Anxiety

a place to call home

Dear Internet,
My list yesterday of 50+ shows to keep you entertained while waiting for the next season of Downton Abbey / Miss Fisher turned out to be a huge hit. Cheers everyone! I’m glad my obsessive television tendencies were finally put to good use! Maybe I should start a “IF YOU LIKE, YOU WILL LOVE” feature because surely, all of this information should go somewhere.
Like the rest of the world, except for apparently Miami, I’m buried under a million feet of snow and ice. It has been snowing steadily since the weekend and if my weather desktop app is to be believed, there does not seem to be an end in sight.
Today marks the half-way point of December (It is also my half-birthday! Happy 41.5 to me!), we have not even hit the longest day of the year and I am already tired of winter. Kate and I were talking about taking off for a long weekend somewhere where we can pile on the 50SPF, drink fruity drinks with dangerous amounts of alcohol in them, and go swimming in blue oceans. And no partners allowed – no husbands, no boyfriends, no whiny dogs OR kids. We just may need to make this happen.
This week has been awful for many of my close crazy friends and that has been making me feel helpless, as I watch them struggle with their own diseases and I cannot help them. My own anxiety has been setting off like crazy at the tiniest of changes and moods. I’ve been having anxiety attacks at the most random of places, and at the most random of times, namely all fast beating of my heart that makes me feel like my chest is about to explode. Sometimes the beating is so hard and fast, you can see my shirt move or the pulse visibly quickens at various pulse points on my body. The attacks come on quick, there is no warning, and then leave just as if they never happened.
I am grateful they have been short lasting, for when they are prolonged, I tend to get exhausted quicker and immediately go into protect mode where I want to cut off all contact with the world, something difficult to do when at work. I have not been taking my Klonopin as often as I should have done, even when the first attack hit on Monday. When I had one today while randomly discussing something benign with a friend, all I wanted to do was take a whole pill, which would have promptly knocked me out. I need to score my pills for anxiety emergencies because this unnecessary insurmountable stress will just keep getting worse.
Friday at roughly 4PM is my last work day for the semester and I do not have to be back on campus until January 8th. TheHusband is already off for his holiday vacation and does not have to back until January 6th. We have absolutely no glorious plans other than my mother-in-law who is coming to visit between the 25th and 1st. I have stocked up on jim jams, tea, and will be sure to keep comfort food around me. My goal? To do absolutely nothing but wallow in my own filth, drink lots of tea, do old lady crafts when the mood strikes, watch more hours of the telly, and stuff myself silly with chocolate and treats.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe:

