PANIC ATTACKS!

THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT THESE ONES ARE MINE!

I am writing this for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I need it out of me. I have felt the urge to tel this story for years, this is not my first draft of this. Secondly because I believe that raising awareness is excellent but it falls short of truly helping people. We have been raising awareness for years and raising money which has been an amazing effort by all concerned and a real change has happened, but its only half the job. Those of us who have dealt with panic, depression and other mental health issues have an obligation to share our knowledge. Stories need to be told, experiences shared, knowledge passed and then we can be on the same page, then we can come out of the shadows and start actually talking about this shit. People who don’t suffer with mental health issues need to be aware of how real these things are. Those who are struggling need to know they are not alone and what they are feeling does not make them broken or sick, there is no shame, there is help and there are other everyday people going through the same things willing to share their experiences.

I am a forty three year old man and I have panic disorder and depression. Today I am ok with that. I’ve had twenty years to figure some things out. Tomorrow is another day.

On Wednesday of this week it started again. Seemingly out of nowhere. It’s late and I’m in bed helping my daughter get off to sleep, shes not having a good night. And as usual I nod off before her. The next thing I know I’m wide awake gasping for breath, my heart pounding out of my chest and I’m one hundred percent convinced that these are my last moments of this life and of all places, in my daughters bed!! Fortunately I’m an old pro at this shit so I realise very quickly what’s going on, calm myself down, breathe through it and…I’m good. She is none the wiser to what’s just happened to me because I have had a long time to learn how to hide what’s going on from people. (And we are excellent at hiding whats really going now aren’t we.) Awesome mission accomplished. However I’m so tired that I nod off again almost immediately and away we go again, and again, and again. Finally I can’t handle it anymore and fortunately she’s nearly asleep, so I make my excuses and go back to my bed. Thus begins a night of panic, mental torture and extreme anxiety! The rest of the week I feel anxious, tired, grumpy and my inner voice is kicking the shit out of me. Whats my body trying to tell me?

The Beginning

It all began in 2002ish (of course this is not the beginning, this is where my body started screaming at me that something was very wrong) I was 24. I was a six foot one rugby playing bloke with heaps of friends, an amazing social life, a non existent career, an obvious drinking problem and a tendency to enjoy the odd recreational drug here and there, living life to the fullest in Australia. Bullet proof! I was living pay cheque to pay cheque choosing cigarettes and alcohol over food when I came to budgeting and my mission in life to to have all of the fun. For a while it was working.

After about 18months I was very kindly asked to leave the country by the immigration department. In my mind, that day I lost EVERYTHING. My life, my lifestyle, my friends, my girlfriend, my job and my future….gone.

So I scrounged the money together, concluded my affairs and buggered off.

The impending sense of doom prior to leaving was crushing me. My drinking habit and casual party drug indulgence went to a new level. The recovery of which started to show signs of the imminent arrival of the panic. I would find myself not breathing and suddenly gasp for air. I couldn’t sleep, sit still or concentrate for more than five minutes.

I even found myself in a hospital bed for the night.

For my last weekend my friends took me to Sydney for one last piss up. It was huge! The night after we got back I was home alone crashing hard and convinced I was dying. I couldn’t breathe properly, I vomited over and over again to make myself feel better. I spent what seemed like hours pacing around the flat. I was scared for my life for the first time ever. Because I was so terrified I went over to some friend’s house so that I didn’t die alone. They ended up taking me to emergency where I got put on a drip and left in a corridor to rehydrate. The staff were not sympathetic to my self induced state at all. My first experience with panic lasted for over 24hours. I gave myself one day to recover and was back in the pub. Things were never the same again, something had changed in me forever. Little did I know that it was a good thing. Many years would pass before I would realise this.

England

So I’m back in England and living with my Father and Step-Mother. I hadn’t lived in the same house as my Father since I was thirteen. I had never lived with her. Needless to say there were some unresolved issues from the past as well as all the other shit that I was going through. Which hit me like a big slap in the face, over ten years of trauma and emotions plus the loss of everything I knew was overwhelming. But I didn’t know.

I’d just quickly like to say that I will be forever grateful to my Father and Stepmother for putting up with me and the way I behaved. I carried the shame of how I acted for decades to come.

This is where it starts to get really fun! The bedroom that I had while I was there had a narrow single bed that had cupboards underneath it and over the top. With a wall on one side and the other less than one meter away. Somewhat enclosed, coffin like.

I went to bed one night with the feeling of my heart in my chest. I could feel it, hear it, beating in my whole body. I attempted to tell myself this was normal and went to sleep. What seemed like seconds later, which was in fact hours, I awoke not breathing, heart beating out of my chest, racing like an engine at full revs. I was head to toe covered in a layer of sweat. I knew at that moment with out a shadow of doubt I was about to die.

