Anatomy Of An Anxiety Attack

This blog is going to be a little different to the others, possibly a little fucked up (sorry mam), but I’m going to try and document something.

This is what happens when I’m going through an anxiety attack.

The attack came on Monday 9th May. I made notes as best I could add it was going so I could chronicle it properly for this. I’ve then been able to go back and write it out properly afterwards. I’ve tried to write it in the present tense to keep it more immediate.

It was there when I woke up over an hour ago. I felt like I was coming out of a bad dream abruptly. Did the dream trigger it? I don’t know. All I know is since I started wearing the CPAP machine for my sleep apnoea, sleep has been completely different for me. I spent so many years feeling like I wasn’t sleeping or dreaming that sleep can really throw me. Dreams, when I remember them, seem really vivid. Sometimes it takes me a while for my mind to adjust, to realise it’s not sleeping, that the dreams aren’t real.

I go to the bathroom and start to get ready. Even the simple act of getting ready seems wrong. Let’s face it, it’s a daily ritual we could all do in our sleep. This morning I feel agitated and short of breath. My brain feels disconnected to what I’m doing, everything had to be done deliberately, like I’m doing everything for the first time. Toilet. Brush teeth. Wash. Get ready. Do beard and hair. Put on my rings and wrist things. Each step feels alien, almost like I’m controlling a character in a game. I feel like a visitor in my own body.

I’m jittery and breathless by the time I’d got downstairs. I tell Sarah what was going on and she suggests going upstairs and running my tapping exercises. I say I’m going to head into work. I need to change my buses at Durham and I could make a decision there to what to do. I put my boots on (which I don’t remember doing), grab my bag and the coffee Sarah had made for me and head for the bus.

I pull up ‘White Pony’ by the Deftones on my ipod as I wait for the bus that’s running a few minutes late. I go through my normal morning routines whilst I try to focus myself into getting ready for the day. Thought the simple acts of checking my phone for email, Facebook and messages would help distract me as I work on trying to shut down the anxiety. It doesn’t. The usual steps I take aren’t working. This means the attack is a big one. I would need to do my EFT/tapping exercises. Which means I would have to stop my journey to work and go somewhere quiet.

I have to change buses in Durham. I know when I get off the first bus that I need to get somewhere quiet and get this under control as best as I can. Luckily, even though Durham is a city, it’s a small and relatively quiet one. I walk up towards the cathedral that’s situated on the top of a hill. I find a bench under a blossom tree (that’s the view I have in the photo at the to of the page), send my boss and Sarah a text to let them know what is going on, and pull up the tapping exercises on my phone.

Let me try to describe what my anxiety attack is like. I get short of breath and it feels like my heart is trying to beat it’s way out of my rib cage. My hands become restless and I feel like I need to be doing something with them as I feel like I’m constantly scratching my nose or rubbing my arm. I’ve already bitten a thumbnail down to the point it stings. My brain goes into overdrive and thoughts become random like they’re jumping around. I feel physically agitated. My forehead feels dry, like the skin is starting to crack (it isn’t). My hands shake and my jaw aches from gritting my teeth.

I bring up an app on my phone called Break Free. There’s some tapping exercises on there which involves me interacting (by tapping) to an audio track. There’s a couple on there and they last about twelve minutes each. They’re designed to focus your mind and reprogram how your brain responds to an attack. I run three consecutively. They seem to take the edge off it but it’s still there.

I receive a text from my manager telling me to take my time and possibly go get some breakfast. I go to a quiet cafe and order a latte and some granola and sit down to eat them quietly. I swap some messages with a friend, Steve, who was having anxiety attack last night. It helps to reassure me a bit, reminding me I’m not alone in having them. I promise I’ll message him later (I know he’ll worry) and quickly write some things down in my blog notes, so I can use them for writing later. By twenty to ten I’m sitting back outside the cathedral. My breathing is still feeling shallow and rapid. I’m trying to keep my left hand under control by gripping the arm of the bench tightly while I use the other hand to write things on my phone. My ipod is playing some relaxing music for me by an American band called A Light Within. I feel exhausted and tired. I don’t think the tapping exercises have worked.