frequency ranges and spatial distributions

Electrode locations of International 10-20 system for EEG (electroencephalography) recording. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Dear Internet,
I learned today that one cannot tweet when one is having electrodes placed on their skull. But then, you’re so tired from the sleep deprivation, the last thing you want to do is lean over and grab your phone to tell the world you’re beginning to look like the Bride of Frankenstein.
The EEG test required me to be sleep deprived, so I fell asleep at midnight and woke up at 4AM. No caffeine. At 7:15, I woke TheHusband up for us to head to the hospital where the procedure was going to take place. I was feared I was going to end up getting amped up on adrenalin that would prevent me from falling asleep during the procedure. I also feared of falling asleep while driving. There are times when having a husband is useful.
The EEG testing unit is buried in the bowels of the hospital, a set of complicated instructions arrived in the mail, but we got there will little delay. After I checked in, I was called back by one of the techs who was admonished that “Donna has to learn patience. I have to finish checking her (meaning me) in before Donna can have her.” More conversation. I’m told to sit back down. Then stand back up to follow the not Donna to the actual testing area. The not Donna kept apologizing along the way for what has just transpired. There seems to be some drama fraught at workplace.
I meet the Donna when I’m led into the room where the testing is going to take place. Donna goes through my paperwork and seems perplexed as to why I am here after I answer her questions. I document my seizure history, starting when I was 3. She then wants to talk about “my other issues,” which she means my mental disorders. These I had already mentioned to her earlier questions and I notice she has a hard time saying their names, her mouth seems crippled. I say them clearly, for her to make sure we’re clear: Bipolar I, Borderline Personality Disorder. ADHD. General anxiety. I explain, again to her since she seems confused, some of the symptoms associated with one disease is duplicated across other diseases. For example, the tremor in my right hand and leg, which happens rarely, is from the Bipolar, not neurological.
Donna’s seemingly reluctance at my answers is making me anxious. I find that slightly hilarious so I giggle while she finishes up my paperwork.
Prior to the placing the electrodes, the not Donna measured my skull and gave Donna seemingly random numbers that sounded like some sort of key, “6. 5.8, 6, 6, 5.8” and would act slightly intrigued when something came up as a “7.” “Are you sure?” the elder would ask. “I’m sure. It’s a 7.”, the junior responded.
I still have no idea what they were talking about.
After my head was measured thoroughly, and marked all over with red grease pencil, they began placing the electrodes on my head, using a heavy glue for the attachments. I’m assured the glue, another sticky product, and the grease pencil are all water soluble.
Donna and not Donna start working on placing the electrodes me, one obviously more confident or has been at her job far longer than the other. Donna’s confidence in what she was doing overshadowed the other tech, who while as agile with her fingers, often seemed to pause or was hesitant about what and where she should mark. I was getting annoyed with the confident one as she marked and place the electrodes on my skull, she had a habit of pulling my hair just enough to make me cringe for a nanosecond, but not so much that it actually hurt. Since her counterpart managed to not do this, I took it as some passive aggressive act about her job. This was cemented when one of the electrodes seemed to apparently not be working correctly, as she worked on fixing it, she had no problems being rough with moving and cleaning the electrode around my head, pulling my hair roughly a few times about with the shift.
After I was wired up, my head was wrapped with several rolls of gauze and I was told to lay down.
The room was sterile and devoid of any comfort. I was wearing a cardigan, sports bra, tshirt, and yoga shorts and I was shivering. The not Donna asked if I wanted a blanket, which I gladly took. I couldn’t get warm and I tried not to be scared.
There were several tests that were performed, the first of which with my eyes closed, various patterns of flashing lights were pulsed in front of me. Some flashings did nothing to me, others caused my eyes to rapidly move. Was that normal or was I having some sort of non-epileptic seizure? Another test was a breathing test where I breathed out, from low in my diaphragm, for three minutes. Harder than it sounds. The final test was the sleeping test, in which my brain waves were measured as I slept for 20-30 minutes.
Apparently I conked right out, because one minute the Donnas are talking to me and the next, I’m being woken and informed we are done. I was uncomfortable in the room, cold still. I’m a side sleeper, something I couldn’t do for the test with my head wrapped in electrodes, thus the fact I slept was surprising.
The Donnas spent a few minutes unwrapping me, taking the electrodes out. The not Donna hands me a comb similar to the one we used to receive in grade school on picture taking day to run through my mop to get the electrode gel out and I laugh because my hair would break such a comb. I run it through anyway and it pulls and tugs but does not yet break, that it is easier to use my fingers to hunt of gel bits. Once I’m made somewhat presentable, I’m let free and taken back to the waiting room where TheHusband waits.
I’m told I will hear in 7-10 days from my neurologist.
Me, personally? I’m betting it’s what the doc said: I was epileptic when I was a kid and now the symptoms I’m thinking are epileptic are actually non-typical migraines.
We went to breakfast and came home by 11A where I slept for a few hours and TheHusband went right to work. I spent the rest of the day lounging, keeping up with my RSS reading and TV watching.
In other news, my appointment on Monday with Dr. H., the medicating doctor, went as I had hoped. He agrees to take me off of lithium, which will be much more involved process than I had hoped. I had already taken myself down from 1500mg to 1200mg, so I’ll remain at 1200mg for the rest of the week. Then I’ll go down to 900mg for a week, then 600mg for a week, then nothing. Dr. H. also cautioned that if I felt good on a particular dosage, to stay on that dosage and call and let him know. So if the crazy is tempered by 600mg as opposed to my 1500mg, then bully for me. I’m willing to do this, but if things don’t work, I’m not staying on it. Period.
I can almost taste the mental freedom and it will taste delicious.
x0x0,
Lisa

