Anatomy of a panic attack
It always starts out small… or seemingly so. That one last trigger that pushes you over the edge… some threat to safety… the hint of a flashback… a confrontation at work…
Then…
The heart starts to race… you feel it pounding and hear the blood rushing in your head. Breathing feels impossible… like you’re breathing through a straw… but, it doesn’t matter anyway, because you don’t have any lungs… your breath goes no where, it’s just an activity for your mouth to do out of habit. You put your hand on your stomach to try and force yourself to actively breathe deeply… but your stomach muscles move purely on reflex.
Fuzziness hits… lips tingle… then the rest of your face. Palms sweaty and no longer associated with your body. Legs disconnected and unable to move.
And the noise…
Screaming internally… strong voices trying to cut through the chatter. All to no avail. It’s lost in the torrent of chatter and screaming.
You feel the dissociation pull… but it doesn’t happen soon enough. A door has opened into the hell inside your head and there’s no going back. No longer adult… now a seething mass of voices screaming out in pain.
Just stop the heart… don’t slow it down, stop it. Anything for relief…
The tightness travels across your chest into your arms… the clinical side of you wonders if this is a heart attack.
Head swimming and mushy now… the screaming echoing around.
But always, hypervigilant of what’s going on around you… you back slowly to a wall… scanning the room for any threat. Trying to contain the crazy and appear normal… please don’t let anyone notice…
Noise jars you into a startle response…
Your movements become stilted… every muscle aches from tension. Your body is ready to sprint for safety, but it doesn’t know which way to go.
Time warps… seeming to slow down, yet race at the same time… it feels as if this moment will never end.
Then, mercifully… you feel the Earth tilt… yes… blissful oblivion.
Blackness of dissociation… feeling the rush of the protectors coming forward… slowly the noise fades away.
Sleep… blissful sleep. Only to wake an hour later as if coming out of a cotton wool cocoon… your voice is a little louder than usual. But that’s understandable, because you feel as if you’re looking out at the world from about 5 paces behind your eyes.
The noise from the outside world echoes around in your head…
Nothing seems real. Derealisation settles in… your hands belong to someone else, colours seem brighter and everything is disjointed.
Drugs… too late for the panic attack, but it might help with the derealisation. A fear that the protectors took some during the dissociation… you start to second guess yourself. But you can’t go on like this, so risk the drugs anyway.
Covert looks around… no one sees you popping the pills. Just breathe…
Finally you feel that rush of air go into your lungs… the big ball of tightness at the top of your chest slowly eases…
Slowly, the automatic actions ease and control returns.
But there’s still that nagging fear… it will be worse next time… someone will see next time… you can’t do that again…
Internally the chaos is stamped back down… layers of dissociation bury the screaming… different ones are returned to their cells… locked away and ignored…
Until next time…
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Now playing: Natalie Merchant – My Skin
via FoxyTunes
A dance to the edge
A good friend recently mentioned that she felt like she was going to fall, and fall deeply. Part of her was expecting, and almost wanting the fall to happen. Thankfully, her fall hasn’t happened, and I hope it doesn’t; but what she describes is a feeling I know all to well. It’s like standing on an edge, waiting for that last push to send you over into a mental health free-fall. The scary bit about standing there, is that you have an awareness about where you are. You know that one more negative thing is going to push you over, and part of you wishes that it would come so that it’s over with; but another part of you hopes that you can still claw your way back to safer ground. It becomes a tug of war between different parts of you… This alone is so tiring that it can be enough to tip you over…
I know I’m also moving closer to the edge. The stressors in my life have kicked into high gear and I can feel the pressure building. At the moment, I’m far enough away to know that I’m in danger without being too close to it. A part of me niggles that I’m thinking myself into moving towards the edge – why do I think of my ex-husband, why worry about the ACC assessments etc. But the rational part of my brain knows that I’m experiencing PTSD flashbacks and my worry is justified based on past assessments. This is the beginning of the tug of war that intensifies over time. Soon other issues will come in to muddy the waters – denial, and a need for validation have already started to appear. All of this increases my anxiety levels. I’ve experienced this often enough in the last few years to notice the pattern… It becomes like a dance, to and fro… ever closer to the edge…
The problem becomes, how do you stop the dance? If I called a crisis line, they would take me through the individual stressors I am facing and encourage me to break them down into solvable chunks. This would work for some of the issues I’m facing, but they can’t help with the PTSD symptoms. I saw Jo today, and she was recommending trying to ground in the present, and while I agree with her reasoning, I also know that I can be very grounded in 2010 and still keep on dancing towards the edge. Some of the grounding work can make the situation worse – repeating “it’s the 26th of January, 2010 and they are just memories” can morph into a denial statement about the memories all being made up. The most effective way of keeping the anxiety at bay is to consciously breathe deeply – this also tends to by one of the first things I forget to do. Like many survivors who experience anxiety, I have a form of hyperventilation syndrome, with my breathing being short and shallow. It takes a conscious effort to alter my breathing pattern to a healthier depth and pace. Changing my breathing will temporarily ease the anxiety, but often this isn’t enough to stop the dance towards the edge. I’m not always sure what moves me away from the edge, I think this time it will be the formal dissolution of my marriage and completing the ACC assessment. If this is the case, I’ve got about another three weeks of doing the dance around the edge. I don’t think I’ll fall, but a part of me thinks I will… A part of me wants to fall, because they think that this is what I deserve…
And so the dance continues…
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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes
How many lives do you lead?
