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Tag Archives: panic attacks

Writing as a Technique to Overcome Anxiety

01 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by A Journey With You in bipolar, hope, mental illness, schizophrenia, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

anxiety, Art, mental health, mental illness, panic attacks, schizophrenia], therapy, wellness, writing

Either as a part of my schizophrenia or in addition to it, I have an anxiety disorder. I am someone who does not like to be excited or looking forward to anything. I can not tell the difference between excitement and anxiety. If something good happens and it will take a few days to manifest, I usually have a panic attack. Today was one of those days. I have an appointment next week that is excellent for me, but the news of that revved up my anxiety.

I try not to take extra medication when I am struggling with anxiety. I try to “power” through it. Today was no different; I did not want to take a pill to calm myself down. I tried exercising because sometimes that works. I tried calling my husband because that can work as well. Then I tried writing a blog, and before I knew it, I was absorbed in trying to figure out which word to type after the last one, and my anxiety was gone.

I wrote a whole blog. I like it, but it is about faith, and I don’t make it a habit of writing about anything religious or political on this blog, so I’m not going to post it. I am going to take a victory lap for finding a new way to deal with anxiety, and that is writing.

I have always known that writing is powerful and I have known for a long time that people use writing as therapy. I know many people who write to overcome trauma of one kind or another. It never occurred to me that the act of writing could change my thoughts though and get me from a bad spot to a good spot in less time than it takes medication to work.

I’ve never tried mindfulness, but I can only guess that writing works in much the same way as that – a person has to focus their thoughts on something other than the anxiety they are feeling. In mindfulness, it is the here and now and with writing, it is a whole complex set of thoughts that can take a person outside of self-focus. When I am writing, I ask myself, what am I trying to say? How am I trying to say it? How does this word follow that word, and so on. The act of writing seems to take up enough thought power to squeeze the anxious thoughts away.

I don’t know if it will work every time I have a panic attack, but I am hoping it does because I don’t like to depend on medication for every symptom I have. I like to try and deal with some symptoms by using techniques that complement my medication routine and not add to the number of pills I take.

 

A Setback: Looking at my Symptoms Honestly

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in bipolar, schizophrenia, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

anxiety, employment, essays, hallucinations, jobs, mental illness, olfactory, panic attacks, paranoid, schizophrenia], work, writer, writing

I failed. I would like to say it is a small failure, but it is colossal. The worst part about it is I thought I could do it. I was excited to try. I had my hopes up that I would be successful. I was ready to put my illness on the back burner and rejoin the workforce.

I didn’t make it through orientation.

The first thing they made me do was to put my purse in a room because they didn’t want me to have it in the warehouse. I knew this was going to be a problem for me. My purse goes with me everywhere; I never lock it up, and I never let it out of my sight. I had two hundred dollars in my purse. I had my house keys and car keys. I had my medication. I had my social security number prominently displayed on my medical card. I had my driver’s license. And I had food; food, that they told me to bring for a snack. I can’t eat food that has been out of my possession because I am paranoid about contamination and poisoning. Food and food issues are one of my most frequent and persistent symptoms.

They took all of us new hires, about twenty of us, into a room. They gave us our identification cards and gave us a tour of the warehouse. While walking the warehouse I smelled all the laundry detergent soaps and other perfumed items. I am allergic to perfumed items, but that isn’t what hit me. I started getting paranoid and anxious about all those smells. Smell is a trigger for me regarding panic attacks and olfactory hallucinations. I was still worried about my snacks because I was starting to get hungry.

Back in the training room, we went over our login for work hours and a safety video. By this time my anxiety was so high and I was hungry, nervous, and paranoid. I told the man at the desk, “I’m sorry this isn’t the job for me.”

“Do you want me to walk you out?”  He asked.

“Yes, please,” I said.

He walked me to the warehouse exit, and I asked about my purse. He apologized and led me to the room where I had left my belongings. I went to my car, drove home and had to take an extra dose of medication and have my husband come home to try and get me back to a stable place.