This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2010

she-bear

Henry Fuseli – Hamlet and his father’s Ghost (1780-1785). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Dear Internet,
TheHusband and I were set to go up to Throbbing Cabin last night but opted to stay home to circumvent the potential traffic bomb of travelling on a holiday weekend. Our plan, then, was to leave this morning and stay at Throbbing Cabin for the rest of the weekend, coming home on Monday morning.
This morning, however, had other ideas
When I woke up, I went into a massive panic attack where I refusing to not just not leave the house, but I was not going to leave our bed, or even get dressed or any thing resembling personal care. I became so agitated over the prospect of leaving, moving, interacting with people, I started to get into manic mind mode. TheHusband, who had been out walking the dog when the attack started, returned back to our bedroom to my meltdown.
When I saw him, I immediately burst into tears.
Needless to say, we’re not going anywhere this weekend.
TheHusband has learned to stop asking me what is setting off the panic attacks because I never know. Sometimes it’s mental, sometimes they are physical. Sometimes I can ward them off, and others, like today, I’m overwhelmed by their sheer control over me.
The attacks, or in this instance the need to shelter myself from the world, has become more intense over time. I often feel hyper sensitive to the outside world. People. Situations. In my head, when plotting a set of errands that require me to leave the house for long periods of time, I attempt to sort them to make them least painful and less having to interact with anyone. Sometimes, more often than not, I lie to get out of situations because the thought that I would need to be around other people, or more rightly in places that are not familiar, makes me anxious. My house is my touchstone and if I cannot have things set up the way I need them to be set up to function, then things start to break down.
While my depression in the past has been the cause for decrease in sexy times, the drugs have amplified sexy times, along with everything I have just explained. I’ve always had voracious attitude towards sex and with nearly a year on Lithium, it has dried up like an October leaf. I was telling a friend of mine recently, who was newly diagnosed as bipolar himself, I could have Alexander Skarsgard naked on a chaise reading a book in front of me, and I’d be, “Eh.” I don’t want to touch myself, let alone my own husband, and I could not even summon the desire for a naked Alexander Skarsgard. Or James McAvoy. Or any of my fictitious husbands. I used to be the girl who wanted to have sex every where and with everything, and now I would just like to put the kettle on and have a good pot of tea.
And yes, I have a fairly healthy vibrator and dildo collection that is currently gathering dust. Which is a shame as some of them are expensive and were gifts.
At my last medicating appointment, Dr. H. was absolutely positive that by taking Klonopin at night would help some of my issues. The idea being if I take the drug at night, I will get a sound sleep. If I get a sound sleep, then I will feel rested in the morning and more at ease.
Except that didn’t work. After trying this for a week or two and still feeling exhausted and pent up, I told Dr. P. who suggested I take the Klonopin earlier in the evening, say 7PM instead of 10PM. The reason is that Klonopin releases slowly so if I’m taking it later in the evening, by time I wake up, I’m groggy because the drug is still working. Then I start amping up on caffeine to get over the hump and the cycle begins again.
Dr. H. gave me a prescription for Wellbutrin, and after several weeks of circling it like shark, I bit the bullet and got it filled. Numerous friends of mine with similar brain issues have all reported good things with Wellbutrin and as it was not a SSRI, I figured it was worth a shot.
The first few days of Wellbutrin, I was downright cheery. I didn’t feel the energized pep that several friends reported, but I was honestly okay with all of that. By the end of the first week, the dark clouds started to form and for the entire second week, I was hell on wheels. It was not so bad that other people knew, or commented, but it was so bad that I picked up all the signs that this was not going to end well. My meltdown this morning was the final straw and I stopped taking the drug.
Some medicating therapists will have you push on through these periods because after the drug settles, it is smooth sailing. I can’t do this, emotionally, physically, mentally, or financially. My brain chemistry is such that what takes someone 21 days to metabolize a drug, it takes me 7. I may have a fight on my hands with Dr. H. this week because he’s going to report back to me my lithium levels are still in the therapeutic range and I’m going to tell him that regardless if they are, I need to get off that drug in a safe manner because I’m done with this experiment.
A year ago when I called Dr. P. to get my life on track, I was open to the idea of drug therapy because I wanted the pain to end. I wanted a way to chemically fix what was broken if talk therapy didn’t work enough. and to fix what behaviour modification could not fix. Dr. P. recommended Dr. H., who confirmed the existing diagnosis of ADHD, Bipolar I, Borderline Personality Disorder, with a top up of anxiety.
The idea was to get my mood stabilized with lithium, then start adding in the ADHD drugs to control that. Once we found the combination, everything would be grand!
Well, not so much.
Reading through some of those old entries, a lot of patterns begin to show. The drugs, mood/ADHD, are clearly not working. I can’t afford to emotionally keep putting my life into upheaval every time I go on something new to see if it works.
This nine month experiment, while peppered with good intentions, has crippled me more than I could ever imagine. Feeling myself hit the wall, time and time again, the disappointment I’ve laid on myself when something didn’t work, the guilt I built around me when I couldn’t complete a task, and the friendships I lost because I was not the person they thought I was.
The constant stress of wondering who I was going to be that day when I woke up, and how that affected work and personal relationships.
I’m done. I don’t want to be this girl anymore, who hides in her bedroom afraid of the world. I’m done not living a life because I feel too medically incapacitated to do so.
The new plan is to get weaned off of Lithium, and start a diet and exercise routine because literally, every book on bipolar talks about the lessening symptoms if you do these two things. Continue to see Dr. P. for talk therapy, once a week as current or more if he warrants it.
Anything has to be better then the now.
I want my life back and it looks like, I’m the one whose going to have to go get it.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #36)

This day in Lisa-Universe in:

the perfect storm

is how my GP referred to my left eye. Random hemorrhaging that randomly appeared on a random day last week. The “perfect storm” attribution comes as I hit all the elements just right (allergies with allergy meds waning, working out in the garden, a sneeze) was all it took to look like I had tangled with a liger.
Several days later, I had a massive anxiety attack while at work, the first one in months.
And I believe the hemorrhage and the anxiety attack are related.
It’s time to strip naked everything.

