Tag Archives: panic attacks

Nov 27 2012

30 Things to do before I’m 30

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This blog post has been in the works for quite a while (about 4 months). I’ve come close to posting it so many times and at the last moment, talked myself out of it again. Last week some friends on Twitter were talking about the 101 in 1001 lists thingy and I decided that it was time to post this. It’s still taken me another week to overcome inertia, so I’m posting it now before I give myself the opportunity to back out again. Apologies for any typos, I’m just sick of reading this over and over and then deciding not to post it. This is a long one btw, so grab a cup of tea and pull up a chair… Jo.

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a little internet-absent recently. Normally when this happens I come back with some blog post or other plagued with apologies and excuses. This time it’s different (and no, it’s not because I had to go to rehab following my Snickers addiction).

A few months ago I realised that I am now, officially, in my late twenties. I am 28 and a half (ish) years old. That means that in a year and half (ish) I’m going to be 30. I know that’s not an overly distressing thing in itself, but it prompted me to think about my twenties and wonder what, if anything, I have been doing with my life so far.

I started to think about the things I have done, but mostly, I thought about all the things I haven’t and I wondered why that might be.

Let’s go back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old. At this point in my life all of my friends had birthday parties at a place called The Big Buddy Bear Club which was a massive play area (ball pools, slides, tunnels, rope ladders etc.). The Big Buddy Bear Club was the place to have birthday parties. It was excessively good fun, for most kids.

I’m sure that given the amount of times I actually went to The Big Buddy Bear Club I probably had fun at least once, but all I remember is that I once got stuck in a tunnel and I found it very scary and upsetting.

I was crawling through a tunnel which had a gap in it. To cross the gap, I had to crawl across a rope bridge. As I approached the rope bridge I stopped. I wasn’t keen on crossing the rope bridge – it just didn’t feel safe. My gut instinct told me to go back the way I came, but there were kids behind me and I was too shy/scared/socially awkward to ask if I could crawl past them so I closed my eyes and hurriedly crawled across the bridge before pulling into a side tunnel and bursting into tears.

Even though I didn’t fall, and the rope bridge didn’t disappear beneath me, and nothing bad happened at all, I couldn’t bring myself to continue further down the tunnel. And I couldn’t bring myself to go back across the rope bridge, either. Supposedly, facing your fears means you overcome them. For me, it merely confirmed that I definitely found crawling across a rope bridge incredibly scary and that I didn’t want to do it again.

And so I sat there in the tunnel and cried. I cried about being too scared to go forwards and too scared to go backwards. All because of a totally non-threatening rope bridge especially designed for children of my age, height and weight to crawl across.

As I sat there sobbing loads of other kids crawled by. Some would give me a quizzical look before going on their way, others didn’t notice me.  Once again, being incredibly shy, I was too scared to ask one of them to help me get out of the tunnel. So I just sat there and all I could think about was how everyone in The Big Buddy Bear Club was having masses of fun except me. And maybe some other kid who was throwing up in the ball pool or something.

Eventually, after I can’t even remember how long, some girl I didn’t know saw me crying and helped me back across the rope bridge and back to where lot’s of extremely bored-looking parents were sitting on a bench drinking coffee and waiting for the party to be over. I sat with the bored parents until the end of the party, watching all the other kids playing and having ridiculous amounts of fun. I wanted to go back, but I told myself not to. It just wasn’t worth it, what if I got stuck somewhere else? What if next time, no one found me and I’d just get left there?

This is pretty much the story of my life. I’m scared of everything. When I face something I find scary I don’t conquer my fear, I simply reinforce the fact that, yes, I really do find that thing scary.

This is, apparently, how I roll. I seem to fear things I’m perfectly capable of doing, just in case something terrible happens. And so I sit on the side, crying, too scared to go forwards and hoping that, eventually, someone much more confident than I am will find me and I can go home.

Whenever I have taken ‘risks’ (and I mean that in the broadest possible sense of the term) I feel like things work out badly, and I regret taking that risk… And then that puts me off ever taking any other sort of risk or impulsive action ever again… Ever.

So now I ring-fence myself into ‘playing it safe’ that is: avoiding all the things that scare me, not making any decisions, and hoping that maybe one day everything will just work out for the best and I’ll be happy. I stop myself from making any decisions just in case I make a bad one that might make me unhappy.

So here I am. Nearly 30 and well and truly fenced into my comfort zone. This doesn’t result in a particularly satisfying life.

