Panic

I listened to my Mum’s Deezer playlist on the way to work on Saturday. I hate working Saturdays, who doesn’t I guess? But, I like my job. Anyone with small children will know that actually going to an office with real grown up people is a chance to remember who you used to be before you surrendered your Vagina to a team of a dozen doctors without giving a monkeys. It’s also a chance to drink a cup of tea whilst it’s warm. Not hot, because you’ll never get back to the days of hot tea, never ever. Your mind is always planning a million jobs and tea is always the last thing on it.

More recently my panic attacks have started to slowly creep back into my life. But, only whilst driving. ‘Oh, that’s OK then’ I hear you utter sarcastically. I have a routine, a routine that I know will subside the irrational blighter in my brain. I turn my air blower right up, direct the nozzles at my head and theoretically freeze my entire face for a number of seconds. I know it has nothing to do with actually curing the panic attack but, over the years, I have taught myself how to deal with them. I need a trigger. Something that I tell myself will stop it. When I realized this, it was my epiphany. Without being dramatic, it really did save my life. A book saved my life.

When I told my Dad, I played it down. Told him I kept feeling dizzy and he told me I should eat more steak. Perhaps I didn’t play it down. Really, how could I play it down when I didn’t have one clue what was happening. I didn’t even consider that I may be mental or have some incurable disease:I just thought I was unlucky and what I was experiencing was a downright pain in the proverbial.

Candy and I would spend many hours together: she was a good therapy for me.

I remember the first time really well. I was 18 and I had been shopping in Exeter. Actually, at that time I had just had my hair done and popped into Marks and Spencer food hall for a little treat. Before we had Waitrose in the darkest depths of Devonshire, this was the best option for particularly special edible posh naughtiness.

I always loved food and food was always a reward, a treat and was and still is an escape. When I was visiting my Dad on the Cancer ward in his final days, the only way I faced it with a smile was to think of ‘normal’ things. I would think to myself ‘When you get out of here Shu, you can get a pizza or something yummy and a bottle’. Then I would think about what utter tripe I would watch on television (I definitely still enjoy a large amount of tripe these days too). That took me back to normality. I still do it now. It’s no bad thing: although it was a slight pain when I was unable to get rid of excess baby weight second time around and had to lose three stone because of it. Luckily no one was ill or dying at this point and I managed it without too much struggle. Although, the reduction of the special wobbly grape was particularly difficult.

Prawns! It was prawns I was reaching for at the time. Not just any old prawns however. They came with an avocado mousse and some sort of cucumber jus on the side no doubt, all encased in a wonderful circular clear plastic dome. I remember that all of a sudden the lights seemed really bright, like they were burning through my eyeballs and into my brain. Script on the food seemed more prominent, more acute like it could actually be touched and everything started to become sort of swirly. I felt really heavy, like I could feel all my body parts, like they were square. Although I could hear and see people around me, it was like they were underwater and I was in that wonderful clear plastic dome all by myself, separate from them; like the cucumber jus. My heart was in my throat and I can honestly say that, even after watching my Mum die just a couple of years previously, I had never been so terrified in my life. I had to sit down. If I didn’t sit down I would topple over like a domino. That would most definitely be embarrassing.

It subsided pretty quickly and I brushed it off (as you do most things at 18) and started to queue. As the bile rose in my throat and I started to feel like it could happen again, I made a conscious decision to leave those prawns behind, ditch the queue and simply hop on my train and go home. From that moment, the moment that I gave into it, supermarket queues were always my Kryptonite and so they remained for at least four years. Yup, four wonderfully utterly crap and debilitating years.

18-20! That’s on average how many panic attacks I would have a day. I couldn’t wait in a queue. I couldn’t go into a shop with too many people in it. Couldn’t travel on public transport without an available seat. I couldn’t go to the cinema if I wasn’t sat by the door. I couldn’t even visit Trago mills because it was so big that once I was inside, I could not see the exit: could not reach the door in an emergency. Those people that are aware of Trago Mills will realize how utterly and completely bonkers this statement is. Not just for the sheer amount of crap you can usually purchase for less that a quid to keep your mind entertained ordinarily.

I visited my doctor several times; had blood tests for anaemia and I even ate loads more steak, just like my Dad suggested. Then, one day a different doctor said that maybe I should consider some medication to help my mood. My Mood? I was utterly fine. What a downright cheek! Peter Andre helped my mood, not medication. Actually, that was a couple of years earlier I’m sure. What on earth was this woman rabbiting on about? The bloody liability! Like an attack, I saw her mouth moving but really, nothing of consequence came out of it. Like I was the Little Mermaid under the sea again and she was that grey haired witchy villain with the rather large cleavage.

I would never have dreamed of having children if i was still suffering with such severe attacks.

I saw her at a party a few years later, pissed as a rat she was! I remember smiling and (not just because she was ‘off her tree’) but, thinking that it had been her that woke me up that day. I still can see her face now. I never took the pills, I did something else. I read a book.

The book I read was:

Panic Attacks by Christine Ingham

The very first chapter of my savior book described the reason we had panic attacks and those that they affected and in what scenarios. Guess what? Those that lost maternal figures early in life were prime candidates for panic attacks (Another negative legacy that I felt my Mum had left me with).Places that had bright lights, like supermarkets and places that had no visible exits. OK, it never ever mentioned Trago Mills per say but, I knew that’s what it meant. In just one paragraph, with one little selection of words, my life became normal again. It was me; this was like reading about me. It may as well have had a picture of me on the first page.

From that moment on, I realized that my body actually felt like I was in danger and it was actually my own stupid self trying to protect me. Damn my own stupid self! I would go to the supermarket and if I had to queue, I would simply spend the time adding up the value of my shopping in my head. It took me a while as I was always in the bottom set for math. Before I knew it, I had paid and left and absolutely nothing had happened to me. Once I had achieved it once, it was only up from there. Like the first time that i gave into the negative feeling, it was only downhill.I was still alive and what’s more, I actually had some shopping. Best of all, I went and have been several times to Trago Mills. Oh yes!

Anxiety is a much smaller part of my life now.

I have always been proud of myself for this and that’s why, at times when it creeps back into my life, I know it’s my little reminder that everything is getting just a little too much and I have to change it.

12 years later though, I didn’t read the book again, I started writing a blog instead.