Panic in the Streets of Grand Rapids: Conversations about mother (part iii)

To support NaNoWriMo this month, I’m finishing the 30+ odd drafts laying about and posting them through the month of November.
Part I: Conversations about mother
Part II: Conversations about mother (part ii)
I felt fine in LA and in Phoenix (no minute or heavy stress attacks) as I drove but somewhere around Las Cruces, NM I began to have a major panic attack. It was late at night, I was stuck between two semis and the 10 had turned into single, each way lanes coupled with high cement shoulders due to construction. To top this wondrous night off, it was raining and raining hard.
I began to panic.
I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t breathe and I was freaked out of my wits.
This stepped up the racing thoughts that any second I was going to careen into the cement shoulder, hit a semi or get run over by the semi behind me. After what seemed like hours but was probably only mere minutes, I pulled off the road when I found the first mom and pop motel where I grabbed a room for the night. Even by taking myself out of what I thought was a dangerous situation, my heart wouldn’t stop racing. I made deals, bets, begged, cajoled, pleaded and bargained with whatever deity was above me to make this end. Nothing happened. I paced my room, smoked a million cigarettes and did everything I thought of in my power but I could not calm down.
The situation was made more intense that while I was no longer freaking out about my impending death on the 10, new thoughts would appear about my situation. I was in the wilds of New Mexico! Alone! With hardly any money! No one I know for hundreds of miles! With a crap cell phone!¹ I was literally thousands of miles from my destination, alone, nearly broke, and frightened and scared.
Common sense roused its stately head and forced me to go to the mom and pop of the mom and pop hotel, to explain in very poor pidgin Spanish, that I felt like I was unable to breathe because that was the first thing I could think of to tell them. I could hear the crackling of Spanish on the radio in the make-shift lobby as I spoke. I remember how warm the night felt against my skin and how the air hung with wetness from the recent downpour. I must have looked like a crazy person, standing there, begging for help in a reasonable voice while my heart raged on and clearly, able to breathe.
EMTs shortly arrived thereafter and gave me oxygen, which upon my first inhale I immediately calmed down. They found, just as the ER docs found a few weeks before, nothing wrong with me. Healthy as a horse. It is like once the attack has been fully addressed in some manner, it decides to leave as quickly as it sprang up. Instead of being thankful to the EMTs for the reassurance, I remember feeling chastened. Slightly ridiculous that I called them out in the middle of the night for a panic attack. Also a little stupid, a little insane and a whole lot of embarrassed.
Moments of lucidness during my attacks, when I knew I was fine and I knew I was not in harms way were always felt to be made like disappearing bread crumbs along a well worn road by the panic. It is a struggle, still in the now and sometimes almost daily, to differentiate between the world colored by anxiety and the world in which is real. It is an exhausting struggle within my brain to fight for what could be potentially destructive behavior as compared as to what is termed normal behavior.
I do not know.

1. Back in ye olde times when cell phones were bricks, on analog service and you paid by the minute.

conversations about mother (part ii)

