Rings around the moon.

Anxiety is a long haul nightmare mediated through the hormone, cortisol. Cortisol blunts the hippocampi - the 'sea horses' that file and compile reports on new experience through memory. And panic is a reaction to the physical sensation of adrenaline, fear of what the sensations mean. In short, sustained adrenaline leads to cortisol, leads to inability to make sense...cortisol makes it totally worse...six months to recover... I like the way a scientific understanding drains energy from reality. In my case, the energy is conveyed by a description of how bad it can get - and I'm not going to add colour because it is too awful - the bit where I feel like a dog being yelled at to 'stop it', or 'drop it'...is put here in a flat, and unemotional way. The bit where he threw his wedding ring at me. The times I've been told how stupid I am and how he doesn't love me. Well yeah...Those places are too bad, too cruel and so bitter. They have not been r...

But it is essential that at this stage you end your ceaseless pondering and are given one point of view to hold in your tired mind. The solution finally decided upon must be acceptable to you.. ..Old fears eventually return and you lose your grip on the new point of view. Do not despair at this. It is to be expected. After all, you have been looking at the problem for so long from the one distressing viewpoint that it would be almost a miracle if this did not soon reassert itself vividly. It has become your habit pattern. [ Weekes, Dr. Claire. Self-Help for Your Nerves: Learn to relax and enjoy life again by overcoming stress and fear (p. 76). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition. ] The positive things I can say about managing 21 days without allowing panic to win, is that it is slightly easier to regain control as a crash happens, and that 21 days is something to be very proud of. The only thing I can say about how I managed 21 days is that my core statement...

So, 14 days is pretty good, yes I'm frayed around the seams and no...my situation isn't 'standard' but then, whose situation is standard? Everyone's life is different and the things that get me - well I'm tempted to say would make anyone crack up. But I don't know if that's true. Plus I don't see a good choice here. There are no hills to run to. Getting out is a long, slow climb without oxygen. All I know is, panic attacks do not help. And I don't know what you are putting up with! For me, so much of this panic is about wanting to control the future, is a desire, a passion to know that I can make everything OK. And it is a cry for help. But something I learnt when Josh was in his smashing up the house phase, if I display any vulnerability...it evokes the bully. Facing the feelings, accepting that that sound of the 4 minute warning I feel as if I'm hearing...means DO NOTHING and welcome the bombs, and then floating isn't easy. ...

Today is the ninth day of facing, accepting and floating through my panic attacks. Though I have  reason to feel panic, panic is only of use when fight or flight are called for. As I'm usually inside a building and everything is OK except my thoughts, limp and give up is the only way to go. Just not in an uncontrolled, sad or negative way. Sensitization of my amygdala from years of increasing stress, followed by 'the bad thing' throws up and highlights information that makes me anxious, but I am not allowed to seek answers. So I've learnt second fear - fear of first fear.  For nine days I've been going limp and giving up because the argument to do so, makes sense. I can't change anything for the better by asking a question. I don't get reassurance, and I feel bullied.   For a day or two anxiety became gut-panic, a constant feeling of needing to go to the toilet. But, I just have to go limp through that feeling too. That ended. Lying in bed to s...

Three questions sent me up the road to enroll at college to begin training...All three have been answered. Gaining the information has been painful and probably, any fool could have told me the answers. But no, I don't believe so. My first was,  how do people ignore other people who are totally distraught, that is to say, so distraught that they may be compromising social rules? Years ago now, it was around 9 pm, a woman was walking up and down the street, sobbing. After I'd spoken to her and she had gone home, my neighbor ( a nurse) opened the window and asked me, what that was 'all about'? I felt really uncomfortable. I wanted to say, 'you heard her, but you did nothing?!' Hence my question Was it fear that meant my next door neighbor ignored her? Did my neighbor think that the woman would be embarrassed when she stopped crying, and would prefer to be ignored? Or was there something else going on? This question perplexed me because I don't ign...

I will begin to write again. In pain drenched letters, with a heavy heart. Our family is whole, my husband, my children - no one died. But we are splintering and fractured and it is almost too much to bear. I've been looking at the work of Claire Weeks. An immensely sensible person who described the effects of prolonged stress, the 'sensitization' of nerves, and the way adrenaline and then endorphins - well no, Claire doesn't mention endorphins, but they are now understood as playing a part in the maintenance of severe anxiety - how adrenaline and then thinking about stressful things, and then reacting to the feeling of stress, and also having to go 'cold turkey' when stress is over and you no longer get that hit of endogenous morphine...can take even the sanest person down. So now its my turn. And this is just about the hardest and the worst period of my life right now... I need a hand to hold, and so I write.