When I started thinking about what I have done this past decade, I realised that I’ve moved house more times than I care to remember, eaten a lot of pizza and watched a lot of films. I also passed my driving test, but I’m too scared to actually drive a car. And I wrote a novel… with no story.

I’ve realised that a combination of life anxiety and an unrelenting fear of failure has left me in this situation. I can either shrug my shoulders to it all and say that this is just the way I am, or I could do something (even if it’s a fairly small thing) to change.

In the interests of turning 30 and knowing that I’m heading in the right direction (or at the very least, be safe in the knowledge that I did more than move house and eat pizza) I’ve decided to make a change.

I started making a list of things I wanted to do before I’m 30. It’s kind of like a bucket list – minus  the  swimming-with-dolphins cliché and having death as the deadline. There are only 30 things on my list, but some of them might take me a while to complete. Others are small things that I’ve wanted to do for while but never got around to doing them – or simply because it’s easier not to bother.

I’m sharing this with you, Internet, to force myself to actually do the things on this list instead of flaking out like I normally do.

And I figured that since I’m sharing my list with the internet, I may as well write about each of them here. I foresee most of these things going spectacularly wrong (all part of the fun/learning curve, right?), and I’m more than happy to share those experiences for your amusement (you’re welcome).

Still reading? Excellent. Without further ado, here’s the list:

30 before 30 – The List

1. Join the Anthony Nolan register.

2. Have something (anything) published and be paid for it.

3. Begin to pay off my student debt.

4. Do volunteer work.

5. Be a confident driver (i.e. not have a panic attack when facing the prospect of getting in the car).

6. Write a new novel and complete my MA.

7. Learn how to play chess.

8. Take a yoga or meditation class.

9. Eat lobster.

10. Go ice-skating/sledging.

11. Learn a bit of Spanish.

12. Host a dinner party.

13. Walk the Three Peaks.

14. Try out for a roller derby

15. Have a party with a bouncy castle.

16. Master using WordPress

17. Go to a music festival.

18. Watch the films I haven’t watched (list to follow).

19. Go out for brunch.

20. Go to a drive-in movie.

21. Visit Edinburgh.

22. Do all the touristy bits of London you’re supposed to do when you’re a tourist.

23. Do a pub crawl.

24. Knit a scarf.

25. Do all the things I was too scared to do as a child (list to follow).

26. Own a round wicker chair.

27. Be a vegetarian for a week (or maybe a month).

28. Go on a random trip without planning any of it.

29. Stay up for 24 hours.

30. Work in the field for which I received my degree.

There’s a reason for why each of these things went onto the list, but I’ll explain each when I blog about them (because otherwise, this is going to be the longest blog post ever).

Jul 14 2011

And then from nowhere, you feel like smashing things…

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This isn’t quite the sneaky hate spiral, the one which Allie Brosh describes so brilliantly on Hyperbole and a Half. This is something else. Entirely.

In recent years I’d say that I’ve managed to knock a lot of my self-loathy behaviour on the head. But every now and again, I wake up feeling like I am the worst person to ever have existed. I’m terrible and everyone knows it etc.

Sometimes I can even wake up feeling fine, happy almost, and then at some point in the day lurch frantically into this evil state of unadulterated rage.

What’s a classic trait of this state of mind is that I can’t say what it is that’s making me feel so terrible. I feel bad, and I have no explanation as to why that is. Which, in itself, makes me feel more upset.

Generally, I try to hide feelings crappiness, but even a minor set back (in any capacity) seems to open a floodgate of anger fuelled by a back-catalogue of negative thoughts from my life so far. It looks a little something like this:

Stage 1 – A Minor Setback:

wonderwhyspreadsheetwontprint
Stage 2 – Irrational Feelings of Anger and Rage:

why printers suck

 

who do printers think they are

 

printing capabilities

 

refuse spreadsheet

Stage 3 – Self-Loathing:

not printers fault

 

dont understand

 

lol

Stage 4 – Crying:

Er… No illustration needed.

 

When I’m not falling out with printers or other bits of technology, I’m punishing myself for other minor mishaps. The other night for example, I found a tasty looking recipe (complete with mouth-watering picture next to it) in a book and decided to give it a go. Despite my best efforts, however, the end result did not, by any means, mirror the appetising delights in the picture. Immediately after sitting down to consume it I found myself yelling "THIS FOOD IS DOGSHIT" because honestly, that’s what it looked like.

