19 March 2008

The familiar

and unwelcome feeling of Panic has been gnawing at me this afternoon. Crawling around under my skin and between my shoulderblades. It started at work, and now I am at home trying my best to breathe in and out at a regular pace - grasping for any hold I can keep on my rational, yet slippery, sense of self - constantly reminding myself that I'm not dying, I'm just hovering on the edge of a mental cliff. It's been over a year since my last full-on panic attack, which I count as a blessing.

I'm hoping that the focus required for rehearsal tonight will help my system to override and reboot itself. I wish it were just a simple means of telling myself to "calm down," but it's not that easy. I can tell myself to calm down, and perhaps that puts off the inevitable, or shortens the duration of an attack, but it really is an involuntary physical manifestation. It's very weird...I can describe all the symptoms like they are happening to someone else...very 'out-of-body' like...but they are not happening to someone else, they are mine.

I think it's probably because I've not slept enough this week...that's happened to me before. Gotta change that and I'll go to bed directly after rehearsal tonight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did it help? You know me- I always say the two most important things to stay healthy are water and sleep. Hope you got some zzz's.

moi

Unknown said...

I think to stay healthy you need sex, but that is my opinion.