Semi-Circular Ramblings of an Over-Anxious Mind

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.  I’ve done it before but it’s been years.  At this exact moment as I type this, I am in the middle of an anxiety attack.  For the first time in a while, I am going to describe exactly how I am feeling in this moment.  As I said, I have done this before and found it to be particularly helpful in the moment because it gives my racing mind something steady to focus on.  I’m focusing on descriptive words, sentence structure and punctuation – all things that have established rules to guide me as my heart races and my thoughts reel.

 If I can give all you lucky people who have never had the displeasure of a panic attack a visual of what the inside of my mind looks and sounds like to me, just imagine a video tape on fast-forward with sound.  Normal orderly thoughts become a confused, speedy jumble of nonsense.  I’d always imagined smoking crack would produce a similar feeling but those who’ve done it once or twice tell me it feels much better than that, which is why peeps get hooked on it - and quick!  There’s no danger here of that.  Being high for the first time at the age of seventeen introduced me to a heightened sensation of anxiety that I wish I had never felt to begin with because now it’s stuck in my repertoire of feelings, forever staining my nervous system like a herpes of the mind.  And as Eddie Murphy once said about herpes, “You keep that shit forever, like luggage.”

Despite my current temporary break from the outside physical world, actually more due to my irrational fear of having a panic attack while out and about alone, I actually haven’t had a full blown attack in a while.  I have mini-attacks, fleeting moments of panic that come out of the blue and usually leave just as suddenly as they come.  The one I’m having right now has a direct cause: too much caffeine.

A long time ago, I figured out that I do much better when I don’t consume excessive amounts of caffeine.  I didn’t actually think I had been up until that point.  But then it hit me – my system changed and the two cups of regular coffee in the morning had become an excessive amount for my nervous system to handle.  So I switched to one cup in the morning and one cup in the late afternoon.  That worked….until it didn’t.

I could never consider a daily life that did not begin with coffee.  Perish the thought!  I switched to reduced-caffeine coffee and for a very long time that worked – actually, it still does for the most part – at least while I’m in seclusion, anyway.  Well, last week the supermarket had my brand of choice on sale – only it didn’t include the reduced-caffeine kind, only the regular blend.  I hesitated.  Coffee is expensive.  Ultimately, I couldn’t pass up the great bargain that it was.  I rationalized that I still had some half-caff at home and could change up once in a while and it would be okay.  And it was…over the weekend when I was not alone and could easily drown out the thoughts that can sometimes spin out of control when no one else is around to keep me grounded firmly in the reality of the present moment.

Yesterday, I didn’t take any chances and had my usual half-caff.  This morning, feeling extra groggy and knowing that half-caff wouldn’t provide me enough boost for all the cleaning I had planned to do today, I had a cup of regular blend.  I am over-caffeinated!  And now, my heart is racing, I’m shaking, and if I wasn’t typing this right now, my head would still feel like it was spinning.  This process is helping me tremendously!  I’m wondering how I can somehow incorporate this exercise into something I can do when I leave the house to take a walk.  If I start to feel panicky, what can I do to calm my mind and refocus it to something constructive?  I know for me, simply doing this in my head does not work.  My thoughts race beyond my control without some literal outlet for them.  If I am with my husband, I can describe to him the feelings and sensations as they run through me along with the thoughts that I’m thinking and it helps so much.  I know I can do deep breathing – and I do!  Without those deep breaths, I am apt to hyperventilate and pass out (it’s happened before).  That’s a scary thing when you’re home alone with no one nearby to come over and help (been there, done that). The thought of this happening when I’m out somewhere alone, well – that’s a chance I am not ready to take just yet.

Maybe I should get tape recorder (or its modern digital equivalent) to walk around with.  If I wear the hands-free ear piece for my cell phone, maybe people won’t think I’m muttering to myself as I walk down the street talking myself out of a panic attack.  Maybe I’ll talk about myself in the third person…just in case….or is that even crazier?

While I’ve had problems with anxiety since the age of seventeen, it hasn’t always ruled my life.  I have had lots and lots of years when I didn’t have a single attack and never even thought about the possibility that I could have one.  Those were some really fun years, too.  Some day, I’ll blog about all the times I’ve reinvented myself and the Goya beanery of crazy characters I’ve met along the way.  I refer to those as my “Years of Optimal Confidence” and I sincerely hope those weren’t the last of them because I still have things to accomplish in this life.  It cannot be over now.  Although I have accomplished some things, I have heard myself say things like, “I haven’t done ANYTHING yet!”  Of course, that’s simply not true.  I’ve set out to do things that I had no knowledge of beforehand and researched as best I could to find out how.  I sought out the people who did and asked them how they did it.  These complete strangers became short term mentors and in some cases, colleagues.  And this was all before the internet age!!  Imagine that!

The year I spent as a makeup artist is one example of many in my life as an independent thinker and doer and refuser of all things conventional and normal.  Conformity never worked for me – even when I was a little kid.  I never wanted to be a fairy princess.  I wanted to be Joan of Arc.  I wanted to be the Bionic Woman.  And I sure as shit in the morning didn’t want to be Barbie!

What was the point of all this rambling?  Oh yeah, I was having an anxiety attack and I wanted to write about what that feels like and how my irrational fears have temporarily taken over my life and how that wasn’t always the case.  And oh my, I really do feel much better now!  Semi-circles always do that for me….