Worse still, whenever I’m in a total funk this way, people seem to collect around me, more so than usual. They’re everywhere – popping up left and right with their smiles and polite conversations and telephone calls. And I know it isn’t them, it’s me being angry. I know that they’re merely existing, and I’m merely existing and we’re all just existing together. But their existence somehow fuels my feelings of irritability. Therefore, anyone who even so much takes an inhalation of breath within a five mile radius of where I am, is subject to endless sighs, tuts and aggressive rolls of the eyes by yours truly.

Ironically, less than a week prior to my stonking rage festival, I had attended a training course on building confidence and learning the power of positive thinking. I really felt as though I was feeling the benefits too, until the end of the week rapidly transformed into the beginning of the week and for whatever reason, I woke up feeling like a failure and hated everything.

Sometimes, to clear up these weird feelings that seem to appear from nowhere, I just need a good cry, or a long sleep or a massive piece of cake. Eventually my brain shifts back into gear and all the hating flows back into whatever dark abyss it came out of in the first place.

Afterwards, when I’m wringing out my pillows, and wiping the smears of chocolate cake off my bed sheets, I feel a quite stupid about it all. I have this feeling of  ‘Seriously, what was I so upset about?’ and I still can’t really figure it out. And while I’m being honest, I also still feel a bit of resentment towards printers.

Jan 18 2011

Animals are trying to kill me…

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Specifically vermin. Vermin are most definitely trying to kill me, and not just in the spreading lies the plague disease type way, but in the actual, physical act of vengeance type way. No word of a lie, a pigeon just slapped me in the face.

I know what you’re thinking; you probably don’t believe me or you think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not kidding you. I just got bitch-slapped by a pigeon, and other people were there to see it.

Pigeons have tried this sort of stunt on me before: Once, when I was little, a pigeon landed on my head in Trafalgar Square. Struck with terror, I remained frozen to the spot, while my own mother proceeded to point and laugh, grabbing the attention of anyone passing by and encouraging them to do the same.

Another time, I was plagued with a stonking hangover whilst wandering through town, when a pigeon suddenly launched from the pavement and intentionally swooped directly towards my face. My instinctive reaction was to perform an extensive chudo-chop manoeuvre (complete with an audible “hi-yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” sound effect) only to discover on completion of the chop that the pigeon had entirely disappeared.

There’s still some ambiguity over whether or not the pigeon was a mere daylight hallucination – a by-product of my hungover state at the time, or whether it most definitely did exist and the whole episode was a cleverly orchestrated ploy by the pigeon to make me seem like a crazy. Pigeons are sneaky that way. And after its disappearance, my still frozen chudo-chop stance was met by many a raised eyebrow from passers by.

Today, one of the beady-eyed air-beasts went the whole way and full-on backhanded me in the face.

 

Even though I’m technically single and homeless now, this will never be me. I will never befriend pigeons. I don’t care how lonely I get.

 

Last week, it was the rats who were after me. It was another cleverly orchestrated plan to scare me off their territory, which took place during a trip to the fenced-off industrial bin area, where I’m currently living. I had been warned that rats were prone to lurking around in there, and I guess it’s my own fault for not taking the warning seriously. Then, one evening when I was walking home, I saw one scurry under the fence and disappear into the darkness and thus my confidence was shaken.

A couple of days later, the domestic waste situation in the kitchen was growing in severity (there were two bags of rubbish) and I knew the moment was upon me to dispose of it at rat central.

I stealthily approached the the fenced-off bin area, keeping my ears open for the pattering of tiny rodent feet. Then I kicked open the gate (not literally) and flung the bags of rubbish a whopping two metres into the bin – my plan being to make a hasty exit immediately afterwards. Only the impact of the second bag sent reverberations directly into one rat’s ears. It then came hurtling towards me, presumably in an attempt to scare me off, making an immediate ninety degree turn at my feet before scurrying off in the opposite direction.

The whole thing happened so quickly. I was panic stricken, unable to move, and fearing for my life. Aware that I was standing in a densely populated residential area, I had to resort to doing a silent scream – you know, where you essentially have your mouth open as though you are screaming, but no sound comes out.

It was really traumatic – possibly more so than the time I was mauled* by a bear**.

*Technically not a mauling, as there was a fence separating us and no actual physical contact was made.

**Technically not a bear, as it was actually a dog. But it was roughly the size of a bear.

To conclude: I no longer trust animals, particularly ones with wings, tails or disguise themselves as bears (dogs).

Jul 22 2010

Internet! I’m back, and I’m caffeine free… Sort of.

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You’ve probably forgotten that I exist by now, so if you’re reading this then congratulations – you’re probably the only one. Email me – and you could win a crayon drawing of a fish.