Next step in my attempt to stop them, some YouTube videos. When I did my therapy sessions previously, my counsellor suggested searching online for some EFT videos. I tried a few before settling with some produced by a guy called Brad Yates. I found these to work for me in the past so I bring up a couple that I already have bookmarked, incase of an emergency like this. I run them, gently tapping away at my face and chest. I know a few people who pass me by will give me some odd looks, but it’s relatively quiet here so I don’t get too many.

I’ve been in Durham now about two and a half hours by this point. I make the decision to head home. The YouTube videos have subdued me a little but, again, it’s not by much.

I feel tired, drained and a bit deflated as I text my manager to let her know I’m heading back home. I feel the need to shut myself off for a bit, but I’m not ready to admit defeat just yet so I’ll give it a while before trying to head back in again.

I head down through Durham. It’s not too busy but I still feel like people are walking into me (they’re not). I call into a newsagents to get a bottle of water as my mouth feels dry and the woman at the front of the queue is irritating me by taking her time over something. Nothing major but enough to start winding me up about being around people.

I get back home some three and a half hours after I originally left the house. I’ve travelled around ten miles, most of it on public transport. I sit on the sofa with the curtains partially closed and feeling totally exhausted. My plan is to rest for about another hour or so before making my next decision.

I sit on the sofa, trying to resist the urge to lie down and sleep. Time goes a bit odd and before I know it it’s almost one. I’m still tired and a bit spaced out. I decide to phone my manager to say how I am. It takes me about ten minutes to actually work myself up to the state when I can call her. It’s not like I’m expecting a bad call, I’m not. Like I said she’s very sympathetic. She reminds that I’ve been doing so well recently and tells me to rest. I have a light lunch and head to bed. It’s now almost two.

In bed, I put Netflix on in the background to try to distract me. It doesn’t really work so I switch it back off. In a short while I’m sleeping lightly but getting the extra rest helps a bit.

Waking up just after five I head back downstairs. I still feel jittery and anxious but nowhere near as much as I was earlier. I still feel tired and drained of energy though.

Sarah comes in from work shortly after. Having the extra noise and someone else in the house seems to put me back on edge a bit more. I focus on my breathing and help get it back under control. She goes out for a short while with her mam which gives me time to being myself down a bit. We start making a curry from scratch, me slicing the onions and chicken. I leave Sarah to do the cooking and head back into the living room.

It’s seven thirty now. I feel a bit more relaxed but still quite withdrawn. My energy feels spent. I want to read but can’t really be bothered. I kind of feel restless for a while. 

We eat tea slightly later than usual and watch Game Of Thrones. They provide decent distractions. By the time we decide to go to bed the anxiety seems a lot more subdued. It’s not gone completely, it’s still there like static on a badly tuned radio. I’m not waiting until tomorrow to start afresh. It starts right now. I won’t let the anxiety completely beat me. My future starts now. 

If you want to talk to me, please feel free to message me at rustyred666@googlemail.com. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I’ve also created a closed support group on Facebook, also called The Order Of The Dog. We’re a collection of sufferers of various mental illnesses as well as people who want to help and support. Please feel free to join, everything is treat with respect and confidence. Finally, please share this blog with anyone and anywhere you think it might help.

Cheers,

Scott
The Order Of The Dog.

There Are Those Of Us Who Deal With Darkness....

I've posted about music several times already in my blog and I've no doubt that I'll post about it several more times in the future. Music is such an incredibly important part of my life. Even my blog titles are taken from songs. It changes my mood, it touches me in a way most things never could.

Music is my main medication in life. If it wasn't for music I wouldn't have the friends I have (most of whom I've met through music) and I wouldn't be here. It has, quite seriously and hand on my heart, saved me. My meds work to try and keep me on an even balance, but music is the thing that can really cure me. A song can alter my mood in seconds. Some uplift me, some motivate me, some relax me. Others, a select few, offer me catharsis, that emotional release that seems impossible. I know very few people who can watch the video of Johnny Cash performing 'Hurt' without being choked up. The Temple Of The Dog album got me through the passing of my grandad and immediately sends me back to that time in a heartbeat. And as for Steve Earle's 'My Old Friend The Blues' is a perfect meditation on life.

The subject of this blog came to me after I had gone through a bit of a dry spell with my writing. I always have several blog pieces I'm writing and last week I was working on them as best I could but I wasn't connecting. My writing felt forced and faked. Take a break from it my brain said, even if it's just a week. So I took its advice and took some time away from it. I thought it'd be a couple of weeks and I'd decided I would only start when inspiration struck with a new idea, not something I'd been previously working on.