To support NaNoWriMo this month, I’m finishing the 30+ odd drafts laying about and posting them through the month of November.
Part I: Conversations about mother
Part III: Conversations about mother (part iii)
I lied.
But I’ll maintain it was for the sake of good copy. The realization to write about my family is not something that came to me in an instant but something that I’ve been struggling with for months. My panic attacks and anxiety levels, which have been fairly dormant these last few years, have come aggressively to the surface with the move to Grand Rapids. My precious supply of Klonopin, when before I used so sparingly and only when under extreme need, I’m now eating like TicTacs.
On the surface, things are falling into place for TheHusband and me after months and years of sacrifice and financial starvation. Things are not absolutely perfect (I work part-time as opposed to full-time, as an example), but when are they ever? We are starting to build a lovely life – so why all the goddamned almost crippling anxiety? Again? The conclusion: If after ruling out everything else that could be detrimental to my mental health and the only thing left is my family, therefore they must be the cause of this unwarranted stress. It is also equally important, I feel, that in order to continue on discussing my familial relationships, it is also equally important to lay out the history of my anxiety.
I had my first panic attack when I was barely a teenager. What I can recall is that I was walking with a girlfriend from one class to the next when my heart started racing a million miles per minute. I can also remember looking down and seeing the fabric of my shirt move ever so slightly to the tune of my heart beat. I do not remember the eventual underlying cause for the attack but it was, in my living memory, the first real physical experience of being physically anxious. The heart racing went on for a few moments before settling back down to its normal rhythm. And as it happened, just like that!, it also ended. I must have, at the time, reported the incident to my mother who took me to the family GP who announced I had mitral valve prolapse. Stress, fear or anxiety were never mentioned in my diagnosis though much later, I would find out it is those things that triggered it.
(For many years I told people I had a literal broken heart. It sounded much more dramatic and romantic while fueling my ever active imagination.)
As I age, the anxiety comes and goes in ebbs and tides. Sometimes, symptoms are minute and barely noticeable when I know I am under extreme stress and others, it would have me convinced that I was having a heart attack, dying or riddled with cancer when I felt I had no stress in my life. Sometimes still, the more frightened, cornered, or helpless I feel, the more intense the symptoms would manifest. Others, I would be conscious that I was anxious or upset which easily could explain the flight or fight feeling while others, I could be at an event having a good time when the symptoms would begin to manifest themselves for no apparent reason.
With me, there is no straight path with anxiety, and almost always, if it happened one way before it would not necessarily happen the same way again. The symptoms would almost never repeat themselves. Sometimes it would be a racing heartbeat for a few minutes, other times it would be traveling aches/pains that would appear and disappear with no introduction or farewell. Once I had hair randomly fall out for months and then stop. This past winter, after TheHusband and I moved to Grand Rapids, I got something in my eye when I was getting ready for bed. Most normal people wash their eyes out and continue on with their life, but instead, I became ultra-hysterical and belligerent. I was convinced I had cancer, I was going to lose my eye and thus was going to die in five minutes! After washing my eye out with water AND saline a million times, on top of crying hysterically; TheHusband could not find the offending piece of whatever that was driving me insane. The only way he could calm me down was by drugging me up. Within minutes I was asleep and was incredibly sheepish about the whole incident the following day.¹
To be fair, the anxiety of my youth paled to that which would come in my 20s and 30s as illustrated by the examples above. By 1997, I was desperately unhappy with my life and under the wooing of a man-boy, I sold all my worldly possession and ran to the Bay Area to start my life anew. The man-boy promised fame and fortune, but instead left me in an illegal apartment culled out of a walk-out basement, in a house controlled by a dominatrix. Within several months of my move, he and I were over and I was working for a small tech firm in San Francisco. Within a year, TheHusband (then as TheBoyfriend part i) and I were living together in Oakland. According to TheHusband, I spent most of our relationship during that time on wild bouts of alcohol infused desperation. I don’t remember much of our time together during that period other than I drank a lot, we were dirt poor, and it seemed no matter what I did to improve my life, I was still so desperately unhappy.
By the summer of 1999, TheHusband and I were broken up but still living together. I was restless and always on the lookout for an escape route to get out of California². I found the escape by applying for and being offered a position at UUNet, located a million miles away.³ For the move, I was driving across the country alone with the most precious of my worldly belongings in my car and the rest shipped to my final destination. To make the move even more bittersweet, the day I went to hand in my resignation, I was made redundant from my current job.
