Misinformation

All of the stressful events that I've described so far - losing a friend, losing a cat, losing my drummer, having to re-record 6 hours of work, the bathroom flooding, my son being diagnosed with asthma, are things that I would have normally taken in my stride. Yes, life WAS stressful. But so are other people's. I'm sure people who have bigger responsibilities like running a company, head of an organisation etc are under much more pressure than I am. So why did my coping mechanisms fail me? Why now at 28? Why when I was happy and relaxed? It was like throwing my life up into the air and watching it fall down around me in pieces. It changed how I viewed myself, my life. I began to question my strengths, weaknesses. My happiness, was I really happy? The two main causes of panic (according to the NHS website) are drug abuse and deep seated childhood fears. So what about if I had neither? What was causing the attacks?

Nothing that I had read or been told up until that point had given me a satisfactory explanation. That was part of the problem. My fear-adrenaline-fear cycle was being fuelled by misinformation, misunderstanding and probably a lot more misses of different kinds. The doctor I went to see less than 24 hours after my first panic attack prescribed me Tamazipam - a tranquiliser - to use next time I had one. Those fateful words again - next time! I never got the prescription and threw it away. I knew that treating the symptoms instead of the cause was not the answer.

I was already avoiding everything that I associated with my first panic attack; finishing my Dan Brown book, drinking Pepsi, sitting on the sofa and Domino's pizza. After I had my second one, I didn't read anything, eat any fast food, drink any caffeine, go in the living room, take stimulants of any kind - even chocolate, I quit my birth control, didn't take medicines of any kind, not even vitamins and didn't make travel plans. I was changing my life because of them, but changing all the wrong things. I was seeking the cause in a physical place because I didn't trust the answers I'd been given.

But then some time passed...