Panic!

Image from verywellmind.com

I had a panic attack today. That is unfortunately something I believe many who read this will be familiar with. Right now, I think I just entered the post-attack phase that is Shame. I feel ashamed. I am not yet strong enough to just move past something like that without having those feelings afterward. Not yet.



A few years ago, when I had attacks fairly often, they seemed (at least in hindsight) to be slow in developing. By comparison, today's felt like it came right out of the blue clear sky. And that seems to have made it worse. Let me go through what all transpired, and tell me if anything sounds like something you have experienced. This is just me trying to work through what happened.

I was sitting at my desk at home and had just started my work for the day. The way our team works, each day one of us is the point person for the group and assigns out the work while coordinating new work during the day and playing traffic cop. So, my teammate assigned me some work, which honestly was not bad at all. I expected worse, and by worse, I mean items that would require more effort by me to get it done. My job is to get others to resolve issues as efficiently as possible. I started to look at my 4 issues and got updates from teammates who were leaving for the day. I was prioritizing them and planning to deal with them.

At the same time, I noted I was feeling quite warm, which was a bit out of the ordinary for me. I turned the AC down a notch, and I heard it came on. But it didn't really help, and I started to feel a general anxiousness. Then I realized I was having trouble thinking through what I needed to do. Then, I was assigned a 5th issue, one I had touched on last night, and was seemingly going nowhere (as I write this, it's now resolved with basically what we thought the problem was last night; not sure why it wasn't handled hours ago, in that case). So, I'm feeling physically warm and uncomfortable, my head is swimming, and I start to feel overwhelmed.

The panic attack had begun, but I didn't recognize it as such (or maybe I did). I wondered what was wrong with me. The morning had gone well; I felt no stress, at least not consciously. It was a sudden "WTF!".

Factor into this my sugar level. This ALWAYS factors in, but I'm not sure how much. It might explain the head swimming and sweating. I'm still getting used to the insulin regimen, getting the dosages and timing locked in, with the help of my endo (endo #1; endo #2 helps with the hormones). The thing that seems weird is, last night for the first time, my level was PERFECT at bedtime. It was up this morning, but not terribly, but I wonder if the large variance in levels had anything to do with this. A less-than-sensible breakfast did me in. Self-sabotage, all the way.

Within a moment or two, I did realize I needed some remedy and wouldn't be able to work until I got one. That lead to the absolute tipping point: I needed to tell my boss and I didn't want to. I knew from experience he would be understanding and would want me to take care of myself first. I had the sensation that I had done things like this too often when in reality it might be 2 or 3 in the last couple of years. I started to feel even more emotional and was a bit shaky as I called him. True to form, he was awesome and advised me to take care of myself, get what I needed to be ok.

That's when the dam burst. I got off the phone, went and got on my bed, and just lost it. I felt so guilty for needing the break, I worried about what my team must think. Mind you, I'm in my male shell at work, so that always adds extra pressure that it shouldn't. The vast majority is from within. I know it and knew it. But I could not stop it. After a cry that lasted a good half an hour, all the while messaging family and friends (you know who you are, and you are AMAZING!), I got calmed down. I remember trying to get my breathing stabilized and doing self-assessments about how fit I might be to return to duty.

It took probably over an hour to get back to it, during which time all my work got reassigned. I'm picking at some unimportant stuff right now, allowing me to get my thoughts out here while still fresh. I feel bad others had to take on my work. I'm glad I did recover enough to at least return to do what I can. I am exhausted but otherwise ok.

Back to the Shame stage. Several people told me things like, it's ok, it happens to everyone, it's just life, etc. Intellectually, I know that it's true. I feel shame that it happened and I couldn't stop it. I will get over it. It's something I need to work on. "You can't freak out at work, Shannyn!!" is what I am telling myself. "Why can't you control yourself better!" I'm not sure what to do about it.

I think there are positives to today's episode, and typing them out here helps me to recognize some of them. First, I think I recognized something was wrong quicker than I would have in the past, and I think I worked through it quicker. For those of you into resolution metrics, my MTTM is going down (MTTM: mean time to mitigate). I recognize my support system is stronger than ever. *I* did that. I had a bunch of help, but I put it in motion. In the end, here I sit, on the other side of a tough couple of hours. It could be worse. Could be a lot worse. I'm ok.