Suddenly, a pain in my chest tormented me, as if I had been hit with a baseball. Breathing was becoming more and more difficult....
This is how I experienced my first anxiety attack
Sitting on the edge of my bed, with a towel in my hair and another on my body, looking at myself in the mirror, I began to feel an intense heat inside me that in seconds turned cold. Suddenly, a pain in my chest tormented me, as if I had been hit with a baseball. I tried to inhale and exhale slowly but it was getting harder and harder.
I doubled over, the pain was terrible and my throat was closing more and more. Something inside me knew this was not normal and I forced myself to breathe as deeply as possible. That unleashed an unstoppable sea of tears that lasted about 30 min and slowly helped the pain subside.
I present to you: my first anxiety attack.
Listen to your body, Macarena joy.
I told my psychologist and my close friends about this episode and I discovered that I was not the only one who had experienced it and that it had a name, but above all, it was a well-studied pathology. "Girl, what's happening to you?" That's exactly what I said to myself after I calmed down. I am 29 years old, I have a job, an apartment and a good salary, why the hell is this happening to me?
I'm sure you're saying to yourself: "That's not going to happen to me" or "I' m sure he's a negative person, I always #positivevibes". Well, let me tell you that just like you, I thought so too. However, it's not the first time my body asks me to stop. Ever since I was a kid, I remember when I had exams, I would get red welts all over my face or my voice would go blank.
On this occasion, I had already been collecting personal and work situations that made me feel uncomfortable and my body had been sending me signals two months before the attack.
First I stopped sleeping well. I would wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. to write on a list by my bedside the things I couldn't forget for the next day. Since I wasn't sleeping, I decided to fix the problem by eating melatonin gummies. Then I started to get red spots on my stomach. I went to three doctors who all agreed: "It's stress". Which made things worse and of course, caused more red spots. The last sign was the voice. From one day to the next, I lost it. As I had to travel to visit my family and settle personal matters, I never rested. I lasted three weeks without voice. Until it finally culminated with that anxiety attack.
The worst thing is that during all this time I never listened to my body screaming at me: "friend, realize. I kept on and on increasing my responsibilities instead of seeking my peace of mind. It's important to listen to those little signals your body sends you to avoid a breakdown, but how do I realize I'm in that situation?
New challenge unlocked: Anxiety
To make the following sections more dynamic (and not to stress us out), we will add some of the tweets I published during that time, because we know that "life is better tweeting".
This adulting game is very complex, how do I unsubscribe? #MentyB
The first thing to know is that anxiety is a mental state characterized by great restlessness, intense excitement and extreme insecurity. It is a very intense fear of an everyday situation. Now, an anxiety attack is the physiological reaction to that event .
The most common symptoms to recognize it are: tachycardia, hot flashes, sweating, temperature increase, hyperventilation, chest tightness or discomfort, numbness, trembling and choking sensation. An anxiety attack lasts less than 10 minutes and is caused by accumulation of stress over common situations.
Although an anxiety attack is very common, very few people know the symptoms, so it is very easy to think it is something else, for example a heart attack. I was one of those and, during that moment, I promise you I saw my life passing in a minute.
"Hello little god! It's me again" #StruggleBus.
Hey but, if it's so normal, why do I feel like a failure?
After this picture, I wanted to know more about it, so I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. I could not be calm without knowing why this had happened to me. And to tell the truth, I was hoping that there was a magic pill that would prevent it from happening again. On the way to the appointment, I felt like the biggest loser in the world because I thought that from that moment on I was going to become a person who had to take medication in order to have a stable life.
For as long as I can remember, my dad has taken medication for many things. One of them is to control his stress. Stress used to paralyze him, he felt like he was having a heart attack and we had to take him to the doctor. I remember when he was 11 years old we took a car trip to the United States to visit a famous amusement park (insert sponsorship here). That day he forgot his medication and within hours he started to feel sick, we had to leave and take him to a hospital. When we got there they gave him his pills, and within minutes he was feeling fine.
We didn't go back to the amusement park, and as a child that makes you very sad. But it made me sadder to know that my dad was an adult who couldn't enjoy a day without taking his medication. At that moment I compared not being able to be at an amusement park to being a failure, and therefore, my worst nightmare.
After my appointment with the psychiatrist, I realized that it is not always a matter of a pill and that's it, but a series of adjustments in your life that can make you live better. This is not to say that medication is not necessary. There are as many solutions as there are contexts when talking about anxiety, all of them are valid and useful as long as they are endorsed by an expert.
Simple methods to work on anxiety
For now I will tell you some simple recommendations (and others not so much) that can help you, but remember that it is important to give you the time to have a professional support you with a specialized treatment for you. And the simple fact of putting into practice any of these methods is an act of love towards you:
The "simple" ones:
The not so simple ones:
"Realizing things in therapy is the adult magic show.
I keep saying 'Wow!' my whole session."
Since childhood we have been taught that it is better to avoid problems or even hide them instead of facing them. Society has made us believe that expressing ourselves shows us to be weak in front of others, it categorizes us as Losers, and it's NOT TRUE! My dad, friends, and probably people close to you, live with this problem. They have all realized that the more they talk about their situation, the more in control they feel of it.
Burnout syndrome
Kalinada Kano in her book "Perfectly Imperfect " mentions that being always busy does not make us more successful. There is a syndrome called "Burnout" which is a state of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion that occurs as a result of overwhelming demands, chronic stress or job dissatisfaction. This is not a disease but it is an important trigger for an anxiety attack.
Being honest with ourselves is the most valuable gift we can give ourselves, because it helps us to know what we can and cannot do. We can't always do everything and it's okay to accept that the plan has to change, or even to raise our hand and ask for help. For me it's the hardest part.
"I'm going to let things flow, but I need to know what day
and what time they're going to flow, so I get organized."
And if it is for you too, hermanx... Stop lying to yourself! If it can't be done, then it can't be done. Many may tell you "You can achieve anything if you want to,you set your own limits". But what if my body tells me "this is as far as I can go'? Learn to listen to it. It's okay to set limits and stop thinking that the more things we can carry, the better person we will be.
"I'm almost there with balancing my life. I just
already feel more tired because it's like my second job."
Having a balanced life so as not to break is the hardest thing. I am not going to say that now I am a new woman and I changed all my habits overnight, but I am trying to make small changes, starting by talking about this topic with more people so I don't feel alone, it is an act of love towards myself.
Showing vulnerability is not a symptom of weakness. Let's eliminate that irrational fear of saying we couldn't achieve a dream or finish a project. Let's see it better as an opportunity to become famous on a Fuckup Nights stage (wink, wink).
Since my first Fuckup Night, I marveled at the phrase "sharing failure". We are so used to only sharing what we do well, that we don't realize that mistakes unite us and therefore, liberate us.
Sharing my story helped me understand my dad and my friends, but most of all, it helped others understand me. It opened a door to the possibility of being more honest with myself and feeling more alive by listening to my body.
Edited by
Raquel Rojas
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Let's transform our perception of failure and use it as a catalyst for growth.
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