Last night, one of the lives that one of us leads, intruded on our normal functioning. This made us wonder how many lives we lead and what impact this has. Everyone talks about having different roles or persona’s they present to the world, e.g. how you act and appear at work is possibly different from how you would act at a dinner party on a Saturday night. It appears as if this sort of thing is usual for the singleton population. As someone who experiences dissociation, I’ve often wondered whether my experiences are all that different from this sort of usual occurrence. That is, until the way the two different parts run their life collide, then it becomes obvious that we may not fit “usual”.
As a singleton with various aspects of one personality, there seems to be some consistency in the way you interact with the world – that is, your ethics, morals and way of viewing the world don’t change significantly. There might be more slippage in the way some things are viewed, but overall you are consistent. Whereas I experience what I would consider more of a sliding scale, especially when it comes to morals and our way of viewing the world. Our ethics seem fairly consistent – a desire not to intentionally harm others is one common denominator; but our morals especially, seem to be more variable. This seems to contradict some of the research I have read where morals and ethics are consistent across the dissociative system – if one part performs an action then it is something that the rest of the system is capable of. So, I as CG are capable of my usual shyness as well as Sophie’s outgoing happiness and S’s overt sexuality. I’m also capable of the actions that occur from the way those parts view the world. I struggle with this concept greatly… Sophie’s outgoing happiness and innocence is a direct contrast to S’s overt sexuality; how can these be morally consistent? Each part has their own group of contacts online and when there is a collision between these groups, the differences become obvious. The other night, we were chatting online with a friend, during the chat we received a message for S from one of her online contacts. The confusion and resulting anxiety lead to a dissociative switch with S coming forward to try and get rid of the person we were talking to so she could talk to her contact.
It is rare for all of us to respect or consider anyone a friend, but there are a few that S doesn’t feel the need to control, manipulate or please. Does this mean that we are morally consistent? Or, does it mean that S is healing and learning that controlling people isn’t always necessary? I’m not sure of the answers. What’s interesting, is that it’s our male friends that she is more likely to have contact with, but yet she doesn’t fall into the old patterns of sexual manipulation. I’m not really sure if she considers them friends, authority figures or objects to be studied out of curiosity. But it’s a marked contrast to our female friends, whom she expresses no interest in talking to. Possibly because in some respects the abuse we were subjected to by women was physical as well as sexual and psychological, so there is a different dynamic going on.
I’ll take this to Liz on Tuesday and see what she thinks… I’m not sure that I’m fully grasping the difference between a singletons presentation of different persona’s, and someone with DID presenting with different dissociative parts.
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Now playing: U2 – Running to Stand Still
via FoxyTunes
Stand by me
I was 24 when I last talked to the father. It was during my first year of being on-campus at university and I’d agreed to stay with him for a long weekend. He hadn’t been contributing to our care since the divorce when we were 16, but we still a sense of duty to him because… well, he is the father. To say that the weekend was a disaster, would be an understatement. He lived alone in a cold, small, two bedroom semi-detached house situated at the bottom of a hill. The house felt dirty, but I think that was our association of his dirtiness getting mixed up in the perception of the house. He had become a bitter, mean old man who took pleasure in putting others down and feeding his narcissistic desires. He was not pleasant to be near.
In a move similar to asking the mother to leave when she came to visit, I left the father’s house earlier than planned. I couldn’t cope with him. The day I left I knew that I would not be able to see him again as he was too toxic. I grieved on the drive home… grieved for the father I realised I would never have, and the one I was now leaving behind. While listening to the radio during the drive, a song came on that started the tears – Stand by me by Ben E. King. To me, the song is about being strong enough to face the darkness of your fears, as long as there is someone standing beside you. During that car trip, this was particularly meaningful… I knew I was about to tell the family about my decision to no longer have contact with the father. I also knew that I was probably going to have to confront the father as well.
