19. Nov, 2014

Power of panic

I collapsed inconsolably on the floor of my shower sobbing as in grief. I sat there hoping the cascading of the water gently brushing my skin would help calm me and help ground me!

My heart was thumping, my body trembling and shaking and the world was spinning as I gasped for life giving oxygen to fill my heavily compressed lungs.

Where was I, what was I doing and why did I feel like I was in a tug of war between life and death?

Dizzy with fatigue and exhaustion, I frantically tried to make sense of my situation and why I was there.

As the waterfall slowly washed away my tears, I began to feel the touch of the floor against my skin, and as my breathing gradually returned to a pant rather than a gasp, reality slowly dawned on me that, no, I wasn’t in fact dying; I was merely in the grip of another punishing panic attack!

I know what triggered this latest effort because it was the same as the last and it is becoming clearer to me that I have a score to settle. That is to try to come to some sort of peace deal with the enemy – my ruminating mind and my compromised body!

This latest fatigue crash has unsettled some demons; they are shaking the very foundations of survival, leaving me weakened and at their mercy!

As I sit here writing, I struggle to grasp what feels like a 3 kilogram pen and my calf muscles, thighs, arms and back burn as if someone has thrown a bucketful of lactic acid over me. It dissolves my skin as it eats away at my outer core. The panic is the acid within, corroding me from the inside.

I have endured the odd anxiety attack over the past few years and they never get any easier to handle. It’s like every coping mechanism I have learned flies out the window as you engage in a desperate search for anything that will promptly ease you out of the excruciating terror that clutches at your very soul. You wonder whether you will ever grapple your way back to sanity, to reality!

We are all just a hair's breadth away from the edge of this frightening precipice – but here’s my tip...

Have a backup plan! Secure your connection, and never feel ashamed of your need to make contact with a trusted ally! After all, you’re only human, and so are they!