The thunderbolt struck me on Sunday night.

I'd gone with Sarah and a friend of ours to see a gig in Newcastle at the Miner's Institute. It's one of Newcastle's most beautiful buildings dating back to the 19th century. It's quite grand and is very typical of buildings of that era, with marble floors and sweeping staircases. It resonates with me in a different way too as it's a centre of mining heritage in the North East of England. My dad, my uncles, my grandad and generations before them were pitmen. I come from a strong mining background like most people in this part of the country and I've lived in mining villages for most of my life. There's a sense of community that's still there. But that's probably another conversation for another time.

We had come to see a band called The Lake Poets, a band comprised of a young guy called Marty from Sunderland. He writes acoustic songs tinged by folk and country music. A lot of them flow with the life blood of our heritage, especially when you start listening to songs about the miner's strike of the eighties in these surroundings. They instantly remind you of a once proud industry that is now non existent, thanks to the actions of the Conservative government of the time that seemed to want to create divide across the country and social classes.

I have another tie to the Lake Poets. Last year when I was going through a major episode of anxiety and depression. Sarah and I went to see them perform at a different venue in Newcastle. It had been a bad night before we even got there with long traffic tailbacks triggering anxiety that just seemed to escalate. When we eventually got there we sat on the balcony just above the stage, away from the crowd and giving me a handy exit if the need arose. By the time Marty and his band took to the stage, my anxiety was at a peak. But as soon as he started playing a combination of his songs, his voice and his playing started to sooth me, calming my frayed nerves. I lasted the whole night, shedding a couple of tears due to the power of the performance rather than the results of my illness.

Fast forward to Sunday night in the Miner's Institute. Part of me was a little worried that the songs' power would be diminished without the enhancement of an overemotional state. I was wrong, so wrong.

He was part way through his set when he started talking about the story behind one of his songs. It concerned a young girl he was teaching who showed him a huge bruise on her hip that her father had given her. He went on to play Black And Blue, the first song I ever heard from them. When I first listened to the song I was floored. I had to stop, skip the track back and play it several times in a row. I bought the album purely on the strength of that song. I know I'm not only one who's been affected by the song. A few of my friends have felt exactly the same when they heard it. It's one of those songs that just connects on a pure, raw emotional level.

Marty was playing the song solo at the Miner's Institute. His voice and guitar had everyone spellbound. I felt like time had stopped. I didn't need to breathe. The only thing that existed was this performance. Something inside me felt uncaged. The tears started. Not just tears of sadness, tears of emotional release. I felt like there was a cleansing of all the negative emotions I was still carrying from my last incident. My face and beard were damp. I could tell without looking around that I wasn't the only one touched by the power of his song, the feeling in the room was tangible. You could feel the relief once he'd come to the end of the it as the entire room seemed to exhale collectively.

Other songs hit home too. Shipyards (about his grandfather who who never got to see him perform), North View (his memories of his gran before she passed away from Alzhiemers) and Vane Tempest (influenced by the Miner's Strike and it's effect on his family) left various people, including myself, with tears on our faces, especially when you consider the latter song was being performed in a room steeped in so much mining history. The songs weren't full of misery either, they all carried a sense of hope and a celebration of the past to them.

I left the room feeling emotionally lighter. I wasn't quite prepared for emotional release it gave me, but I'm so incredibly thankful for it. So thankful that I felt I was finally able to let go of the extra baggage I wasn't even aware I'd been carrying, something that medication, counseling and therapy hadn't been able to do.

The indefinable power of music.

The title of this blog is the first line from Black And Blue (the song I discuss above) from The Lake Poets. A live version of the song preformed at Tanfield Railway (which is about ten minutes drive from my house) can be found here The Lake Poets - Black And Blue (live).

If you'd like to chat to me you can drop me an email at rustyred666@googlemail.com. I've set up a closed Facebook group, also called The Order Of The Dog, where you can come and find kindred spirits who suffer from mental health issues and people who want to learn more and support others. Just click on this link - The Order Of The Dog. Finally, please feel free to share this blog anywhere and with anyone where you think it might be of help.

Cheers,

Scott Hamilton
The Order Of The Dog.