Oh Fuck! This is it!

Here we go, I’m Dying! I am actually about to die!

These are my last moments in this life, and I caused it, I did this to myself!

Help! I’m dying!!

Not yet! I’m not ready to die yet!!

In an instant my biggest fear seems to be a realisation and is milliseconds away. All the emotions flow over me in waves, sheer terror and panic, regret, fear, shame, guilt. I’m panicking like crazy trying to somehow will myself back to life with my mind so that I can avoid my self inflicted death sentence.

I put the light on as if my life depends on it. I stand, I sit, I stand. I’m desperately trying to calm down pacing the floor of this tiny room trying to figure out if I’m ok. My mind is racing, I can’s see colour normally, I feel sick, fuzzy and have full body pins and needles. I calm down eventually and realise, slowly, I’m not dying. Still very shaky I go back to bed absolutely dazed and confused about what just happened. Surprisingly I’m asleep quickly. My nervous system seems to crash and shut me down. Until…

Bang! It starts again! I’m up, the light is on and I’m fucking terrified! It must be real this time!!

This same process happens another four or five times that night. With the exact same terror every time. There was no recognition or ‘here we go again’ moment. It’s the exact same terror as the very first time. Every time convincing me ever so slightly more that I am in fact dying and one of these times I’m not going to be able to keep it at bay.

I survive to see the morning. I don’t know what to do, but asking for help is the absolute last thing on my mind. The idea of anyone seeing me like this or admitting that this is happening is not an option. I feel a huge amount of shame for what is going on and it must be hidden at all costs.All I know is that this is happening and it’s something that should never be spoken about and dealt with or endured quietly and on my own.

As a child I was always told not to be so sensitive and to toughen up. So I did. Boarding schools and rugby culture will do that to you. I always thought that people who claimed to be having a ‘Panic attack’ were just being silly and unnecessarily dramatic about a situation. Suddenly not only is it a real thing, but it’s happening to me!!! All I can think is, if I just ride it out it will go away, I can tough it out and handle it. I’ll keep doing what I do and deal with it quietly in the dark of night.

However the nightly terrors got worse. Most nights it was five to ten episodes but then others there were fifteen to twenty five a night. Fortunately there is a dimmer switch on my bedroom light. So I leave the light on all night so I don’t have to wake up in pitch black. At least I’ll be able to see as the end comes. This helps, but comes with the shame of being in my twenties and sleeping with the light on like a five year old. I still won’t talk about it.

It gets so bad that I stop sleeping all together. I don’t know exactly how long I didn’t sleep for but it was for months. It is actually surprising how much energy you feel when you haven’t slept more than an hour and you get up and go to work.

Then it happened in the car! I was driving. Fortunately on a quiet road with room to stop and pull over get out and pace up and down the road until I can bring myself to get back in. I won’t talk about it.

Then it happened at work. I hide in the toilet until I can come out. I won’t talk about it.

Then it happened at the pub! My safe place! My happy place is now tainted with FEAR! I won’t talk about it.

I went to the doctor, in secret. I felt like he was looking at me like I was a useless human being and a failure at life when he said ‘oh you’re just having panic attacks’. ‘Take these beta-blockers and you’ll be fine’. Thanks Doc! No information about what was happening to me or why, just a pill. Which I had heard of but had no clue what it was or what it was doing to me. They didn’t work and didn’t last long. If the doctor can’t help me, I truly am in this on my own! At this point I reached out. I’m not going to say who to. It took all the courage I could muster, I was shaking as I said the words, ‘the doctor diagnosed me with panic disorder and depression and I don’t know what to do.’ The response was classic, ‘what on earth do you have to be depressed about?’ I didn’t even answer, I withdrew, clammed up and that was the last time we spoke about it. Now I absolutely won’t talk about it.

Slowly I started to figure out little tips and tricks to keep the panic at bay during the day. Rubbing the backs of my knees helped in the car or in public situations. Eating immediately after an attack helped massively. Midnight feasts for the win! Movement is a must, get up and move whilst focusing on slowing your breath, which is hard when you wake in a tiny bedroom or your in the tiny car I had to borrow to get around. Positive mantras go a long way too, not that I knew that what I was doing was a mantra as such. I was just reassuring myself that I was ok over and over again. Avoiding situations that created anxiety or panic was and still is a big one, and not healthy at all. I also learned to compartmentalise a situation. For example: I’m on a ridiculously busy train, I cant move, I cant, get off, I have no control. I learned to remove everything and everyone from my mind except the 2–5 square meter area around me until it was time to move through to the next 2–5 meters and so on until I felt ok again. I was learning to manage the fear but it was always there, and the fear of the fear was worse. I lived with it always lurking in the background every minute of every day and night. I wanted to scream but couldn’t, I wanted to smash stuff but couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything that might give the game away. The shame was too much. I had to hold it together by myself, alone.