I learned a few things today. The first is I am no longer young. Also, I don’t have the courage and energy and resiliency I had in my youth. My symptoms have gotten worse over the years (I may not be actively psychotic but what I can handle, accomplish and push myself to do is greatly reduced from ten years ago). I will try to make working at home a priority again because I believe it is all I can reasonably handle. Although I believe people with schizophrenia can do anything, I cannot do everything. I have more limits than I imagined. I am not giving up (I will try to find some form of work that I am well suited for that doesn’t require me to have an episode just by going to orientation). People will still hire me, and I may give in sometimes, but I am not a quitter.

Today was a setback, a failure of sorts, for all of us with schizophrenia trying to lead a normal life, but I still plan to find a way to be a good example of successful living while dealing with active symptoms. I know it can be done, and I believe I can do it. I may not be able to do traditional jobs, but I will find some meaningful way to use my time and talents.

I hope you had a more successful day and a better experience than I did, but if you didn’t, let’s agree together not to give up. Let’s keep trying. Failure is nothing to be afraid of, it is not trying that dries us up and kills our spirit. Our spirit is our life force, let’s keep fighting to keep it vital, active and alive.

Thinking About Age

10 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

age, aging, anxiety, day of the dead, death, dying, elderly, end of life, fear, hope, inspiration, life, mexican, mexico, panic attacks, writer, writing, youth

When I have a panic attack, I am terrified of dying. When I am having a good day and think about having a terminal illness, it doesn’t scare me. I like the good days. I don’t like to be fearful of the end of my life. If I have to be aware that my life is going to end one day, I don’t want to be terrified of how that is going to happen.

For the past twenty years, I have watched people from Mexico celebrate the Day of the Dead, and every time I see an altar, or a painted skull (I have one on my desk), I wish that we treated death more like our neighbors in Mexico. I want to be more like Mexicans and have a day to celebrate the dead, and keep them as a part of my life. A celebration of those who have gone before isn’t something I want to do alone I want to do it with others, as a part of a family or community.

I grow weary of living in a culture that worships youth, and where many elderly people are placed in homes away from their families. I know from personal experience that it isn’t easy or even safe, to always care for the elderly in your home, but many people are alone at the end of their lives, and that is tragic.

The first time someone I knew died, I was twelve or thirteen. Two boys, twins, from my hometown, (I had a crush on one of them) drowned underneath a waterfall near a lake outside of the town where I grew up.

Since that time, I have lost friends, a step brother, aunts, uncles, cousins, and my grandparents.  Occasionally, I will write a story about one of them, and the process of putting a memory into words brings more memories of them back to me.

I love the young people in my life, and I know they have things to teach me, but so do the older people in my life. When I see older people, I know that someday, if I am fortunate enough to live a long life, I will be in their place. I may lose bits or pieces of my memory. I may completely lose my memory. I will be frail in comparison to my youth. I will have more doctor appointments and more medication. Of course, there are more and more stories of people living past one hundred who are still participating in a passion of some sort like music, or architecture, or other arts.  Many people are living longer and healthier.

These are the thoughts I have on a Sunday morning in January. I am thinking of how I would like to celebrate those people who have died but are still a part of my life. I am also thinking about how we treat youth and age, and my mortality and the mortality of those I love.

It may seem like a weighty or depressing topic for the early morning, but it shouldn’t, and that’s the point – it happens to all of us and so many of the messages we receive from advertising is that it doesn’t have to. It does have to. It is a certainty; a certainty that we often hide.

I’m not hiding this morning, although I may be next week, and if I have a panic attack, I’ll be terrified of this very thing. I don’t want to be terrified. I want to celebrate and accept. Of course, I also hope to be writing my best stories at the age of one hundred.

Psych Central, The Mighty, and Happy New Year

02 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by A Journey With You in articles I wrote, mental illness, schizophrenia, Uncategorized

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Tags

anxiety, articles, bipolar, depression, marriage, mental health, mental illness, panic attacks, Psych Central, relationships, schizophrenia], The Mighty, writer, writing

My post on Psych Central today is about people marrying those of us with a mental illness and how those people are not automatically saints. You can read it here. 

I had a new article posted on The Mighty. Some of you may have seen it before. It is an open letter to a hiring manager from someone with a mental illness looking for a job.

I am a day late, but I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year! I hope 2016 is our best year ever!

 

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