Posted 7/22/2012 8:11 AM (GMT 0)
Hi,
I am new here and found this forum to be very comforting and educating. I am glad to have found it. Here is my background: 38 year old married mother of 2 who has had panic attacks and anxiety since I was the age of 5. They started after I was sexually abused (one time) by a relative. I remember my first attack like it was yesterday and it was terrifying. It changed my life forever.
Growing up in the 70's-80's, I suffered mostly in silence for many reasons. One being, I had no idea what this was and as a young child I couldn't explain it to my parents properly so they could get me help. Secondly, I felt weird, strange and was always afraid that if I did fully describe all my symptoms, my parents, family and friends would think I was crazy. I always wanted to have my mother around. If she was not home or with friends or at work I would be anxiety ridden. My biggest fear besides dying was that she was going to die. I am an only child so I guess I was spoiled and we had a very special relationship. She was kind to me.
When she left me alone with my dad, I used to get depressed because he was the type that would work all day, come home, eat dinner and go right to bed at 8:00 sharp. He wasn't very understanding or nurturing when I would get a panic attack. I would tell him I was afraid of dying and he would say "We are only here on this earth temporarily and there is nothing you can do about it". "Hopefully, there is a God or a heaven". GULP! That didn't make me feel comfort, lol! My dad just wasn't a very sensitive person and had robot like emotions. He was caring, but did not know how to express himself.
I once had a really bad panic attack when I was about 8 years old in front of my aunt who was babysitting me in my home. During the attack, I started running around the house feeling like I was dying, gasping for breath and my aunt thought I was just "acting up or was being a brat". She slapped me hard across the face and yelled at me and asked me if I was crazy. I was horrified. After that, I became terrified of having attacks in front of others. I became a loner and hid my attacks as much as I could. My childhood was pretty much spent in solitude with only one really good friend that actually understood me. She is still my friend 33 years later.
I couldn't handle sleepovers or any normal childhood things. Going more than 15 miles from my "safe zone" was beyond terrifying for me. I hated to visit my grandma who lived 45 minutes away. I always wanted to be home in my "safe zone" which was just another term for my own "personal prison". I was always panicking and thinking I was going to die or go crazy. I felt so alone and different. I felt like I really didn't know who I truly was and was afraid of my own thoughts. I was a prisoner in my own body which was my own personal hell.
My mom was the only one that could ever calm me down. Even if I had a common cold, I felt like I was going to die and I was a major hypochondriac, lol. My mom would try to cheer me up and distract me from the scary thoughts.
Panic attacks must run in the family because when I was a teenager, I actually saw my own dad have a major panic attack. He called 911 and went to the hospital in an ambulance thinking he was having a heart attack. When he got there they dismissed him and and said it was just "nerves".
One day, back in 1996 I was at my local bookstore with my husband who at the time was my boyfriend. I was extremely agoraphobic, so to be at a bookstore was a small miracle. On one of the racks I saw a book called "The Anxiety Disease" by Dr. David Sheehan. I am so glad it caught my eye because it was a life changing experience. When I read the synopsis on the back of the book, I knew I had to buy it. There was finally a name for what I had!
At that point the attacks were getting so bad I was a full blown agoraphobic. I was so anxiety ridden on a daily basis, that I couldn't hold any solid food down. As soon as I would eat, I would be either throwing up or have diarrhea. I lost so much weight I was becoming a skeleton. The only nourishment that I could hold down without gagging on and vomiting up, was chocolate milk shakes. At the time I was filled with extreme despair, dread and depression. All I could do to escape, was to close my eyes and go to sleep. I slept about 19 hours a day!
At the time, I still lived at home with my mother. My parents were divorced by this time and my mother had problems of her own. My once understanding mother would yell, "snap out of it!!" "stop being a drama queen!!", "get up off the couch", "what the hell is wrong with you?". That would make me get even more anxiety ridden.
One day she got so fed up, she made me take a ride with her to the local video store to return a movie. She felt she needed to force me out of the house. On the way there, I had such a bad panic attack, I jumped out of the car while she was driving on a very busy boulevard! Cars were honking at me because I stopped traffic. It was during rush hour, so incensed commuters were waving their fists in anger at me. GULP!