While all of this was going on over the course of the summer (breaking up, drinking binges, concocting wild & desperate plans to escape), I started getting intense physical pains in my right arm – eventually to the point that it would not bend or move as it was meant to bend or move. Soon, I needed to have TheHusband’s help to get clothes on or off. This was in addition to the minute symptoms of stress also occurring, such as the rapid heart rate, clammy skin and random aches and pains. Convinced I was dying, I headed to the emergency room, where after battery of tests I was informed nothing was wrong with me. As soon as the diagnosis came, the pain vanished. I was as healthy as a horse, except for the tiny, picky little thing called stress. The ER docs did warn me, however, that if I did not do something about it soon, I may find myself slightly dead.
Sometime shortly thereafter that announcement, I bade TheHusband goodbye, climbed into my car and left San Francisco and all of my California problems behind, forever. From San Francisco to Virginia, with a pit stop in Atlanta, my drive was the 5->10->20 and then north, cutting across the lower part of the U.S. and across the widest part of Texas.
I felt fine in LA and in Phoenix (no minute or heavy stress attacks) as I drove but somewhere around Las Cruces, NM I began to have a major panic attack. It was late at night, I was stuck between two semis and the 10 had turned into single, each way lanes coupled with high cement shoulders due to construction. To top this wondrous night off, it was raining and raining hard. I began to panic. I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t breathe and I was freaked out of my wits. This stepped up the racing thoughts that any second I was going to careen into the cement shoulder, hit a semi or get run over by the semi behind me. After what seemed like hours but was probably only mere minutes, I pulled off the road when I found the first mom and pop motel where I grabbed a room for the night. Even by taking myself out of what I thought was a dangerous situation, my heart wouldn’t stop racing. I made deals, bets, begged, cajoled, pleaded and bargained with whatever deity was above me to make this end. Nothing happened. I paced my room, smoked a million cigarettes and did everything I thought of in my power but I could not calm down.
The situation was made more intense that while I was no longer freaking out about my impending death on the 10, new thoughts would appear about my situation. I was in the wilds of New Mexico! Alone! With hardly any money! No one I know for hundreds of miles! With a crap cell phone!⁴I was literally thousands of miles from my destination, alone, nearly broke, and frightened and scared.
Common sense roused its stately head and forced me to go wake mom and pop up to explain in very poor pidgin Spanish that I felt like I was unable to breathe because that was the first thing I could think of to tell them. I could hear the crackling of Spanish on the radio in the make-shift lobby as I spoke. I remember how warm the night felt against my skin and the air hung with wetness from the recent downpour. I must have looked like a crazy person, standing there, begging for help in a reasonable voice while my heart raged on and clearly, able to breathe.
EMTs shortly arrived thereafter and gave me oxygen, which upon my first inhale I immediately calmed down. They found, just as the ER docs found a few weeks before, nothing wrong with me. Healthy as a horse. It is like once the attack has been fully addressed in some manner, it decides to leave as quickly as it sprang up. Instead of being thankful to the EMTs for the reassurance, I remember feeling chastened. Slightly ridiculous that I called them out in the middle of the night for a panic attack. Also a little stupid, a little insane and a whole lot of embarrassed.
Moments of lucidness during my attacks, when I knew I was fine and I knew I was not in harms way were always felt to be made like disappearing bread crumbs along a well worn road by the panic. It is a struggle, still in the now and sometimes almost daily, to differentiate between the world colored by anxiety and the world in which is real. It is an exhausting struggle within my brain to fight for what could be potentially destructive behavior as compared as to what is termed normal behavior.
Intensive bouts of therapy over the years has taught me how to work with and for the anxiety, to control it, subdue it and to live a fairly normal life. In 2003, in addition to being diagnosed with anxiety, I was further diagnosed as a high functioning Borderline Personality Disorder. Treatment via talk therapy (I had a regular shrink) coupled with techniques learned from dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT)
1. We laugh about this incident now and anytime one of us has a something in their eye, it’s automatically termed the problem is cancer.
2. Which I would later swore I would never return nor step foot west of the Mississippi. That too turned to be false when I would go visit a friend of mine in Sacramento in 2003. So much for big threatening gestures.
3. Northern Virginia.
4. Back in ye olde times when cell phones were bricks, on analog service and you paid by the minute.

