Anxiety Self Help

DATE: May 05 2007, 11:07 am / MOOD: Don't know

So now everyone in my family knows. They've all (well, enough of them anyway) witnessed first-hand just what happens to Jess when she goes through a heaping helping of trauma without cutting herself.

 My Nanny (grandmother) recently passed away last month, and for about a month or so up until the day she died, I was down at her house with my mum and sister -- eventually living there full-time -- helping to take care of her. She had lung cancer which had spread throughout her body and into her bones, making every single movement a lifetime of excruciating pain. Her breathing had got to the point where sitting up in bed was a major struggle, even with our help. She was a 24-hour, two-person job. Relatives came and went throughout the weeks (my mum has 5 other siblings), but my mum and sister (who were already living with her) and I were constant.

Watching her go through the process of death was beyond anything I had ever imagined. And as devout as I am, I couldn't help but wonder, How could a woman with so much faith be put through so much torture? How could He do this to her? In addition to all the sh*t going on around me, I was starting to question the one source I had always fled to for comfort and guidance. I felt abandoned (and still kinda do).

So the day she passed, everyone was at the house (I mean EVERYONE), my mind was going a million miles an hour, and to make matters worse, people were trying to talk to me about the wake and funeral and wondering if my Dad was going. (I'm not on bad terms with my Dad, but he's really driven my sister and I away over the past few years...well really after he and my mum split...regardless, seeing he and my mum in the same room is like waiting for a faulty grenade to blow up.)

I'd been doing relatively alright throughout the day, mostly because I was distracted just about all of the time. But later in the day, when the subconcious storm was finally coming to a head, I was out having a smoke on the back deck with mum (I had picked it back up since living there =_=), and I don't even remember what we were even talking about, but I knew I had become VERY dizzy. I put out my butt, walked in teh door and sat in the nearest chair in the diningroom to try to stop the world from spinning. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground, in the midst of one of the most severe panic attacks I can ever remember. I'm fizzying out (my code for the bizarre "ticks" and repetitive motions that accompany the attacks), rocking back and forth, hyperventilating and stuttering like I could not f@cking believe! I couldn't get a single sentence out of my mouth whatsoever. All I really remember is that I didn't want my little sister to see it. She's affected by my psychoses the most, and she has enough on her plate to deal with. Not to metnion, she's the most important person to me in the whole world.

I think at one point my mum shoved an atavan down my throat (I can remember choking on something), and then somehow I ended up in her bed upstairs, in the dark. I didn't know how to come downstairs afterward. I don't know how long I was out for, or who brought me up there. I just knew that they had seen me. They knew what I'd been trying so hard to hide from them for such a long time. How was I supposed to look anyone in the eye after that??

Somehow I managed, and now I'm back home. Pretending like life's back to normal. "Normal"...yeah. I dunno. I'm done with this blog now, I guess.

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DATE: Mar 21 2007, 12:20 am / MOOD: Don't know

Picked up a brand-spankin'-new computer tonight, along with the game that I've been dying to play for ages, now -- World of Warcraft. Erm, and the expansion pack. Because, apparently, it's just not worth playing otherwise...so says everyone.

Anywho --

So I've seen the way my best friend gets when he plays. For days straight. Occasionally forgetting bathroom breaks and eating only when absolutely vital. I rarely see him. However, when he's not playing, he's the extroverted and sociable creature that I fell in love with (platonically, of course) over five years ago.

Now, the only thing that makes me worried is...considering just how anti-social, shy and practically agoraphobic I already am, will playing this only (very seriously) hinder my progress of becoming less socially phobic?? Will I completely cut myself off from the world altogether and never form another "real life" relationship with anyone ever again!? I don't want to turn into one of those socially inept creeps who literally have nothing in common with the rest of their peers and have the most difficult time with even discussion of the weather (mostly because they go so long without seeing an ounce of daylight).

But I don't know how to prevent this. My gaming addiction is such that I already spend hours -- occasionally days -- in front of the screen, chanting, just one more level.....okay, but just one more.........alright, alright, but just one more.......