Last week, the Novelist and I went on holiday. That’s right. Even aspiring writers need to take a break from their pensive existence every now and again. No phones, no laptops, no internet – just the beautiful French countryside, some good friends, and a serious amount of red meat offal wine relaxing. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to write a post, I was in two minds about announcing my departure to the Internet; on the one hand I thought that maybe it was courteous to you, my readers – people who actually take time out of the day to read my posts – to at least let you know that I was going to be away for a while and that I’d update the blog when I got back. And I’d also probably plead with you not to forget about me, because let’s face it – the internet works 85.6% faster than the real world, and the real world works 89.7% faster than I do. All that equates to me being a bad blogger with no readers – if you do the math (or MATHS if you’re English, like I am) and if you actually believe those statistics that I just made up. On the other hand… well… isn’t it kind of stupid to tell the world that you won’t be home for a week?

“Dear Internet,

Next week, I will be going on holiday and so won’t be posting to the blog for the next week. Please don’t forget about me. I still exist in the real world – but I have come to understand that your world and my world are two entirely separate things. As far as you’re concerned, for that week, I won’t really exist. PERIOD.

I hope you will acknowledge my existence when I return.

Love and kisses,

Jo

PS. Any burglars reading this, please do not steal anything from my house. Presuming you know where I live. Which you probably don’t. But either way, you might be able to find out, and now that you’ve read this you’ll know that I’m not home. Also, even though I don’t have anything worth stealing, I have privacy/trust/attachment-to-random-inanimate-objects issues and I would be really upset if all of my useless crap was thieved while I was away. This includes my favourite seaside ornament. I also don’t really like the idea of people I don’t know being in my house when I’m not there.

Kthxbai”

No you’re right -  I was being totally paranoid.

And so from one realm of crazy to another. Last time I wrote about how I was frequently experiencing episodes closely akin to acid trips anxiety attacks. You all gave me some stellar advice; Alone With Cats told me in not too many words, that I’m essentially turning into her mother – and from what I gather, this is could be some cause for concern. My brother merely corrected me for confusing ‘Psychology’ with ‘Psychotherapy’ (thanks bro). Thanks guys. I ♥ you too.

I figured our holiday would probably provide some much needed relaxation time, which would probably rid me of whatever it was I’ve been unknowingly suppressing for the past few weeks. And it seemed to be working too four days into the holiday and I was doing fine. Then one night in a bar I went into meltdown yet again, and had to sit on a wall outside until the intense feelings of dread went away.

Novelist: How much have you had to drink today?

Me: How DARE you?

Novelist: I’m talking caffeine-wise.

Me: Oh. Erm… three cups of coffee, and a couple of cans of Coke.

Novelist: I think…

Me: And another cup of coffee after dinner in the restaurant. It was really good. Italian – mmm tasty.

Novelist: *stares*

Me: Sorry, you were saying…

Novelist: I think that it’s time you cut down on the amount of coffee you’re drinking.

Me: Why?

Pause

Me: I don’t think those two things are related at all. [Looks at trembling arms]

Novelist: You know caffeine is a drug – you can get addicted to it just like nicotine – and it goes without saying that these things will eventually have an effect.

Somewhat reluctantly, I conducted a little holiday experiment whereby my daily caffeine intake was reduced to one cup of coffee. As much as it pains me to admit it, it seems to be working and I’ve had no subsequent episodes since. I feel heartbroken. I love coffee – not even the taste – just how it makes me feel, which I guess is kind of telling in itself really. And so our long turbulent and slightly abusive relationship has met an untimely end. coffee poster

Although I was sad to face the whole holiday with only one caffeinated drink a day, I realised that being in France (and on holiday) I could substitute my missing coffees with wine and cigarettes a vast array of other luxurious treats.

Anyway, Internet, all I wanted to say is that I’m back, I missed you and that I’m almost normal again (but not quite).

Jul 8 2010

UPDATED: Sometimes being mad can be nothing more than inconvenient: Dear Neuroses, stay away, I’m busy.

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I know I always go on about being a bit mentally unstable and all that, and aside from the time I thought I was in Switzerland I never really go into much detail about any of my real-life neurotic incidents. Maybe it’s because my actual craziness has stayed away for a good couple of years or so – relatively speaking of course, I mean every now and again I have the odd episode that sees me behaving in very strange ways (rearranging furniture, crying while watching reruns of Friends, having a permanently dazed expression on my face, finishing every sentence with “does you see what I’m saying?”), but it usually goes away within a couple of days and I don’t think too much more about it.

