Ravaged By Time

The clinical definition of anxiety is:Anxiety is a medical condition characterized by persistent, excessive, and uncontrollable fear, dread, or apprehension regarding future events or potential threats. Unlike normal stress, pathological anxiety is disproportionate to the situation, lasts for months, and interferes with daily functioning. It involves physical symptoms like rapid heart rate, sweating, and muscle tension. 

I experience most of this daily. I do not sweat though which is really weird because my heart rate generally goes up to around 110bpm during these times. My chest will tighten and my muscles will tense. I feel like I am trying to crawl out of my skin during these attacks. My mind is always racing during these attacks as well. I tend to fixate on a past action I did or words I have spoken. I do my best to live like Mr. Rogers of Bob Ross and stay calm and gentle, but when these attacks are happening, I tend to avoid people like the plague.

When I was younger, the attacks were not as bad. I still experienced them but not to the level that I do now. I am pretty sure that one of the reasons is because I was not as self aware then as I am now. I take accountability for my actions now when I did not do that as much when I was younger.

The scariest part about anxiety attacks is that the symptoms can mimic a heart attack. I want to say that it was at some point when I was in my late 30’s that I had this happen to me. I am not going to go into too much detail into what led up to this because I am not on here to attack others or publicly smear them. I had driven 2 hours to pick up my kids from my ex-wife’s house, and we did not get along at all at the time. Realistically, we still do not. Anywho, When I arrived at the house, no one was there. I knocked several times and tried to call her. I eventually had to call the police where they informed me that without the court orders in my hands, they could not enforce my visitation rights. I got back in my car and started the long drive home. The entire drive I was in a rage. I could not believe they would keep my children away from me. The longer the drive went on, the darker my thoughts got. I had many moments of weakness on that drive. I can not tell you how many times that I would see a tree and considering plowing into it at full speed. Since I take accountability for my actions and am here writing this, I obviously did not follow through on those thoughts. When I think of things like that, my immediate next thoughts are how actions like these will affect the people that I love and love me. The entire time this was going on, my heart was racing and my left arm was tingling. Near the end of the drive, my chest was so tight that it was hurting and my left arm was going numb. I decided to take a trip to the emergency room to get checked out. This was the worst experience in a hospital that I have ever had. The nurses were horrible and they gave me a shot of some anti-anxiety med and things got worse. I got home from that hospital fiasco and my thoughts were dark. I can not remember the name of the medicine they gave me but like other anti-anxiety meds, it made me not care about what was going on but it also rooted deep into the dark thoughts and they almost became a reality. Luckily I eventually fell asleep and dealt with things the next day.

Anxiety is a cruel mistress. It can lead one to becoming antisocial and severe depression. It creeps up on you when you are not aware. It can cripple anything you are trying to do. I use deep breathing exercises to combat my anxiety. One that works to clear your mind is 2 sharp quick inhales through your nose and then a long exhale from your mouth. This helps to calm your heart which starts to clear the mind. In the next couple of days, I will go into more breathing exercises that help but this is long enough for today.

Be Peaceful and Mindfull ~Ravaged By Time