dance dance revolution

Tonight was supposed to be my first night at dance class, but, work pressure was mounting up today and i got an awful migraine around 4pm that just wouldn’t leave. I called Alisha and told her that I would have to take a rain check till next monday — it wasn’t that I was going to not follow through, fuck, i spent some cash on my shoes (tap and ballet), but for some reason some of the signs of my anxiety flared up (why I dunno, I’ve been taking the drugs), and i thought it was best to go home.
I’m taking a combination of tap/jazz and ballet which is to provide two things a: get me limber and flexible, b: get me in shape and c: so I can dance on the dance floor. I don’t know why lately I’ve been on this club kick even though I haven’t been to a club since, hell, when I left grand rapids four year nearly five years ago, but I have been. I just love dancing. I proudly told Alisha (who is a professional dancer) that I danced from the time I was 3 till I was 9 or 10 or 11 (somewhere in there) where the dreams of a professional dancer sort of got shot with my growth spurt and my big feet (I wore a size 10 shoe starting when I was in fourth grade and I stood over 5′ tall — this has got to tell you something).

i’m a star baby

an idiot that i know (who, even though i have him banned on aol IM, icq and generally toss his emails — he’s *likes* the abuse) did email me about a clever site that ranks journals/blogs into proper order. so i put mine in and became a star! baby! yah!
it’s silly. i got the most hits and the lowest rating. hahaha.
that just cracks me the fuck up.
are you shrunk yet?
i actually got up on time.
this is a major shock to me, my dog and paul as i rolled out of bed at 7 to get ready to head to the shrinks office. i was nervous. i chain smoked and checked my bank account [ob: to prove how much of a procrastinator i am, i will get up at 8, sit in front of my computer till 8:30 checking email and my online bank account, jump in the shower at 8:30 and leave at 9. I have to be to work at 9. Apparently, my yo-yo of a bank balance is more important than work.], surfed for a few minutes. Left somewhat on time (i thought 7:45, i left at 8:05. Appointment was at 8:45].
I was scared.
I lied. I hate shrinks because I’m afraid I’m going to admit something i don’t want to admit. pauls the best thing that has happened to me in a long time and i don’t need some scholar to tear down this relationship because he is 8 years younger than me. i fidgeted in traffic. i called my mother and spoke to her for 20 minutes as i weaved my way around the beltway. i park and walk in the office and fill out paperwork and she brought me into her office at 9.
I broke down.
This was the consultation to determine if i needed counseling. I cried. I cried when talking about my mother, the passing of my father and my very fragmented life. I cried for the first time in a long time (okay, not that long time) but I cried because I finally felt the relief that I was going to be okay.
Dr. Buyse wasn’t that bad. In all honesty she was really nice and I could easily speak with her. My mouth did drop open when she asked me about Paul and I’s sex life (something I had not expected, though Paul and I had made light of it the night before). We spoke and touch on so many issues, it really was a wonder that I hadn’t pursued this before.
I didn’t feel like the big bad bitch anymore.
I felt so good after the session that I had immediately gone to starbucks and gotten my usual raspberry mocha frap and a few cookies since I had skipped breakfast. But I felt motivated for the first time in a long time. Motivated to get work done on issues and to finally start putting my life in place.
I knew though, from her comments, she regarded me as a pet project. Who wouldn’t with a cornucopia of crap bubbling inside of me (anxiety, depression, alcoholism, child abuse, suicide, divorced family, etc). I’m a freaking field day for any day doctor worth their salt. She calmed my fears about klonopin, the drug I’m on now. Turns out it’s the *least* addictive of the somethingoranothers family it’s part of. My taking .25mg a day (the period is not a typo) is like, for some people, having a cup of cawfee a day. it’s my crutch, and i know it, but it helps.
I’m frustrated by the utter lack of support and information about anxiety available on the web. I’m frustrated by how often it is misdiagnosed and how often (from reading) that anxiety brings out other problems. I’m frustrated by some of the doctors I’ve read about who have a carefree attitude about it.
it’s a disease. it makes my life hell and has been for the last 15 years (if you go back to when i had my first attack at 13). it’s misunderstood, misdiagnosed and mistreated. I do not have a heart problem, depression, thyroid problem or anything else. My name is lisa m. rabey and i have anxiety disorder.

ed note: i want to thank all of those who email me about their own anxiety problems. i greatly appreciate all the feedback I’ve been getting from people, however, please PLEASE do not email me with “what do i do” because i am not a physician and nor can i tell you if you have any sort of anxiety or not. Please seek medical help so that someone can diagnose you PROPERLY. if you email me with “how do i know if i have anxiety or not” your email will be deleted. thank you.
i had my first “recorded” anxiety attack when i was 13.
i say recorded because that is the first memory i had of an attack. the image is still so clear in my head, it’s disgusting. i remember walking down the hall towards a class and coming upon a group of girls who were in my grade. the popular ones. the ones everyone loved. the ones that were getting asked out by the boys to dances and had “dates.” i remember my heart pounding so hard that you could watch it through my shirt. after passing the girls, my heart rate slowed and i felt better. but i didn’t understand what was going on.
during the next several years, the anxiety attacks worsened or lessened depending on the context. the time i had stayed out all night with Alan and had come home at 8am in the morning to be chastised by my mother. the attack in NYC this spring when i was out with friends having a cigarette because my relationship with paul was so new that i was afraid of the consequences. the lead on attacks last October on my way to Virginia. They are like a college in my head because depending on the situations and the severity, I can only remember the ones that stand out but thinking back, while laying on my back, i can recall almost all the more important ones and how they lead into my life.
the last year of my life has provided enough stress to take on the world. clearly i can see how the breakdown began with my breaking up with Justin, the stress of living with people I did not like and could barely tolerate, to moving to Virginia, to finding out that friends are not really friends, to my father dying, the reuniting with my mother.
—–
i wrote the above at 4am this morning when i had first gotten up. or actually since I didn’t go to bed, just from laying there hearing paul snore. my sinuses were dripping and my face felt like someone was banging on it slowly due to the intense pressure. i got up and walked around and started writing.
I’m still angry for a lot of things. I’m angry at time and how fast things go by.
i made it my objective this morning to get up early, work out and get to work on time. which, considering i had 3 hours of sleep, never occurred. now it’s nearing 11pm and I’m tired and exhausted having spent majority of the day playing “diagnose lisa issues”.