In the past couple of years, I’ve managed to get a grip and whenever these episodes occur I can find a logical way to put an end to them pretty soon. Sadly, what I’m going through at the moment isn’t one of those episodes (although the desire to rearrange furniture is extremely strong). This is something else that has completely taken me by surprise. It started last week at work; I was sitting at my desk unable to find a document on my computer, when suddenly the name of the document completely erased itself from my short-term memory. I couldn’t remember what I was looking for and I soon found myself staring into space looping through an assortment of random words in my head to see if one of them happened to be the title of the document.

And then I couldn’t remember how to breathe (inhale and then exhale? Which one comes first? Do I breathe through the nose, through the mouth?!) then my heart started racing, my vision went blurry, the walls started melting and the voices of my colleagues sounded altogether strange and unfamiliar. I tried to ignore it and put it down to drinking too much coffee but to be honest, I drink so much coffee daily basis I’m beginning to think I’ve built up a bit of a resistance to it. The freak-out gradually got more intense and before long I was standing at my friend’s desk telling her I had to leave because my mind was going bendy. She helpfully ushered me out of the office, helped me along the melting corridors and led me outside to the car park so I could sit down and cry for no apparent reason. The Novelist tells me I’m lucky – some people pay a hell of a lot of money for those kind of experiences, I get them for free.

The thing is, I have absolutely no idea what is wrong. When I used to suffer from panic attacks way back in the days of University, they were due to the fact that something was bothering me that I continually pushed to the back of my mind. Any time I would think about that thing, the anxiety kicked in and I would feel short of breath, worried, upset, sick and always with a compelling urge to ‘get out’. There was always a trigger in some guise, that would set me off. From what I can remember, it all started because I  hated my degree (and I was failing it). Over the Christmas break during my second year, I had to write a presentation about theatre design (or something else equally dull) and I was completely lost. I didn’t even know where to start. I had a book from the library, called Stage Design by Tony Davis sitting on my bookshelf, with all the presentation notes I hadn’t made and for whatever reason, whenever I caught a glimpse of that book I had a panic attack. After ruining everybody’s Christmas by spending most of it weeping in the bathroom, I was shipped off to therapy where I was asked repeatedly what recreational drugs I was taking and if I had an unhappy childhood. As the therapist struggled to find an answer in her copy of ‘Psychotherapy for Dummies’, I decided to quit my degree, (and the therapy) and switched to study Creative Writing the following year. As if by magic, the panic attacks subsided.

Okay, so the therapy obviously provided no help whatsoever, but realising what was making me so anxious and unhappy in the first place certainly did. Which brings me to my point. Skip forward to now, and there are no triggers. There’s nothing that is making me especially unhappy, nothing that I’m dreading or pushing to the back of my thoughts. Aside from being broke and not being an international, bestselling novelist, everything is pretty much hunky dory – if people other than me even still use that expression. Yet for the past couple of weeks, I’ve suffered these mad episodes where one minute I’m fine and the next I’m clawing at the walls, fumbling with door handles, stumbling around like bleary-eyed drunk desperately in search of a bin to be sick into.

Aside from all the usual what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-me questions attributed to these kind of manic episodes, I’m also finding it kind of annoying. I don’t have time for madness. I got over my various strands of self-indulgent, self-pitying madness so that I had more time for real life things. And now I  have so many real life things to that I don’t have time to take an hour out of the day to lay down on the floor of a car park and cry whilst trying to remember how to breathe. What’s more is that I feel constantly on edge in case it happens again. And if it does happen again, where is it going to happen again? What if it happens when I’m with a bunch of strangers or while I’m driving or in if I’m in a French supermarket? What do I do then? Before, when there was something that was plaguing me, all I had to do was change a few life things; get rid of whatever it was upsetting me and the madness went away. But seeing as I’ve got nothing, I’m all out of ideas. Did you hear that sub-conscious? I’M REALLY FINE.

If I genuinely can’t help it, if these spontaneous freak-outs are going to continue completely unprompted then surely there must be some kind of drill I can use if it happens again, like when you’re on fire. If you’re on fire, you stop, drop and roll. FYI I am never on fire. I have never been on fire, yet if the moment ever comes when I am on fire I will know exactly what to do. Logic dictates that there must be something similar for panic attacks.

*Checks Wikipedia*

So what the hell is happening to me – am I going crazy for good?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

 

This could have saved me a hell of a lot of moneyEliza could have saved me a hell of a lot of time and money had I known of its existence (click the image to get some free therapy).

UPDATE: Okay, so regarding the whole ‘Psychotherapy for Dummies’ thing – I was kidding. Apparently not.