Sanity and Reason: A Conversation About Panic Disorder

I thought writing about this topic this weekend.   I’m still a little hesitant, yet…

In honor of discovering and understanding more about myself, I am going to digest a few things out loud.  Or in writing.  Because it’s my site, and I can, dammit.

About a decade ago, I met a girl named J.  She was my younger brother’s girlfriend, was thirteen, and had been kicked out of her house.  Because I had my own place, it was only fitting that my brother’s family would ask if she could stay with me.  She was a very polite, beautiful, and sort of emo-style girl who was old beyond her age.  She had dropped out of school, and was unemployed.   I loved her immediately, as was my style, because I saw the potential within her; and true to my nature, I saw an opportunity for me to express my own desperate need to help.   Knight in shining armor complex to the fullest of its definition.

Unfortunately, the lease at the place I was living would not be renewed.  With nowhere to turn, I asked my mom if she and I could move in for just a few months.  As it turned out, the drama would be thick at my mom’s home, and so the few months quickly turned into a single, eventful month.

One evening J. came home from hanging out with my brother.  It was late, so she snuck quietly into my room, and found me curled up and reading in bed.

She plopped into my recliner and we chatted about what she’d done that evening.

Then she looked at me strangely and said, “Sometimes I see an angel.  She’s blonde.”

And then she began to have a grand mal seizure.

I had never seen anything like it before, in person at least.  I knew what was happening– but I didn’t know what to do or how to help.  I screamed for my mom, told her to call an ambulance, and sat with J. while her body convulsed, making sure she wouldn’t fall on the floor or hurt herself.

Several years later, my mom offered me a deal I could not refuse. She was moving to Connecticut, and couldn’t sell her house.  So I was to move in and take over the mortgage.  I gave my notice and moved my stuff in, while my mom and her husband moved their stuff out.

We were in my mom’s bedroom– the room that is now mine– and she was packing the things from under the bathroom sink.  She had been having these strange auditory and olfactory hallucinations lately– ones that concerned me but none of the doctors could pin down with an actual diagnosis.   I was packing her things from her closet, and she cried out to me with fear, “Ashley!”   For some reason, I play that revolting cry back in my mind more often than I’d like to admit.

I got up, walked over to the sink, and found her lying on the floor, convulsing and foaming at the mouth.  She, too was having her first grand mal seizure.

I screamed to my mom’s husband to call an ambulance.  My mom laid on the floor, unresponsive and twitching.

It all happened so quickly– yet I can tell you precisely what it looked like with her husband standing over her, crying, “Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me!”

To be honest… we still don’t know what caused those seizures in my mom.  They were never diagnosed as anything related to epilepsy.  She was on medication for a few years, and without any further evidence of recurrence of the seizures, she was discharged from treatment indefinitely.

What gets me most is the fact that both of these women had their first seizure in front of me without any real warning.  There’s nothing to do to help out during a seizure, other than to make sure the person seizing doesn’t fall down or hit their head.  You just wait, and if it’s a new seizure, you call an ambulance.  That’s it.  That’s the answer.

To get right down to the point of this whole post.. it is to say that I am afraid that I will have a seizure.

I know it’s entirely unreasonable, entirely hypochondrical of me… Yet, I can’t help it.  In the back of my mind, especially when I’m feeling particularly anxious, I fear that I will have one.

Will there be someone around to help me?  What if it happens when I’m driving?

Rationally, I see this as my diagnosed anxiety and/or panic disorder.  Anxiety is my kryptonite.

Spiritually, I realize that worrying is worthless.  I realize that it is essentially a negative prayer.  If you put that much emotion, energy, and effort into a thought… and if thoughts become things… then I may as well add it as a black mark already on my list of things to do.

Physically, I recognize that anxiety is a chemical reaction.  Or, rather, over-reaction.  I’ve been able to quell 99% of my anxiety by controlling how much caffeine I consume.  As much as I love waking up to a steaming creamy cup of coffee, I realize now that I can’t drink it.  I’ve had to give up one of my favorite parts of my day– in the name of calming myself down.

For most of my adult life, I have suffered from panic disorder related to such fears as these.  Completely unreasonable, entirely irrational, and yet, even from a person who IS excessively reasonable and rational, I am plagued by it.   Well, I should say, “was” plagued by it.  Because after giving up my morning crutch, my panic attacks have been consistently fewer.

Unfortunately, though, regardless of how little caffeine I consume, regardless of how spiritually grounded I am, and regardless of how rational I’m feeling, there is always in the back of my mind the completely terrified person who is afraid of having a seizure.   Or a heart attack.  Or organ failure.  Or… whatever.

When I’m able to stand back from myself and view my situation subjectively, I am still kind of surprised that I– someone who takes pride in being so well put together– have to struggle with such nonsense sometimes.   I recognize that I certainly can’t be perfect, and I think it’s in my coming to terms with my own imperfection that I’m finally able to write about such things.

Sanity is over-rated.  Even those of us who think we are most sane often have something about us that we’d rather not share.  What they say about psychology majors is often not far from the truth.