Panic Survivor Members Blog

Some of you here probably wonder where I ended up.

Well, nowhere in particular. I am still leading the same, quiet, in some ways pretty limited life, facing my demons on a daily basis, working and sharing both those more and those less fortunate moments in the life of my family and in my dear friends’ lives. And I go on, HOPING for the best more than ever.

 

The reason why I felt a strong need to write this blog is not some purely mine, personal reason, but it still is something that touches me deeply and provokes strong emotions.

 

This site has been of great help and I met some truly wonderful people here, but there are still some aspects of it that paradoxically give me more anxiety instead of helping me lessen its strength. I’ve read and heard many times here that PD is a serious, lifelong mental illness. A verdict for life. Something that gets better with age, but that you should think twice if you believe that you’ll ever get rid of it. I’ve recently read also that it is like living life without a leg. And that once you accept that it is that way and that serious, you’ll be functional and able to accomplish anything.

I will most certainly apologize to all of you who think this way, but I do have a strong need to disagree with things above mentioned.

 

I am someone who is in a middle of a very strong episode of PD with agoraphobia. I am hypochondriac, perfectionist and obsessive thinker. I experience DP, DR, dizziness and vertigo on what seems a daily basis. But I DO NOT HAVE A SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS. I am fully aware of who I am, where I am, what I do, I remember everything, I speak coherently, I am perfectly able to work, take care of myself and deal with other people even in six languages if needed. I do not have visual or auditory hallucinations; I don’t contact with inexistent beings or have manias of persecution. I am not out of control in any way, I am not psychotic or bipolar. I don’t suffer from PTSD, hard traumas, abuse or serious depression and I never planned my suicide. So what’s wrong with me? I am AFRAID. Yes, afraid that I will lose control, embarrass myself, lose my mind, die, forget my life, stop moving my body, fall, choke, have heart attack, seizures, stoke or some rare incurable disease. I am afraid that all this could and will happen, but it NEVER happens. The storm of every panic attack always eventually settles down, my thoughts regain their normal speed, my heart has never failed me. It is very scary and uncomfortable to experience panic attacks. It is very scary to live in and with fear every single day. But that’s what it is, FEAR. Fear is an emotion, in my case blown way out of proportion. But it most certainly is NOT a serious mental illness or I wouldn’t be writing these lines in the first place.

 

Nobody truly knows why this mechanism of fear gets out of control. If you don’t know the exact cause and the proportion of something, you can never predict its outcome with certainty, let alone stick “lifelong verdict” labels on it. A person can experience only one or several panic attacks in his/her lifetime. Other people will have one or more full blown panic episodes in their lives. There are also others who have it unfortunately present on a pretty constant basis all their lives. Some people can overcome their problems with advice, friends, counselors, faith, CBT, self-help or other psychological therapies. Others require psychiatric help and medication. Some need very high dosages of medication just to function. We are ALL different, even though we share the same pretty loose diagnose – anxiety disorder, which DOESN’T fall into category of serious mental illnesses. What works for me might not work for somebody else and vice versa as we all have different problems, backgrounds, age and overall health state. But what we all do have in common is that need for HOPE. Hope that this will somehow pass, that there are better days ahead, that we are not anxiety sufferers in the first place and only then everything else. I am not a naïve or foolish person and I don’t believe in magic wands, but I believe in remissions and in science. Maybe one day someone will truly decipher the mechanism of PD and find more or less general solution which will help us treat the cause and not only cope with symptoms. I believe that some people here will be lucky, get better and never experience PD developed in its worse way. The truth is that we still DON’T KNOW anything for sure. And for that precise reason, I believe that we have no right to put people down and lead them believe that there is no hope as this is something extremely serious and for life.

What does extremely serious mean? That I will die if I don’t take a benzo? That PD will turn into clinical depression or schizophrenia if I don’t take ADs for the rest of my life, live according to an “army” schedule I have to stick to every single day and if I am not on guard even on anxiety free days? Something “extremely serious” must imply some of such horrific scenarios if you don’t take it seriously, yet none of this happens. Out of my 15 year long “veteran” PD experience, I spent only 4 on constant benzo therapy and less than a year and a half on a low dose of an AD which made me see life much more beautiful than it really was, made me laugh uncontrollably and make some disproportional decisions. So what about the rest of these years? Nothing extremely serious happened to me, I can assure you.

