Confessions of a Crazy Woman

I'm stressed, and it's causing my anxiety to come back in full force. I haven't had to fight my anxiety for a long time - not since I was engaged! I haven't been on medication in 4 years, and now suddenly I feel the symptoms creeping up on my almost daily. They've been coming back stronger and stronger over the last month and a half or so. It sucks, and it's scary. If anyone has ever had a panic or anxiety attack before, you know how scary they can be. I've been able to train myself to get out of them and to calm myself down, but it's still terrifying to feel your self control slipping away as your muscles contract, your breathing speeds up like it can't keep up, you start to feel numb and nauseas and shaky - it's just scary. Just the physical aspects alone make you feel like you want to hide in a dark place until it goes away, but at the same time you know that by going into a dark place to hide it will only make it worse. You feel crazy and like you have no control, and your mind starts to go a mile a minute and makes it so you can't concentrate on any one thing - just a mass collage of everything and nothing.

This is how I feel just about every day lately. Sometimes it's just for a few minutes, or a very dim feeling that doesn't really affect me, and other days (like today) I'm struggling to hold it together at all times. I've been feeling like this since breakfast. I tried to sleep, watch TV, craft, clean, excercise - nothing has helped. I'm hoping that venting it out in writing will help me. I'm nauseas to the point that I don't want to eat, but I force myself to anyway because by not eating it's worse. I'm dizzy and have a hard time focusing my eyes. I feel twitchy and like if I try to hold something I'll just drop it. I feel like I've been crying uncontrollably for hours, you know that exhausted, drained, there's nothing left inside of you feeling, but I haven't cried at all (nor do I really have a reason to cry, which makes this even more frustrating for me). To just curl up in a ball and let the anxiety take over seems like such a good idea - like if I just let it run it's course it will be over and I can go about my day - but, as I've learned from experience, it won't. Besides, I can't just leave Sophia running around so I can go curl up in a ball and hyperventilate for a few hours, that's just bad parenting. (Sigh) And the most frustrating thing of all is that there is not one incident or issue that's causing this. It's just stress overall. I mean, my last full blown anxiety attack was when the hood of my car flipped up into my windshield while I was driving 65 mph. That makes sense though. Right now though, there's been no catastrophic event to trigger this - it's just stress. When Jon comes home it will be better - he can always keep me calm when I start to feel crazy like this.

Is there a point to this post? No. Just wanting to vent and thought that maybe talking about how my anxiety is affecting me would help. I hate feeling like this.

(For the record, no this is not post-partem. I had this long before I even thought of kids. At least if it were post-partem, I would have a reason for this....but I don't. I'm just a little unhinged I guess.)