At the time I was living alone – I didn’t even have Winnie (our cat). So, I knew that there would be no one standing beside me, instead it would be up to the dissociative system to come together in a meaningful way to protect us all. This was at a time when I had no working knowledge of my dissociation, but I remember the internal conversations which evolved as I was taking the long trip home… There was fear, screaming, celebrations and physical pain caused by tension… But then, in a shift that I’ve now come to identify as M taking over, there was a sudden calmness and knowledge of what needed to be done. This calmness allowed Sophie to listen to the song and begin our grieving. I don’t think we fully explored the grief, but the song allowed us to cry for things we wouldn’t have and to get to a place of accepting what was happening.
When we got home, we made the necessary phone calls to the family. I don’t remember much about that time, but I do remember slamming the phone down on the father with the parting words that he and I had “never been able to talk”. I have seen him since that time – grandfather’s funeral etc. We’ve tried to be civil to him, purely out of fear and not wanting to cause more trouble within the family. But I know that under that veneer of civility, Frank is waiting to tell the father just what damage he has done. I also know that such a discussion would be pointless, as he is incapable of seeing his own faults and it would only serve to frustrate us further.
There have been other versions of the song done, but it’s Ben E. King’s version that affects us the most…
When does the mother go home?
Is it time for her to go yet? Surely 3 weeks are up already? No? Well, can we fast forward the next three weeks then… please!
The mother has been here less than 24 hours and all the rest I’d managed to get in the previous week has gone flying out the window. I’m dissociated, anxious, craving self-injury like nothing else on this Earth and wanting to run away sooo badly. Admittedly, this is my fault. I momentarily forgot who I was dealing with, so told her that the reason I’ve been off work is because I’m suicidal. That was such an incredibly stupid thing to admit to her. As was proven this morning when we were leaving the house – she walks outside the front door, turns to me and effectively destroys me in one conversation:
Mother (at the top of her voice): “It’s amazing the doctor didn’t go through any lists considering your suicidal.”
Us: “Mum, please the neighbours will hear.”
Mother (still at the top of her voice): “Oh, well, there aren’t any around.”
Us: “How do you know?”
She doesn’t get it. She really doesn’t. I can’t believe that she would say something like that for anyone and everyone to hear. It was just like so many of the things she did while we were growing up which stripped away our sense of self and cut us down to nothing. What’s worse, is that this time she KNOWS we aren’t well, she KNOWS we are suicidal…
I give up, I really do…
What is healing?
I’ve struggled long and hard to understand what is meant by the term “healing” within a mental health context. I’m familiar with healing that can be quantified (e.g. a broken bone mending), but how do you quantify healing from childhood abuse? Is it possible or desirable to do so? What time-frame should we look at as reasonable when we’re considering the healing process?
I’m very aware that this is the intellectual side of me asking these questions. The questions are born from frustration at what is seeming like a very long journey that hasn’t got us very far. I know that many survivors experience a decrease in functioning with the start of therapy, but how long can I expect this to continue? I do what I can to hasten the healing process – I do the homework I’m set, I try to be as open as I can within therapy, etc. But is this enough? I’ve been told by therapists that I’m “working hard” within therapy, but I often feels as if it’s another part of my life that I’m drifting through. There will be a moment of clarity surrounding why I do a certain behaviour, but it’s then lost in the confusion and dissociative memory gaps.
I’ve yet to fully understand what the term “working hard” refers to within therapy. Yet, I often come out of a session absolutely exhausted or on an adrenaline high, both signs that I have experienced something extreme for what I sometimes dismiss as “sitting in a chair for 60 minutes talking”. I have a great deal of respect for those who are working on their healing as a full-time endeavour, it’s not something that I have the strength for. But I have no respect or patience for my own healing. I’m still caught in dismissing and minimising the memories. Liz has offered to assist with this process by using her as a sounding board to test out the feelings and potential accuracy of the memories. There is a certain attraction in doing this, we could finally prove what is real and which memories have potentially been influenced. But there is also a fear that Liz will say nothing about the validity of the memories, but rather ask us to look at them and analyse our feelings and emotions about the events. This is my greatest fear, having no way to prove or dis-prove the memories and still having to do the work of recovering from the toxic mess they generate.
