Hi hope_29!
Yes I think we can get our old selves back !!
Besides the panic attacks you describe, I had this mental blackouts and the emotional absence too. It is indeed somewhat hard to describe that is why I hardly ever talked about
it. Your example of seeing your parents, knowing that they are yours but you can`t feel it - well I could not describe it in a better way.
I had a kind of emotional film tear ( or mental blank) that was drastic for me, I did not know that I had lyme at that time but I knew that somewhat was going on with me; I saw a lot of docs, ruling out a lot of things ( like Malaria). I was involved in a lot of projects, did this for a long time in my life and I loved it. And then, out of the blue: bum ! no feelings availabe; I felt like being my own alien from mars, like if I had absolutely no access to my emotional database in my brain; first thoughts at that time were this could be a super spontanious burn- out - symptom: But by instinct I knew it must be something else. And at the same time I noticed days when I definitely forgot everything; it took me an hour to get my stuff together in the morning because I had to check everything again and again but not to "controll" it but because I did not know if I got everything together; My brain was out of work, in nowhere- land and just did not answer. At the same time another weird thing started: I lost some of my feeling for spaciousness - means I regularly did not put my cup of coffee on the table but beside the table, I wanted to walk through the door but I walked into the doorframe. All this made me very very impatient with myself which made all worse.
All this lasted for about
half a year then it slowly disappeared and is now gone completely.
I also see the local lymie group for coffee- meetings once in a while and there are about
50% which had severe panic attacks and mental/ emotional problems under which they suffered a lot; but all of them got rid of it with treatment or are on their way to recovery; So there is no reason to be afraid of a permanent damage.
You will get better too! hugs, dorit
Post Edited (dorit) : 2/1/2009 5:30:41 PM (GMT-7)