My Recent Relapse

Recently, I feel I may have suffered from a panic attack. I’m not even sure if I have properly experienced one. I do get spurts of anxiety at random times or obviously when I’m going to do something that I’m not used to or not prepared for. However, on Sunday, at a completely random time during the afternoon, I noticed my heart began to race. I tried to breathe through it, thinking I may have probably just thought of something that unsettled me, but the more I tried to calm myself with the techniques I had been taught over the years, it never settled. I was feeding a woodpecker at the rescue at the time, so there was nothing that would have triggered it, because I am in love with the rescue and nothing there makes me uncomfortable like that. I continued with feeding the birds, but noticed I was shaking so much from the adrenaline, I was dropping things, I felt sick and I couldn’t concentrate. I was with another volunteer who has actually suffered from panic attacks in the past, so it was nice that she was understanding. Except I wasn’t even sure if it was a panic attack. In fact, it wasn’t the first things I thought of when I noticed my heart racing. At first I thought it was probably because I hadn’t eaten enough and I was maybe a little low on sugar. But after talking with my mum about it, she suggested that maybe it was some sort of anxiety/ panic attack.

This has unsettled me quite a bit because I have never recalled having one before, despite the amount of anxiety I suffer with anyway. I am still confused about why it happened. As I said, I was in a safe environment where I have never had any problems.

Since this happened, I have honestly been having a harder time than I have had in a long time. Though I know my coping levels rise and fall overtime; having months of coping really well and feeling quite happy with life, but after so long, I have a meltdown, causing me to fall backwards. In the most recent years, my setbacks haven’t had a huge impact on my life. I maybe have a short while of feeling more anxious than normal and finding things a bit more challenging. Yet this time, I have fallen back far more than I am used to. To put it in simple words, I have become a shell of myself. I have found myself wandering aimlessly around the house, not sure of where to go or what to do. I have lost the ability to track time again, meaning hours pass and all I’ve done, is sit on my phone, browsing through Facebook or Instagram without even paying attention to what I’m looking at. I have lost interest in playing games and only feel I am playing them to kill time and I have become more cuddly towards my dogs, probably seeking something soft and safe. With work, I have also become slow and forgetful, and I still get moments of anxiety that catch me off guard, leaving me feeling lost and disorientated.

This big change that has happened to me has made me constantly exhausted, yet I do not want to give in to it. Though I have a really hard time managing things when I am like this, I know that within time, I will eventually find things easier. I know that during this time, I will find pushing myself to make progress, very difficult but as I am keen to get and accept help, I feel that within time, things will improve.