing an oldies song and this awful feeling washed over me like the world was about to come to a halt. Not knowing what was happening I of course started to panic more! Thinking to myself "I am having a stroke, or a heart attack, oh my god what do I do". I ended up in tears parked in a store's lot. I called a friend to come get me because while the house was only three blocks away I could not force myself to get back in the driver's seat. My mind absolutely forbid it. This happened more and more and got worse and worse to the point were I barely drive and barely go out. I finally did see a doctor when I was 20 who diagnosed me with Bipolar disorder and panic disorder. All the previous years my mom would say I would have 'episodes'- I would rage out and just be so angry, or I would become so down it would scare people because I went into a very dark place. So when this doctor told me what was happening I did not know how to feel. Good because I know now, or Bad because this is going to be my life forever?

More on this later!

Class time.

Lea