Stuck In A Hole
Panic attack: A sudden feeling of acute or disabling anxiety.
It was a summer evening filled with fireflies at Windermere Baptist Conference Center. My roommate was gone for the weekend, and I found myself alone alternately listening to Sanctus Real and Mozart piano sonatas. As I cleaned our bathroom I sang and hummed along, happy to be done with another of making beds and folding towels.
A few minutes later, I was huddling on the floor crying, "I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone." The sobbing did not let up for a solid ten minutes. While one part of me cried and gripped the carpet, another part of me stayed aloof and confused. I kept asking myself, "What is this? What is happening to me?" but could find no answer in my realm of experience. This only scared me more.
It was my first panic attack. Eventually, I called two friends and they calmed me down. This has remained a trend in my panic attack history: I rarely have someone present physically to talk me through them. Over the years, I have had dozens of panic attacks, but have only had someone sit with me during five or six of them.
Dealing with frequent panic attacks is like being dropped down a huge hole where despair and depression are at the bottom, and normal, generally positive feelings and actions are at the top. I work so hard to climb out of that hole...only to have another long panic attack that sends me slipping to the bottom again. I want to climb out, believe me, I do, but one panic attack can take a while to recover from, particularly if I'm alone. Somedays I feel stuck in that hole.
My panic attacks can be linked to the Lyme disease that they found in my brain. This accounts for me having panic attacks for no apparent reason. It also explains the strange paranoia that let to me double locking all the house doors and sleeping with my phone so that I could dial 911 whenever a rapist or thief invaded my home. It also explains a lot of the nightmares I had during my six week detox.
The fact is, though, that Lyme doesn't explain all of my panic attacks. It doesn't explain why I sometimes can't look at knives without crying, or why a few mistakes at work or during piano practice will leave me wanting to hide in a closet. It doesn't explain why I want to cry every time I'm alone for more than a few days.
I could write a lot of wonderful things about how God does not call us to live with fear, and how memorizing verses has helped me conquer my panic attacks. Yes! Insert Christianese phrases about feeling victorious and happy because of Christ!
That's not my reality, though. My reality is that I've been in a hole for a long time, and climbing out of that hole is going to take hard work.
A few minutes later, I was huddling on the floor crying, "I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone, I don't want to be alone." The sobbing did not let up for a solid ten minutes. While one part of me cried and gripped the carpet, another part of me stayed aloof and confused. I kept asking myself, "What is this? What is happening to me?" but could find no answer in my realm of experience. This only scared me more.
It was my first panic attack. Eventually, I called two friends and they calmed me down. This has remained a trend in my panic attack history: I rarely have someone present physically to talk me through them. Over the years, I have had dozens of panic attacks, but have only had someone sit with me during five or six of them.
Dealing with frequent panic attacks is like being dropped down a huge hole where despair and depression are at the bottom, and normal, generally positive feelings and actions are at the top. I work so hard to climb out of that hole...only to have another long panic attack that sends me slipping to the bottom again. I want to climb out, believe me, I do, but one panic attack can take a while to recover from, particularly if I'm alone. Somedays I feel stuck in that hole.
My panic attacks can be linked to the Lyme disease that they found in my brain. This accounts for me having panic attacks for no apparent reason. It also explains the strange paranoia that let to me double locking all the house doors and sleeping with my phone so that I could dial 911 whenever a rapist or thief invaded my home. It also explains a lot of the nightmares I had during my six week detox.
The fact is, though, that Lyme doesn't explain all of my panic attacks. It doesn't explain why I sometimes can't look at knives without crying, or why a few mistakes at work or during piano practice will leave me wanting to hide in a closet. It doesn't explain why I want to cry every time I'm alone for more than a few days.
I could write a lot of wonderful things about how God does not call us to live with fear, and how memorizing verses has helped me conquer my panic attacks. Yes! Insert Christianese phrases about feeling victorious and happy because of Christ!
That's not my reality, though. My reality is that I've been in a hole for a long time, and climbing out of that hole is going to take hard work.
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