I also started to notice triggers. As above, enclosed spaces with lots of people and no escape was horrendous. A hangover from alcohol meant a day of high anxiety and a night of panic. This was something I was willing to endure in order to avoid changing bad habits that were ultimately making things worse. I was in denial and wanted the fun to continue. A comedown from illegal drugs was a nightmare to say the least. Mad panic and unbearable anxiety for days on end. This I did realise was something that could not continue. But was not good at resisting temptation. Another big thing I noticed was my inner voice. Usually starting with ‘I hope I don't have a panic attack now’ (like going over a super high bridge in a car), instantly resulting in a full panic attack in a car on an enormous bridge with no escape, fucking nightmare! But from then on every time I was on that bridge panic would reappear. Then I would avoid that situation as much as possible.

I joined the gym and went daily/obsessively . I’d do one hour of full-on cardio then one hour of weights. I would sweat so much I’d have to take a spare shirt to change halfway through. This helped me feel better and got me out of the house after a long day working in forestry and landscaping. To this day just the sight of that house brings on anxiety. (exercise helped and I have an all or nothing nature when it comes to the gym. But it only helped to a point. I will write more on this another time.)

Trees

At this point I was obsessed with getting my Australian life back and was prepared to do anything to do so. It consumed my every thought. Nothing would ever be good enough. I had to return. In my desperate search for a way back to Australia to resume my awesome, perfect life which was awaiting my return, my step mother suggested becoming an Arborist at the local college. Tree climbing. A government funded course that at the end would give me a trade and therefore open the door to Australia again. I hated to admit it at the time but she was right and I’ll be forever grateful to her for always wanting the best for me even though I was behaving like a spoiled shit. Little did I know how beneficial it would be for me.

Learning to climb trees sounds like a load of fun and it was. Very cool people and a great educational experience. But at some point you’re gonna have to climb a tree. A very big tree. So the time passes, we get the basics and then it’s time to go up high and start to learn the job. It’s a bit like being the kid at the obstacle course who’s up on a high obstacle and everyone is watching you to see if you can do it.

I’m higher up than I’ve ever been before and I’m looking down, receiving instructions from the teacher. Then my brain says something stupid like ‘what if you have a panic attack up here, now’ Boom! It hits me! I start to get the waves of panic run over me. This must not happen! I take a breath and tell myself very firmly, ‘you are not going to be that guy’, ‘you are not going to be the one who has to be rescued from the tree because of fear!!’ ‘And if you do you can never return or show your face here again’.. I repeated these mantras over and over until a form of determination found me. I did what needed to be done and came down out of the tree successful. Rather than finding this off putting it spurred me on to go again to get better to force myself into uncomfortable situations and beat them. After a while the fear lessened and the new mantra was, ‘this is your job now, there’s no going back, only forward, get it done’. I compartmentalised the tree into work spaces as If I was back in an office job sitting at a desk. ‘This is where I work now, no going back’. Much like the 2–5 meters I referred to on the train earlier. I was relentless in perfecting my skills as best I could in the short time I had there. I got a job in trees on the side, I took and passed all the independent qualifications I could and by the end of the year’s course I was the most experienced and most qualified of the entire class. I was ready!

I graduated top of my class and was awarded ‘ Arborist of the Year’. At twenty four years old I won my first ever academic award. The lessons I learned up the tree I began to use in daily life. I began to be able to sleep through the night, I turned off the light. It was still very much there but I felt more in control. I still refused to address my drinking problem, I kept doing all the things I’d always done. And I sure as shit wasn’t telling anyone about the internal screaming, hatred and desperate depression that was building inside of me. I won’t talk about it. I am too focused on returning to my old life that will be just as fun as it was before and everyone will be pleased to see me again and everything will be alright.

I graduated and the next day got on a plane to Australia with a hangover, I could barely breathe for the 24hr flight! Two steps forward three steps back.

This is my panic disorder, there are many like it but this one is mine, mine alone to deal with. I own it, it is mine. I have to do the work, I have to decide whether the work gets done or if I remain in the darkness. I have to learn to listen to the signs my body is giving me and I have to respond accordingly, if I want to.

I am twenty five years old, I have to live with this.

Or so I thought………

(yes I stole the subtitle from the movie: Full Metal Jacket)