On Panic Attacks and Tears, I suppose
Oct. 20th, 2010 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressIt...feels a bit like you're a spring, I suppose, and every emotion, every thought, every trigger and concept, every Big Emotional Thing, good or bad, gets a chance to wind you just a little bit tighter.
And finally something ticks it over, relief or fear or depression or loneliness or isolation or joy or safety or pain or something. And the spring unwinds, completely, and what you are crying about to start and what you are crying about by the end are not the same things at all. And because you have to get everything out that's been put in, sometimes you spend a long time crying, sorting out each stupid little piece until they're all done, and you just can't stop in the middle, so I really hope you didn't need that hour and a half.
And that is kinda what a panic attack feels like, at least for me. I can tell, because I'm not having a panic attack right now, and so I'm fairly lucid. When I am actually having such a beast, words...don't come3. Or if they do, they are not concepts-ideas-put together thoughts, so much as muffled screams expressed in a desperate tone of voice and often far too much profanity.
But when that wave of particular emotion hit, it was suddenly like all the world just shattered for half a second, like it does, and for once I didn't slip over the edge with it. This isn't some great example of me healing, or becoming better at handling panic attacks. It's just an example of the timing not being right enough, of too many times lately it all slipping out in tears anyways, so I don't have anything to cry about outside the normal1. Today my brain is normal enough that tears do not become panic. Tomorrow that might not be true, or tomorrow, or tomorrow. I can't ever tell, and maybe that means there is something seriously wrong with me, even though I'm basically happy and basically stable.
It's hard to tell sometimes, what normal is, when everybody hides their faces and refuses to let people see them cry. I'm guilty of it too2, that's why I try to talk about it sometimes, to prove that I'm not perfect, that I am fucked up, and that I'm pretty much okay anyways, so maybe you can be imperfect and fucked up and still pretty alright too.
So. A thing happened earlier, that I don't want to talk about, and I processed it for about half a second before I rolled into a ball and found myself sobbing, and there was that flicker of those tears dealing with everything else from today --too little sleep, and too ill memories, and a fear that makes some jesting threats truly terrifying4, and then I was mostly okay. Later, I will probably cry harder on these things, as I wrap my brain around all the ways in which it just doesn't work.
I am broken. But some days that's a little more manageable than others.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: I...yeah. This really doesn't deserve a footnote, there are very few things inside the normal that I am willing to share with the world. My life is really amazing, and I am very lucky and have few wounds. But some of those that I do have run very deep indeed.
2: I can confirm one person who I can't hide my tears from, and a very small handful more who I don't hide my tears from. Everybody else in the entire world, roommates, family, friends, if I do not want you to know I'm crying, you won't.
3: She carries the act so convincingly the fact is sometimes she believes it, that she can be happy the way things are, be happy with the things she's done.
4: This one I'll talk about, with the appropriate person and no one else. I am open about the fact that I do hurt. I am only very rarely such about why I am in such a state.
5: Goddamnit Sor, actions are controllable, feelings are not. Not anything wrong with being a drama queen, especially not for your own stuff, that doesn't rope in anyone else at all.
A note on comments: I'm fine. I promise. I want discussion, not sympathy, not for me, not right now. I have always had this sort of drama queen depressive attitude5 towards the world, but I also consider myself to honestly be a basically happy person, and a generally stable one to boot. So that.
And finally something ticks it over, relief or fear or depression or loneliness or isolation or joy or safety or pain or something. And the spring unwinds, completely, and what you are crying about to start and what you are crying about by the end are not the same things at all. And because you have to get everything out that's been put in, sometimes you spend a long time crying, sorting out each stupid little piece until they're all done, and you just can't stop in the middle, so I really hope you didn't need that hour and a half.
And that is kinda what a panic attack feels like, at least for me. I can tell, because I'm not having a panic attack right now, and so I'm fairly lucid. When I am actually having such a beast, words...don't come3. Or if they do, they are not concepts-ideas-put together thoughts, so much as muffled screams expressed in a desperate tone of voice and often far too much profanity.