Some people like to compare PD with diabetes. I want to make this comparison – an insulin dependent diabetic will enter hyperglycemic coma and eventually even die if not given an insulin shot and stabilized. I won’t die if I miss my benzos for a day or two or if I slowly wean off them which is A MUST, days will be just filled with a lot more anxiety and harder to endure. I still do have attacks even though I take meds regularly. Some days are great, others not. But my life doesn’t depend on my meds. I sleep, eat, smile, laugh, work, use TV and internet. Deep down I don’t hate myself or my life at all. I am not on ADs now, I am most certainly not clinically depressed.. and yes, I accepted my anxiety long time ago.

 

I want to make one thing clear – I was never against meds or medical treatment. On the contrary I do think that everybody experiencing symptoms like mine, especially for the first time, should go through a thorough check-up by a physician and subsequently consult a good psychiatrist, because these symptoms are not always of “mental” origin and because not all anxious people here or anywhere have “only” panic disorder. There are most certainly people who apart from PD have other conditions that require adequate treatment, or people whose PD is extremely hard to endure and need medication. I am for taking care of our bodies and mind in a normal, moderate way which means to avoid drinking if on psychoactive substances, eat healthy, sleep well, have correct balance between work and free time. But this anyhow goes for every human being, even if people don’t have PD and overdo with anything that is not healthy, they will have health problems. I just want to say that if my diagnose is “just” PD, I have all right in this world to hope that one day I can be panic free again.

 

I know very well that I will have more anxiety than an average person for the rest of my life, just like I had it before I developed PD. But once you don’t experience PAs, DP, DR or stop obsessively thinking about anxiety every single minute while awake, it stops being a diagnose and becomes again just a trait of your character. As long as you can do everything an average person does without constant “what ifs” and thinking about “being nervous”, as long as you can go where average people can go, anxiety will just be a part of who you are, your companion in stressful situations and not some horrible illness. And that CAN happen. Happened to me twice and no matter what, as long as I live, I’ll hope it can happen AGAIN.

 

I am not an addict so that I have to “admit” that I have a problem, accept my illness and then realize that that very first step of acceptance is the one leading me halfway towards the cure. I accepted long time ago that I have anxiety disorder, I know it so well and I researched it thoroughly. I take medication. But this is not AA meeting, this awareness and acceptance is not giving me functionality or moving me even an inch closer towards leading a better life. In my case, on the contrary whenever I start thinking of myself as an ill person, whenever somebody labels what I have as lifelong and serious, whenever I think hard about anxiety and watch out for it, it becomes WORSE. I feel down. Defeated. Deprived of my hope and belief in me. I feel even more afraid as fear fuels fear and less prone to fight because I don’t see why I should bother if I already have something that will never go away. In order not to give up, everybody needs hope in some victory.

 

For me anxiety disorder was not a constant thing and it doesn’t get better with age, each time it hit, I felt worse and I sank further down into agoraphobia. So if I start thinking that it will always be that way and that the only thing I can do about t is just lessen its intensity, I might even start feeling suicidal. On the contrary, if I feel there is hope for better tomorrow, if I divert my thoughts, give up at least a bit all that control and bring down that guard, I’ll always feel better.

My PD most certainly doesn’t vanish if I am not on guard or when I hope that this will end some day, it is just the matter of thinking differently. Instead of being “seriously” on guard, I am choosing a happier attitude. I am choosing hope and another way of looking on things that are still the same, regardless of angle you are viewing them from.

 

There are people who sink down with very serious diagnoses and vanish in months. There are also those who treat the same thing with belief that they will win, which makes them smile and joke, in spite of everything. They can vanish in months, too. So some people would say – fools, they should have taken it seriously… and even if they did, what difference would that make? And who do you think had better last months of their lives?