There was no relief for me. I was having one panic attack after the other around the clock. Even in my sleep which was what seemed like my only relief, I was waking up gasping for air and feeling like I needed to go to the emergency room or the nut house.
Soon after I read the life saving book that I found, I finally sought out professional help with a therapist that specialized in Panic Disorder. At the time, I thought that only psychotic, crazy people went to psychologists and psychiatrists which scared the hell out of me. My therapist recommended a Psychiatrist for me to see right away, who prescribed me Xanax and Prozac. I was finally diagnosed with Extreme Panic Disorder and Major Depression. The first time I filled my prescription at the pharmacy I was terrified! I was afraid of medications and thought that only complete lunatics were on Prozac. This was at a time when Prozac was getting a bad rap in the local media. I was at the drug store waiting for my first prescription of Xanax and Prozac to be filled, shaking from fear when all of a sudden the Ramones song, I Want To Be Sedated came on over the pharmacy's loud speakers. It was like a sign from heaven that everything was going to be alright and it even made me laugh. To this day, every time I hear that song I smile and think about the first time I took a Xanax, lol.
When I got home with the pills I was frightened. I though the pills were going to kill me, lol! It took me an hour before I could even place the pills in my mouth. Within 20 minutes after I took them I was out like a light and slept better than I had in years. I woke up actually rested! Fast forward 3 weeks later and I started to see a life that I was once too panicked to notice. Everything was beautiful. Before I started getting treatment, I basically saw everything in black and white. There was no color. Nothing had any meaning or beauty to me.
All of a sudden the colors of the flowers were so vivid, bright and cheerful. I marveled at the beauty of the sky. At once all my senses came alive. Touch, smell, sight, and music became wonderful. I smiled at nature and started going out of my house a little at a time. I was able to eat again and hold all my food down. I quickly went from always being skinny to wearing plus size clothes several months later (definitely not a side effect I liked, lol). I was actually enjoying food once again so I guess I let that go.
I notice that over the years with therapy and medications, I have been given a second chance in life. I would probably have given up a long time ago if I wasn't so lucky. I still get panic attacks, anxiety and depression, but I am able to deal with them in a different way than many years ago. However, it will always be a struggle, sometimes worse than others.
I always like to be in control of my surroundings. If I am not in control, I get panicky or anxiety ridden. My husband tries to understand, but he just don't get it. He was with me before I first got diagnosed and when I was at my worst. Over the years I have tried to educate him as much as possible. If someone hasn't walked in your shoes, I guess they will never understand. I wouldn't wish panic disorder and depression on my worst enemy.
I was lucky he stood by me despite all the craziness. Any other man would have ran as far away as they could and never looked back. Who would blame them? However, I was also there for him through thick and thin too. 3 months before our wedding in 1998, he was diagnosed with a very rare form of non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. The doctors said we should not go ahead with the wedding. Love knows no bounds and we tied the knot right before he started his grueling chemotherapy treatments. We had a beautiful wedding. He ended up beating it in (1999). Guess whats back? You guessed it. He was just diagnosed with B-Cell Lymphoma a few weeks ago. Here we go again.... God, I'm scared!
He is a strong man and I wish I could be half as brave. He is also an alcoholic who has been sober for over 8 years now. It was a hard demon for him to fight and I give him so much credit! Once he finally sought treatment for his addiction, he became a much different person. A person who works hard to keep his mental and physical health in good order. The once imperfect person I married, has changed most of his negative attributes, evolved, and matured. Now, my flaws stand out even more. I am so happy he is sober, but at the same time, I feel I haven't evolved or changed for the better like him. I worry he will keep being disappointed in me because of my weakness with anxiety. Thank god I don't do illegal drugs or like alcohol at all. God knows that I would probably have been an alcoholic too. This is the only time that my anxiety has served me in a positive manner. I am way too afraid to become drunk or high because then I will be "out of control". I got drunk a few times as a teen and it scared me half to death because, I couldn't control my body or mind especially when the room felt like it was spinning, lol.
One thing that is hurting my marriage is ever since I was a child I need to sleep with the tv and have at least a small night light on at night. For most of my marriage I have not slept in the bedroom with my husband because my need for the tv is a big issue with him. Because of this, there is very little intimacy between he and I. He feels rejected and I try to tell him, it has nothing to do with him, it is just because I want to avoid getting panic or anxiety attacks. You might wonder why I feel I have to get away from the bedroom and it is a valid point, so here goes...