barnes and noble

Brian (Pauls brother) and I hit barnes and noble tonight for me to get some quality writing in and for brian to get out of the house for awhile. I came across a book in the clearance section called Writing For Self-Discovery. I had brought along my notebooks so I went ahead and sat in the cafe and started reading the damn thing. The first exercise on the very first page (which surprised me as most books go into more theory on why you should write before going to the nitty gritty) was to sit in one spot and write about what’s around you. Pick and object and go from there. This is what occurred:
barnes and noble cafe. people. feeling anxious. left breast has slight pains from being anxious. feeling stupid sitting solo at the cafe table with my white painted fingernails, people milling about. various people studying. remembering the cool cafe in Berkeley, CA where all the CalState kids went to. drank coffee. study. college. missing school. thinking of my father. small silver urn around my neck. thin people. beautiful people. grad school. college university. hard tables/chairs. people still here. sitting with Cathleen at the cafe. her sister Carolyn who was way cooler. why is it that people with “Ca” beginning names are called “cat”? on some people it sounds wrong. on others it sounds right. what can one say about the name lisa? derived from Elizabeth. fear to run. flight or fight. i ‘m in a public place and i’m scared.
dreaming about my father more. i’m not sure but it dawns on me in the bathroom tonight that the dreams are a realization he’s okay. he was younger and happier looking. there were scars on his forehead. “Dad, I say,” where are those scars from?” and he points to my necklace — the small silver urn with some of his ashes on it that i wear daily. My father, close to my heart.
i was watching la femme nikita the other night with brian and i saw what i wanted to be — her. Nikita. she is tall, blonde and perfect. except i don’t want to be blonde, just tall and perfect. and she’s was wearing this long black skirt that hung low over her hips and there was an inch or so of skin showing between her shirt and the damn skirt. with her pale skin and deep blue eyes. she looked amazingly exotic. and that was my inspiration. that is what i want to be. i have to lose 100lbs.
fuck.
i remember when i was 14? 15? I weighed 140? 150 pounds. I was like 5’9 or so. And I remember laying on my bed at night, obsessing about my weight and running my hands over my concave stomach and thinking “i’m never going to be fat. i’m not going to allow myself to get past this point in weight.”
that was 1/2 a life ago!
been reading more journals online again. going through diarist.net and sorting by women and ages and reading generally anything of anyone within my age group. and i realize that the 25-32 age bracket is nearly empty — not empty but it’s like what overcomes people between that age group to not write. i’m looking for a REASON and i’m finding it. Ana Voog is 34. Cheryl Tigs is a mom at 54. She can, next year, legally qualify for the AARP. I have 30 whole years left before I need to. And for once I smile. At the cafe. Where the cute goth girl works.
I’m obsessed about ages. People think i’m 22. Brian thought I was 22 or 23. No one believes I just turned 28. But i’m obsessed with other people’s ages. When someone tells me a story, I almost always ask “how old are they?” so that i can make the comment of “she’s immature” or “he should have known better”. and it’s stupid to gauge other people’s life by my age. at 28 i should have accomplished many things and i haven’t. but in a way, i’ve accomplished more than other people ever will. because i took chances. i took the chance, no matter how stupid, on flying to SF with nothing and making a go of it. and when that didn’t work, of driving cross country solo to another state and trying again. and seeing those stupid “jesus knows” signs along the highway. meeting paul for the first time in atlanta. BUT the thing is, i did it. myself. these are my stories and i know lots and lots of people who don’t have the balls to leave within 50 miles of where they were born.
west texas sucked.
my dad was 45 when i was born.
and today i really like me, imperfections and all.
-finis-
so tonight, when the urge struck me to redesign again (and i really do like this new design btw), i felt it. the cold crushing feeling in my chest. and it’s different from all the anxiety attacks i had before. because this time i was not obsessing about anything — I WAS FREAKING WORKING IN PHOTOSHOP. and i start crying. paul is freaking out because i can’t breathe (or so i say between the sobs). my pulse is normal but my chest felt like a ton of bricks landed on it. i call the 24 hour hot line my hmo has set up and i get picked up on the first ring. i tell the woman, mary, what is going on. she assures me i’m not having a heart attack. “you’re on klonopin” she says. “what’s your dosage?” i tell her i’m taking the bare minimum these days – .5mgs .25 in the morning and sometimes .25 later in the after noon. “did you take a dose?” she asks. “yes, i replied — a few moments ago”. klonopin takes 30 minutes to kick in before it works. she talks to me. calms me down. turns out she has done over 15 years as a coronary specialist nurse. i’m not having a heart attack. i’m so low risk it’s disgusting. ‘but this crushing” i keep telling her. it hurts. i don’t know what to do. the klonopin has been my miracle drug for the last two weeks. tonight was worse because it was fast and furious. and i’m so scared something is going on with me. she tells me if the pain doesn’t stop within the next 15 minutes, take another klonopin. after an hour, if there is still pain call. they are open 24 hours. i can be seen.
within an hour brian and i were at 7-11 buying slurpees and a big bite.