Part of my anxiety is generated from the proposed changes to the ACC scheme (check out the ACC category at Gudrun Frerich’s site for some of the issues surrounding the changes). As an ACC client, the changes will mean more reporting, increasing need to measure the healing progress and the threat of my cover being stopped at any time. There is no way that I would be able to afford therapy without ACC assistance, so this is a huge issue. This is not because we are attached to, or reliant on Liz; but rather I have a fear that if we can’t release the thoughts within a therapeutic framework, we will self-destruct. Yes, I realise that I’m contradicting myself – how can therapy be “sitting in a chair talking for 60 minutes” as well as one of the things that keep us sane…
In totally other news, B entered us into a photo competition which we have absolutely no chance of winning or even placing in. This goes against every single strand of perfectionism that runs through our body. I do realise however, that it’s going to be an great deal of fun for them deciding how to photograph 100′s and 1000′s creatively.
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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes
Amazement and confusion
Do you ever sit in therapy with the words that need to be spoken swirling around in your head, but experience a total inability to be able to say them? It can be because the ideas are too scary to raise, there are too many conflicting ideas about what to say, not sure how to say it or you’re too scared of what the therapists reaction will be. We experienced this to an extreme level yesterday with Liz. We wanted to talk about her views on dissociation and diagnostic labels, but couldn’t verbalise it. This triggered the entrance of the hand scratcher…
I have no idea who the hand scratcher is, but I think “it’s” a mature male who is a protector. I know it’s not One, as he is incredibly calm and can look people in the eye. The hand scratcher comes across as being angry as the voice becomes very terse, but he’s very quick to assure Liz that he’s not “getting at her”. He doesn’t seem to get angry at individuals and is prepared to listen to Liz and what she has to say, but seems continually annoyed or angry. He also takes away with him all that he has talked about, so we lose the time he is present. Yesterday he left us with the knowledge that he’d talked to Liz about the diagnosis, but that’s all. I’m aware of his voice, but not him. I’ve no idea where he fits into the system, but I’m beginning to wonder if he’s on Ellie’s floor, or even if he has replaced Ellie as the main protector for that floor. It’s all very confusing and a great way to mess me around – not that I’m a control freak or anything.
What makes me think that he has something to do with Ellie’s floor, is that soon after he left, S talked to Liz. S is also on Ellie’s floor, so it would sort of fit that they go together in some way. It was S that caused the amazement. She swore, was scornful of the father, told about some of the things that the sister used to do to her and Liz took it all in her stride. Liz could obviously tell when there was going to be the switch from S to B and quickly said that she’d enjoyed talking to S… Yes, she said she’d enjoyed talking to S. I was amazed. One of our greatest fears has been S talking to a therapist, but it went really well. Admittedly S didn’t talk about anything of a sexual nature, but the fact that she talked to someone and we all survived the experience was amazing. I knew the world wouldn’t end if she talked to someone, but I was so terrified of rejection, scorn or disgust as a consequence. Instead I got greeted by a Liz with a smile in her voice and a sense of her having just had fun. Maybe that will learn me about letting fear get the better of me… It won’t, but it’s worth a try.
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Now playing: The Feelers – The Fear
via FoxyTunes
Alone
The mother has gone and we’re alone. It’s a very odd feeling after her being here for so long. I knew there would be some reaction after she left, and there was. It wasn’t tears, grief, or even relief; but rather a sense of wanting to “reclaim our territory”. The house, body and reactions almost feel as if they belonged to the mother while she is here. I know that this is our sense of wanting to be the perfect daughter for her, but it’s quite disconcerting to look back on it and realise what had happened.
While she was here, we tried so hard to appear “normal”, and we quite often succeeded. She was much more accepting of the times when any form of normalcy was impossible. This gave us hope that she was more accepting of us, but that hope was put under question yesterday when she stated that she is going to come off the anti-depressants that she’s been on for the last year. Our fear is that this accepting attitude will disappear when the drugs wear off. I know that the drugs have shown that she can be accepting, but that acceptance was covered up by her inability to cope with what life sent her way. She hasn’t been in therapy or learned new skills to cope with life, so with the drug leaving her system, will those stressors mean that she will again not be able to cope?
When we got back from dropping the mother off at the airport, S ended up calling Matthew. It turns out his intentions have changed from talking to his house mate, to something else. This was the trigger for a night of self-injury. We’ve just cleaned the house, mowed the lawns and did some gardening to distract and possibly punish ourselves for allowing S to come forward and act out. Which of course infers that we have some control over the switching, which we don’t *sigh*.
We have a two week break from sessions with Liz as she goes on holiday. She asked if we wanted to text her while she was away, we said “No, we’ll be fine”. Liz said that she knew we would be fine because we were survivors and had the skills to ensure that no matter what happened, we will still function. I think she has more faith in our ability to not self-destruct than we do.
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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – C S Lewis Song’
via FoxyTunes