My husband does a lot of turn around shifts (mixture of night shifts and day shifts and needs good quality, uninterrupted sleep). When my husband sleeps, he has to sleep in the pitch black darkness with complete silence or with nature sounds/new age music. He is a light sleeper and even if I cough, it wakes him up which makes me obsess and worry about having to move or cough. It is so dark in the bedroom that you can't even see your own hand in front of your eyes at all. He also does not like the regular tv on and the only noise he will tolerate is weird, meditative type of new age music that is on one of the cable channels (some kind of naturescape stuff). To get rid of any light coming from the tv, he puts his big, thick robe over it and blocks it out.
That type of music freaks me out for some reason. Instead of calming me down with the sounds of babbling brooks, and soothing American Indian flute type music, I want to run from the room as soon as I hear it. As soon as he shuts the bedroom door, I feel like all of my oxygen has been cut off and I cannot breathe. The door has to stay shut to keep the dogs and cats out, so I can't even get away with leaving the door open a crack. I also suffer from occasional nocturnal panic attacks and waking up with one of them in that room, in the pitch black dark would be terrifying!
The only way I can fall asleep is by going downstairs and flipping on the tv and having a small light on in the back ground. The minute I close my eyes, I drift off into a peaceful, relaxed slumber. I guess being in control calms me down. However, every night that I lay on that couch, I feel horrible, bad and extremely guilty for being such a terrible wife.
My husband has had enough of this and I can't blame him. We have been arguing about this for years and he is finally at his breaking point because of the lack of intimacy. I love him very much and am afraid this is going to ruin our marriage or am afraid it might be too late to fix this. I can't blame him for being angry and hurt.
I tried to explain to him about the panic that I get in the bedroom, but he is fed up with having a wife that doesn't sleep in the same bed as him. He won't budge and let me put regular tv on because he said the commercials are too loud when they suddenly come on and then wake him up. There are only a few cable tv channels that I can watch that don't give me anxiety when I am trying to fall asleep. All of them bother him. I tried sleeping with a walkman on to listen to AM talk radio and it didn't help because he could still hear the sounds coming from it even though I had on noise canceling head phones. I even bought a miniature 10" tv, attached it to the cable box with a special 10 foot coaxial cable wire so it could reach me in bed and wore head phones. The light from the tiny tv bothered him even though he was wearing a sleep/eye mask!
On a few occasions I have tried to hang in there. I would lay there and try to distract myself with positive self talk. I would take deep breaths and try to think of happy thoughts. Within 5-10 minutes, I wanted to flee. A few times I would even be lucky enough to fall asleep for a little bit. Then suddenly I would wake up out of my sleep and feel anxiety and leave. Sometimes he would be asleep by then and I would get away with not having him see me bowing my head in shame.
I feel so guilty for not being there for my husband. I feel like such a bad, horrible wife. I wish I could be a normal wife and mother, but I try to avoid anxiety and panic as much as I can. All my hard work does pay off and I have been keeping the panic attacks at an all time low over the years. The only problem with working hard all the time to keep those panic demons away, makes me always exhausted! This side affect is overwhelming. I can hardly keep from falling asleep during the day. I could sleep for 15 hours straight and still feel like I didn't sleep at all. I am always hyper vigilant, which tires me out. My doctor recently prescribed me Adderall to give me some pep which has helped me focus so much better, keeps the brain fog away and helps keep me motivated and awake. He also said I have ADD too. Darn my brain is seriously flawed, lol! If this runs in the family like they say, my poor kids are screwed.
My Xanax keeps the attacks pretty much under control for the most part. However, Xanax can't help the bedroom situation unless I take several and I can't do that because then I won't be able to get up in the morning. I have a major phobia of death and dying and sleeping in that room under those conditions and rules, makes me feel like I am dead in a coffin or I am going to die in my sleep.
Does anyone else have a similar dilemma? If yes, how have you solved it? I would take an extra Xanax or two at bedtime if I could, but I have two children that I have to be awake for in the morning.
Sorry I rambled on for so long. I feel so much better that I got all this off of my chest.
Thanks.
Dee