The storm within, or, me and my freaky brain chemistry

: Alto pipes
: Drained

I had a panic attack today. Fortunately, they don't hit me very often, especially since I'm on anti-anxiety medicine. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of talking to someone on the phone in the midst of it who probably now thinks I was stark raving mad.

Panic attacks are often described in physical terms...heart racing or palpitations, dizziness, etc. With me I do get the symptoms of a 'fight or flight' response, but far more debilitating is the emotional turmoil that happens. I get hyper-sensitive to light, to people, to touch; I have to remove myself from any sort of stimuli and go into a dark quiet room, almost like with a migraine, and then try to slow down my breathing. If I can't do that, I get almost paralysed with this inner storm of labilty (rapidly changing emotions), I feel overwhelmed, and I can no longer really verbalise coherently.

That's how I was today. The smallest things overwhelmed me emotionally, although if anyone were to be watching, I seemed very productive. Being around people--even people I know and love--was difficult. My social phobia tends to colour panic reactions...I get to the point where having people going about normal activities around me makes me feel pressed in, almost claustrophobic. I also have trouble with noise coming from all directions. Trying to focus on something is very hard for me if, say, someone is talking but there's a radio or TV going at the same time. If there are several different groups of people, or say a TV in one room and a radio in the other (another friend tends to have these on all at once), it's worse. Usually, I can ignore the distractions. But sometimes it's just overwhelming. When I'm in the midst of a panic attack, it's almost painful to be around anything or anyone, and part of me wants to lash out and make it all stop. It's very scary.

I have a lot going on lately, and so I guess it's not supposed that surprising that it happened. Although a lot of the issues have been going on for awhile, one thing that is different and may have triggered the attack was my decision to put Buns to sleep. Ironically, after I was able to stretch out and do some breathing exercises to calm down, I fell asleep thinking about where I could bury him (I don't really have the money to cremate him and keep the cremains).

And then...

I woke up sometime later to a cat treading on my hip. I reached up to pet him, and found that it was Buns. It was the first time in two or three months that he's come into the bedroom and snuggled up to me. I gave him a long session of petting, and he purred. Again, the first time in a long time. It made me wonder if I were making the right decision. Of course, a little while later he peed under the table right in front of me, so there's still the incontinence issue. Now he's curled up on the couch, and he doesn't seem to feel that well. Earlier seemed to be just an aberration.

Gods, this is going to be hard.