Well.. how do these things even start? What am I even doing? Tonight was a bad night, which is really frustrating because I feel like I’ve been doing okay for awhile. But here I am.. it’s 7am, I’ve been awake all night and I can’t see sleep happening anytime soon. I’ve read quite a few blogs on here, and I admit it’s incredibly refreshing to read things from people who I know will understand, even if only slightly. I guess I’m just feeling alone. When I shouldn’t be, I have the few friends I need, I live with my girlfriend and our wonderfully fat ginger cat. I should be happy. And I think I am? So why the panic attacks? What am I anxious about? Why have I spent this entire night trying to convince myself that I’m not having a heart attack and that I’m gonna be okay, whilst feeling my heart beat throughout my entire body. Not wanting to wake my girlfriend up because I’m so worried about her getting fed up of dealing with my unnecessary panicking. Which is ridiculous, cause logically I know she will always be there for me. She always has been, when my mum died, through everything.
So, I’ve done everything I should’ve. I’ve been to the doctors, gotten all their pills. I take them all daily. I see the therapist I got referred to and it does help, it really does. If I compare how I am now to how I was 2 months ago.. well, there’s a big difference. But it’s just nights like tonight, when no ones there and I cannot control my thoughts or feelings. When I am 100% sure that I’m about to have a heart attack and that’s it, the fear is so crippling I feel it in my chest and back. Now, I know no one will read this, well actually, thats not true. Before I started writing this I actually read a few blogs, and they were helpful. So I guess it’s just as likely that someone will pass through this. If you do, and you understand how I’m feeling even for a second? Well i guess you can be comforted by the same feeling I was. You’re not alone.
I wish that you didn’t feel this way. I wish that so many of us didn’t understand this so intimately. But if we didn’t get it, if we didn’t understand and identify with this feeling then this cite wouldn’t exist. And then we’d all really feel even more alone. The bad days might really suck, but that doesn’t take away the fact that good days happen too. I wish I could give you better advice than Weather through it and find ways to center yourself. Unfortunately though my way of coping with this wouldn’t work very well for you. I went through a period of time were I practically became nocturnal and what finally got me to sleep again at night was a puppy named Teddie. She was so energetic and so little that me breathing too hard would wake her up and she’d wanna play so I couldn’t spend the night panicking and crying and gasping for air because little Teddie needed to sleep. And just the mechanical repetitive motion of petting her for a full minute after her little body stopped tensing helped lull me to sleep. This is how I centered myself. I was never any good at remembering the breathing exercises or the grounding techniques. But petting a small animal that needed to sleep, and just wanted to love me more than anything in the world? That doesn’t need much thought or memory. It just needs to be done. And that’s what helped center me through those bad nights. I hope you find some thing that helps center you, soon.