Panic!

Trigger warning: discussion of self harm.

It’s mental health awareness week and I have deliberated about writing this. I am not ok. But I am also not really ok with people knowing that. However, given the point of this week to increase awareness and understanding of mental illness, I am putting this out there. It is scary. It feels like I am turning my brain inside out and hanging it out for everyone to see. But it is my hope that it helps someone and creates empathy for people with mental illness.

This week I added more items to my very long list of issues, generalized anxiety disorder & panic disorder. I have struggled with anxiety in the past, particularly from social anxiety, but in the last couple of months the anxiety has become extreme and I have been suffering from panic attacks. These come on suddenly and the feelings of dread quickly become overwhelming . My heart speeds up (my apple watch tells me my heart rate gets up to around 110-115 beats per minute) and I can feel it pounding in my chest. I feel faint and dizzy and like I can’t breathe. The first few times it happened I thought I was having a heart attack. Now that I know what it is I can recognize that I have had a few in the past, but not as consistently as I am getting them at the moment. They are very scary and I feel a constant sense of unease.

I visited my psychiatrist with my case manager on Wednesday to discuss my medication. I am already on medication for my anxiety that is supposed to help with the panic attacks, but the increase in my mood stabilizers a few months back have caused me to gain 12 kg in about 3 months. I wanted to see what other options there were as the weight gain is very uncomfortable and makes it hard to do the exercise I need to do to stay well as the heavier I am the worse my back pain is. This is a real shame as the current mood stabilizer I’m on (Epilim) has made a huge difference to my mood once the dosage was tweaked. For the first time in years I had felt neutral or good about 80% of the time, and even when the downs hit there was an underlying buoyancy to my mood which meant they were not as persistent as they had been in the past. It was so nice to be able to depend on my mood being ok, and I finally lost the suicidal ideation that has dogged me for at least 7 years.

However, adjusting the medication is what had to be done for physical health reasons. Unfortunately, this meant dropping the Epilim dose by 2/5ths and slowly titrating on to a new med. With this drop my mood has disintegrated. Last night was not a good night for me. I think words do not accurately convey the desperation I felt. It’s hard to explain to people without lived experience of mental illness what it is like to go to the supermarket and be triggered by the alcohol on display because feel such strong desire to drown yourself in alcohol but know that if you do you are loosening your inhibitions and you might harm yourself in that state. To walk past the personal care aisle and see the razors and not be able to resist standing in front of them, wanting blades to harm yourself. To stand in front of the bandages and wonder if you should buy some because you are probably going to fail to hold yourself together in this psychological storm, but wonder if by buying the bandages you are somehow giving yourself permission to self harm.

I didn’t buy razor blades or bandages. But it took superhuman strength on my part not to.  I came home. I did my mindfulness exercises. I rocked in my rocking chair with my weighted blanket, headphones on, listening to my favourite music, for an hour and a half. And the storm raged on. The drive to self harm was so strong I could clearly picture the blade against my skin and the droplets of blood as they slid down my arm. And what that pain feels like and sensation of afterwards when the endorphins kick in. Even the shame that always accompanies the cutting.

This isn’t pretty and it probably horrifies most people. I continue to write and put my experience out there even though it is raw and hard to look at because this is the reality of my mental illnesses. It’s not nice, it’s not pretty, and it’s not easily understandable unless you have come through it yourself. Anyone can struggle with illnesses like mine at some stage in their life. And you more than likely have no idea what they are going through. Yesterday I smiled and said I was ok, when I had all this going on in my brain. It’s not polite to answer the “how are you” question with a real answer, especially if you are in public. But that doesn’t mean the person who is saying they are ok actually is. Look beyond the words on the surface. Life is complicated but a little understanding and kindness can go a long way and doesn’t take much.