Foolish panic
It's that darn snowball effect. I'm sitting here, just having a regular day. Anxiety is low. It's Friday. Yay for the weekend.
And then, some little thing creeps in my brain. Actually, what happened was I got a call from an unknown number a few cities away. Now, I get a lot of calls from numbers I don't know. And I don't answer, because, let's face it, there is just too much spam/sales pitch stuff. If it's important, they'll leave a message.
And that call, which is nothing (and no message) started a chain of thinking that started me panicking about my son. I can't even walk you through how I go from an unknown junk call to my son, but there I was. In about 30 seconds I went from a 1 to an 8 in anxiety. Even though everything is fine. It's a normal day. My son is at school. Laundry and dishes still need to be done.
I hate this foolish panic. I stopped everything I was doing and just came here to give myself some outlet, some calming down moment. (It has helped.) I get so frustrated with myself that I am going through these moments. My logical, reasonable brain knows that everything is okay. My emotional, overly-creative brain is conjuring all kinds of bad scenarios. And I hate that. Logical brain needs to start working out more to become stronger.
@thoughtfulmomma I'm sorry that you have been dealing with that. How have the panic attacks been since December? Have they gotten any better?
I recently had a panic attack because a driver (no where near me) honked thier horn at another car while I was crossing the street. I was so overwhelmed with panic that I ran the rest of the way to my office building and up to my room on the second floor. It was so silly because the whole time I knew the honk wasn't directed to me, I knew nothing else was going to happen and I couldn't explain the thought process from honk to severe panic.
I've talked to my counselor and he's suggested working on different gounding techniques the next time I find myself in a similar experience. I can either focus on textures in my surroundings (how does my back feel pressed against this chair, or the desk under my hands or the clothes draped across my body?), do the five sense exercise (name 5 sights, 4 sounds, 3 feels, 2 smells, 1 taste), or look for small details in the room (find all the circles: the doorknob, the ring my glass of water left behind, the ring on my finger, the screws holding the the light switch, the number 6, 8, 9, and 0 on the clock...) Maybe one of these exercises will help you too. I wish you the best with your anxiety
@SecretlyMe
The panic attacks come and go. Sometimes I know why, sometimes I'm in the middle of the grocery store and can't figure out what triggered it. I'm doing a lot of deep breathing.
@thoughtfulmomma Yeah that's something I've been struggling with too. I've been using my counseling sessions currently to try to identify my triggers. So far we haven't had much luck because the attacks aren't consistent enough. But I still keep a record so I can go back and look at what happened leading up to my attack to see if a pattern starts to emerge.
While we work on trying to figure out our triggers, all we can do is lower our general anxiety. The more we practice mindfulness and strengthen our grounding techniques, the better off we'll be. The lower levels will hopefully mean we'll have fewer attacks in the future. And the tools we master now will hopefully make the attacks more manageable and therefore less scary.
I know that probably was not the answer you were looking for. I understand how frustrating this can be. But hopefully we can both make progress soon and this won't be as big of a problem in our lives.