Well, I suppose it's near-inevitable. But this is brand-new territory. I've never been an online gamer. Strictly console. So I s'pose we'll just have to see how this pans out. *sigh*

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DATE: Oct 18 2006, 5:52 pm / MOOD: Lonely

Now I'm feeling scared. What if that was something Tyler secretly cherished?? What if it had some kind of sentimental value to him? What if his mom visits and asks where it is??

...thus, the birth of another panic attack.

(right after a good, hard food binge)

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DATE: Oct 18 2006, 5:22 pm / MOOD: Angry

f@cking furious. Tyler's being such a f@cking pussy. Our landlord's doing a wicked job of taking advantage of us.

For f@ck's sake -- we're in our mid-20s, this is our first place, and we were referred by two other tennants. He's dicking us around, cashing our f@cking rent checks more than two weeks after we give it to him. Miraculously Tyler can never seem to get ahold of him, either. He never bothered to get his phone number when we first moved in. And the guy always seems to be on f@cking vacation, so says Tyler.

f@ck him. That's total bullsh*t. As a matter of fact, he's used that copout bullsh*t excuse for more than one occasion. When it came time to ask his HR rep about putting me on his insurance, she just happened to be on vacation, too.

He sure is a stupid motherf@cker. I don't really see how he can think I believe every lie he spits out at me. Then he gets f@cking angry when I tell him I'm not buying it.

Today I washed two sinkloads of dishes, and halfway through he phones to let me know he was on his way home. So, I put the beef stroganoff(sp?) in the oven. He calls me up 20 minutes later to let me know he needs to go into the next town over to pick up his mum's prescriptions. Okay. Fine. I'll just put some foil over supper to keep it warm.

I sit alone at the kitchen table waiting. He phones and tells me his card isn't being accepted at the gas pump. I sign into the bank account and realize then that it's over $850 in teh negative. This was our first month testing out our new budget (that I spent days putting together). After all the overdraft fees we realize that the rent check had just been taken out, taking a gigantic chunk of dough out of what we were saving for other things (mainly bills and gas money).

So I tell him that he needs to bring this to our landlord's attention and work something out so that it doesn't happen again (like it did last month, too). "Yeah, yeah...I'll call him right now." (he says these same lines over and over to shut me up)

He comes home and I ask him about his call to Dick (the landlord...fitting, no?). "I left a message." Mhm. So where's the number so we can finally write it down? "Oh, I probably should've saved it, huh?" (he never called. he never got the number. he won't call. f@cking pussy. I can't call, because Tyler wants to be the one to be "in charge." it's destroying us. emotionally and financially.)

It leads to a screaming match. He takes what he wants of the stroganoff, eats it, then leaves without saying anything.

I dumped the rest of it in the garbage.

I can't release this rage and am trying my very best not to slice myself unconscious. it's times like these that all the other things in my life I'm anxious about return to the surface and explode into a huge mass of panic and fury.

Should I get drunk? Should I cut? What else can I do to get rid of it? I'm running really low on options right now.

...which makes me even more anxious. Maybe I'll smash a glass on the floor. Maybe I'll try to put my fist through a wall. f@ck. I can't...make it go away

** EDIT **

Feel a tiny bit better now. Smashed that stupid f@cking plastic snowglobe his mother gave me with a hammer on the kitchen floor. *semi-relieved sigh*

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DATE: Oct 11 2006, 1:21 pm / MOOD: Other

I'm starting to notice that even my dreams are filled with some of the most anxiety-ridden moments I've ever experienced. Maybe the reason that I'm feeling better in "real life" all my worries and paranoias are being shoved into my unconscious? If that's the case, it could prove to be way more dangerous than if I dealt with it while awake.

Just last night I had two consecutive, panic-filled dreams -- both involving people I was romantically involved with (though had never actually met in my waking life). The first one was fairly short, but scared me enough to wake me out of a sound sleep (which rarely happens). I dreamed that he (the dude I was involved with) and I were fighting, and it got to the point that he said he would kill me, and I told him (in my exact words) "I'll eat your f@cking face off." *lmfao* Anyway, it ended up that he had this reeeeally sharp knife with him, grabbed me, and held it up to my eye and started pressing it in. I finally said something like, "okay, okay!" and things went "back to normal" I guess.

