Over the past two weeks, I’ve had an anxiety attack every single day, and I had no clue what the triggers were.
I have an anxiety disorder, sure, but there’s still usually something that sets off a panic attack. Some days, it makes sense. If I try to edit a video and the file claims not to exist, then I get frustrated and it’s easy for anxiousness to take hold. If I feel like I can’t do something, if I’m being forced into a situation I want no part of, all of these things make sense. But for the past two weeks, I had no idea what was wrong.
So, I did what any rational person would do. I tried to recognize the pattern before one started. It started in my joints, which was strange. It’s the kind of arthritic pain I get in my knuckles and wrists before a storm, but there hasn’t been rain in the forecast lately. It would spread up to my elbows and down to my ankles and through my spine and the back of my neck got tight.
Then the migraine sets in. It’s one of those migraines that starts in the back of your head and pushes pressure through your eyes, the kind where you can’t look at light and every little noise seems amplified and it’s absolutely miserable. As I would cover my head to try and block out the light and the noise, I felt the internal collapse (I have no better way to phrase it). I went from being just fine emotionally to full blown panic.
The thing about anxiety attacks is that there’s a certain amount of recovery time required afterwards, depending on the scale. Like with any sickness, it takes time to fully recover. For me, it takes a couple of days for most of my attacks. But having one every single day doesn’t really allow for recovery, which doesn’t really allow for productivity, which was making me even more anxious, and thus, more susceptible to more attacks.
Migraines are weird. They don’t always present themselves as intense headaches, so it can be difficult to detect them – especially when their symptoms are consistent with an already existent disorder. But sure enough, for once, my anxiety wasn’t to blame for these attacks. When my mother and I figured it out, we got some Excedrin Migraine, and since then, everything’s been alright. The tension in my head has lessened, I’m not photo- and sound-sensitive anymore, it’s easier to concentrate, and no more anxiety attacks.
So, what’s the point of this little anecdote, you ask yourself, knowing that I’ve always got a profound moral to my stories. Sometimes, when living with a mental illness, it all becomes very normal. Panic attacks? Must be that darn ole chronic anxiety being particularly difficult lately. Chronically exhausted? Probably just depression weighing me down. This is dangerous thinking, though.
You live with this illness, so you know how it works. If symptoms are coming in a way inconsistent with how it usually is, then something probably isn’t right. No one knows how your body works as well as you do, and your body is quite good at letting you know if something’s wrong. So if something happens that is similar to, yet inconsistent with, your disorder, look into it. Pay attention to it. There may be something beneath the surface that’s unrelated, a smaller issue that is fixable.
Sometimes it’s so easy to see disorders as things that will never go away, so we forget about trying to manage them or make them easier to deal with. But if taking migraine medication is the only thing necessary to stop this current bought of daily panic attacks, I’d much rather do that than live in misery.
Of course, this isn’t always the case. But you know your triggers. If something is inconsistent, listen to your body. You never know what else could be going on, disguised as something you’ve gotten used to.
Stay healthy and aware, lovelies.
~Liz.
awkwardfangirl 