We ALL “foolishly” believe that we’ll live forever. If you ask people about dying, they will say – oh well of course I am not crazy, I know I will die some day. But when it’s up to you, that day seems centuries away and death is something that happens to others, until it bangs on your door, too. Isn’t that foolish to hope that we will live very, very long or forever when reality is much different? But we still do hope so, and are considered normal if we do. In my opinion, life is seriously not about quantity, but about what we make of it and how well we use that time that is on our disposition on this planet.

 

Consider me foolish or imprudent for all I said before, but I know one thing – if somebody had told me 15 years ago when I was 19 that I have a very serious mental illness and that it will never go away, I would have never done what I did in life. I would have never finished university for the fear of putting my nerves under too much pressure while memorizing facts from 1000 pages long books for some exams. I would have never taken up jobs and work as much as I did, for the fear of making my serious mental illness way worse. I would have never taught, for the fear that others in that direct contact would “see me through” and discover I am a serious mental case. I would have never had relationships because I would be afraid to tell those guys I am mentally ill. I would have never got onto all those planes and travel far away alone because I would think I would freak out up there and die, as I have something bad, which will never go away. I would have never taken up driving lessons or drive a car as I would have thought that I would kill someone, being a serious mental case. Instead of all above mentioned, I would have probably done something completely different. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HIDING FOR ALL THESE 15 YEARS, afraid I could make my serious illness worse.

I will always be grateful to my first psychiatrist who told me this was nothing serious and that I could overcome it. You may think he told me a lie, but although I don’t think so, even if that had been a lie, it still helped me live a quality life. And for me, that’s all what matters.

 

As for the life without a leg, I am sorry I’ll have to say this, but I don’t think I have any part of my body or mind missing, and as a person, I don’t feel disabled in any way. On the contrary, I have all my body parts in perfect places, it’s just that some areas of my brain are overactive. Again, for me PD was never some permanent disability as I had long remissions, which can never be experienced by people who really don’t have an arm or a leg. Maybe we have to learn to live with PD, but we can also have long breaks and I want to give hope to anybody reading this that the best outcome IS possible. Our job here is not just to vent, comment, give advice, warn and sometimes I believe unintentionally scare, but to encourage as well. We are not all lucky enough to get a lottery prize, so we might as well not develop exactly the worst form of PD. You have to believe in that happier thought, as somebody here said before.

 

I wanted you to get to know somebody who doesn’t have both arms and both legs. Her name is Daniela Garcia and she was born with perfectly healthy limbs. On one unfortunate night, she fell off a train whose wheels mashed her bones in pieces and chopped off her limbs. She has hooks on her arms instead of hands and is walking with artificial legs. She will never get her limbs back, that’s pure fact. Advancing technology will maybe make her life easier, but she’ll never get again exactly what she lost.

 

Is she hiding in her room, crying over her destiny? Is her life limited and gray? No, not at all. She finished medical school after the accident and is working as a doctor, first doctor in the world with all for limbs missing. She drives a car and rides a bicycle. Maybe you would think it’s imprudent of her to ride a bicycle as she could fall and seriously hurt herself. She might, but probably she won’t. Even if she falls, she’ll get up. And if she doesn’t even try, she’ll never have the pleasure of riding a bicycle ever again.

She can write with a pen, dress, wash herself and put on her make up. She will be getting married soon and is looking forward to having kids.

Do you know what she says when her patients ask her why she has hooks instead of hands? She doesn’t say – because I am disabled for life. She says – because it’s cool and I like it that way. It’s just her attitude and doesn’t change the fact that her limbs are missing. But she chose to look on it differently and it makes SO MUCH difference.

She wrote a book about her life story called “Elegi vivir” – I chose to live.

She indeed did.

Look what a person who REALLY has a leg, more precisely all limbs missing can do and always remember that we still have all those limbs as well as brain cells in their right places. Yes we CAN get better and PD can stop being a diagnose for years. Seek help in any form for sure and never stop your meds abruptly and without advice or supervision, but believe in different tomorrow as well. There IS hope.