The second dream was panic-ridden in a different way. I was friends with this really rad guy. We were both really into playing video games (which, in real life would be a wicked turn-on), both uber-geeks, and could both tap into each other's emotions really easily. Eventually it came to him telling me he loved me, but as much as I wanted to say it back, I knew I was very unavailable, remembering about my real-life boyfriend whom I've been living with for about 7 years. So as he's looking at me and awaiting some kind of reaction or response, I just clam up and my "outside" shuts down (I think only panic-sufferers could really understand that statement), and I start to experience all of the symptoms of an incoming full-blown attack. Tunnel vision, "foggy hearing," skin turning ice cold, heart pounding, and hyperventhilation. It continued to increase in severity, and while this was all happening, I was desperately searching for something to say. Absolutely anything. When I've reached this point in the past, I've always found it hard to make something up...so I end up telling him that I don't know what to say and have no clue as to how to react. I think he started apologizing or something, and I noticed he looked really hurt -- which just killed me. I wanted so bad to be able to tell him that I loved him. But I know that if I did, it would make the situation so much more complicated and dangerous.

I'm not sure if I actually went into an actual panic attack, and I can't remember much more of the dream. I do know that I woke up with the most incredible feeling of heartbreak and guilt. So much that it was really hard to breathe for a while even after I got out of bed.


It's not normal for me to have dreams like this. Just within the past couple of weeks my dreams have turned into some of the most bizarre and unfamiliar experiences. Familiarity. That's one thing I can almost always count on in any dream I have. Something from my waking life or memory is alway showing up, no matter what the content of the dream. A person I've met, a place I've been before, a song I've heard, etc. But not lately have these things popped in even for a second. Perhaps this is a big reason why my dreams are so scary. Familiarity is a "comfort blankie" of sorts -- even in my waking life. I could be in the most unfamiliar of places, surrounded by the shadiest of people, but as long as I have something from home with me or can identify something familiar, my anxiety level will stay moderately low and I'm able to think with a level head. But the instant that aspect is removed from the situation, my thoughts scatter and I enter into that "fight or flight" mode...but if neither of those options are available, it's panic attack time.


Gotta go get ready for dinner at my grandmother's now. I'll report on more dreams at another time. I feel pretty good at least getting 'em down in a blog, anyway...even if I can't make sense of them. ^_^

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DATE: Oct 05 2006, 7:55 pm / MOOD: Other

I'm gonna make this short. Then perhaps add more later. Because the "CONGRATS! YOU'VE BEEN SELECTED! FREE* GAS FOR A YEAR" strobe banner is wigging me out. To the point where I can hardly concentrate on this blog. And considering that it's my first on this site, I wanted to make it a good one.

Ach! f@ck this I gotta refresh before I have a f@cking attack. Be back in a minute.


Alright! Crisis temporarily averted. I just stuck my WinAmp over it. heh ^^


Yeah anyway...Christ I don't even remember what I wanted to write, now. Um...okay.



I'm really glad to have find this site. A random stranger on MySpace let me know about it...and...here I am! Thanks, JoJo! ^^

It's incredibly reassuring to know that lots of people on here are just as nervous as I am about interacting with the rest of the world. I always fear that I come off as super strange or completely unapproachable when first being introduced to someone new. My mind jumps around a lot. I have a wicked hard time sticking to a single train of thought for very long. And the trains that I happen to stick to for more than a few seconds, make absolutely no sense whatsoever to most people anyway. *sigh*

So, to prevent this from happening, I typically clam up in any and every social situation. I let others speak for me. I allow people to interrupt and talk over me. In this way I am easily manipulated and taken advantage of. It snowballs into bigger things and more terrifying situations. It's initiated an intense paranoia and distrust of all humans. Including friends and family. Now, I rarely leave the house or answer my phone to avoid any further contact with them. It's destroying the relationships I have with my mum and dad. And their concern only makes me feel worse as well as prolongs the inevitable "blue moon" call I make to let them know I'm alright and not to call the police.

Back to why I think this site is so great.

I can be alone, in my apartment, away from reality and can still keep in contact with my very real friends. I can delete words I know don't make sense, convey ideas without interruption, and connect with other people who understand just what the f@ck I'm talking about. But the best part of it all, I know that at least one of them -- if not, many...are experiencing the same anxiety I have been...alone, in their homes.

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