But when that wave of particular emotion hit, it was suddenly like all the world just shattered for half a second, like it does, and for once I didn't slip over the edge with it. This isn't some great example of me healing, or becoming better at handling panic attacks. It's just an example of the timing not being right enough, of too many times lately it all slipping out in tears anyways, so I don't have anything to cry about outside the normal1. Today my brain is normal enough that tears do not become panic. Tomorrow that might not be true, or tomorrow, or tomorrow. I can't ever tell, and maybe that means there is something seriously wrong with me, even though I'm basically happy and basically stable.
It's hard to tell sometimes, what normal is, when everybody hides their faces and refuses to let people see them cry. I'm guilty of it too2, that's why I try to talk about it sometimes, to prove that I'm not perfect, that I am fucked up, and that I'm pretty much okay anyways, so maybe you can be imperfect and fucked up and still pretty alright too.
So. A thing happened earlier, that I don't want to talk about, and I processed it for about half a second before I rolled into a ball and found myself sobbing, and there was that flicker of those tears dealing with everything else from today --too little sleep, and too ill memories, and a fear that makes some jesting threats truly terrifying4, and then I was mostly okay. Later, I will probably cry harder on these things, as I wrap my brain around all the ways in which it just doesn't work.
I am broken. But some days that's a little more manageable than others.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: I...yeah. This really doesn't deserve a footnote, there are very few things inside the normal that I am willing to share with the world. My life is really amazing, and I am very lucky and have few wounds. But some of those that I do have run very deep indeed.
2: I can confirm one person who I can't hide my tears from, and a very small handful more who I don't hide my tears from. Everybody else in the entire world, roommates, family, friends, if I do not want you to know I'm crying, you won't.
3: She carries the act so convincingly the fact is sometimes she believes it, that she can be happy the way things are, be happy with the things she's done.
4: This one I'll talk about, with the appropriate person and no one else. I am open about the fact that I do hurt. I am only very rarely such about why I am in such a state.
5: Goddamnit Sor, actions are controllable, feelings are not. Not anything wrong with being a drama queen, especially not for your own stuff, that doesn't rope in anyone else at all.
A note on comments: I'm fine. I promise. I want discussion, not sympathy, not for me, not right now. I have always had this sort of drama queen depressive attitude5 towards the world, but I also consider myself to honestly be a basically happy person, and a generally stable one to boot. So that.
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no subject
on 2010-10-20 10:38 pm (UTC)That it was it is like for me. Pieces of me, things I can control just start disappearing. And you know that it is going to happen sometime. Sometime soon. But I am not sure exactly what will let it all loose. Be it crying or screaming.
Man, this is babbly and incoherent...
on 2010-10-20 11:43 pm (UTC)Panic for me comes in different levels. There's sort of this overall anxiety that i carry around with me almost all of the time... And then there are the explosions where i am completely out of control like the spring that has been sprung and i fall to bits in my panic and don't think there is any way out of my situation, that i will *always* feel this way and there's just no hope other than to end it all, which i also cannot do so i feel all the more trapped and afraid and yeah.
The overall anxiety/stress thing is something that f!H can usually handle... she kicks in and takes my awareness away from things that cause me worry, if even only temporarily.
The other? Well, the last 3 times it happened in the past few years, W was there and did the best she could, but it's tricksy. i think she really did a fabulous job with the last time it happened (and not many people knew the full extent of it (though, you knew some of the outer edges) 'cause alot of it is so damned embarrassing that i keep rehashing the same old crap over & over again and it's all owing to Insecurity and doubting my own self-worth and being so needy on the people i love the most. (Most of whom are probly blissfully unaware of the level of the sheer pain i've been through) It's that panic that causes me to write elljay posts like the last few angsty emo ones .. 'cause i'm so very afraid most of the time and a lot of the time at a complete loss at how to make it stop.
i am glad that you are fine, though. That makes me feel happy inside. :)
no subject
on 2010-10-21 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
on 2010-10-21 05:19 am (UTC)