Anxiety and Panic

The thing here is not whether I was able to get over it or not, the thing here is that you made me do something I’d never volunteer to do. The issue here isn’t that you tried to “push me out of my comfort zone”, the problem here is that you made me feel extremely vulnerable and frightened. What threatened my sanity was not social pressure, it was an innate mental pressure. I tried explaining but you deemed my emotions unimportant. I tried speaking but you shut me and humiliated me. You were wrong. 

I do not know why and how, but I have frequent episodes of anxiety and panic from time to time. It may mean something or it may not. Some people are just more prone to stress and it’s side effects than others. What I am concerned with right now is the “forceful” nature of our “loved ones” who think they are doing us a favour by making us do things we are absolutely not comfortable with. I wish they knew that they did not do me a favour in any way. There was no good in that.

I’m sitting in the car, extremely angry and uncomfortable. My stomach is feeling extremely tight. I’ve had that before, tonnes and tonnes of times before. It’s like this feeling of discomfort and queasiness where I can absolutely do nothing but bear with it. I do not feel good at all. I cannot eat or even sit comfortably, I have to keep strolling. It’s a horrible thing that I am unable to get used to, after 10+ years of living with it. Anyway, so I’m sitting on the driver’s seat, dealing with my uneasiness and anger. All of a sudden, I feel scared and unsure about where I’m headed. My heart is beating really fast and I feel like I’m shaking uncontrollably, inside. I couldn’t tell if it was physically visible because I was too consumed by my emotions. It went on like that for about 10 minutes, but it was terrifying. In addition to this, I’m getting constant visions. Flashes of images in my mind showing me crashing into something or having a car accident. I was in continuous fear that I will get lost on my way to or from my destination. There were so many thoughts rapidly crossing my mind that I couldn’t focus on anyone or have time to understand anything. All I knew in that moment was that I needed someone. For what, I don’t remember. I didn’t want to start the car because my insides were shivering. Right then, my brother passed by and I screamed his name. I clearly remember the sigh of relief and the quiver in my voice when I told him how nervous I was. I felt like a little child who got lost and found someone they knew. I felt so scared and vulnerable, more than I’d like to be, in public. There was so much stress, I can’t even describe it. The thing is, I’ve felt like this countless times. On countless occasions, I remember going through this, but I never really thought much of it later. I always thought it was just something that was a part of me and I just needed to endure it and live with it. Little did I know that it was abnormal and that I needed to ask myself or probably someone in position, as to why I had these feelings so often.

I don’t know when will I ever talk to someone about it, but as of now, I decided to write about it. Because for the first time ever, I thought about it and realised that this has a name. It’s called panicking and it’s called anxiety. This is the reason why education is so mandatory. To understand your own self too, you need education and awareness. How unfortunate are we that such things are discarded so easily. People who we trust, people who we seek help from also refuse to understand and that is what makes it worse. I do not blame the person, but I did expect them to understand considering I’ve spent more than half my life with them.

You may not understand my situation, but you could choose to sympathise with my condition. 

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What happens after all of this is, one thing leading to another. One horrifying thing to another. One scary memory to another. One fear to another. It keeps going until someone breaks the noisy silence or I just divert my attention to something else, which doesn’t really work. For years on end, I’ve dealt with this alone. I’ve fought with my mind over and over again, non-stop. I’ve battled with my thoughts and fear, endlessly. I have enough practice for me to be able to ignore thoughts coming my way, but inside my head, they’re still scaring me.

I am so confused, I do not know if anyone would be able to sense it in this article or not. The main reason why I’m afraid to acknowledge any of my fears is because they scare me more. They frighten me and affect me physically. I get scared of everyday things in my house and regular pictures, like the featured image above. Everything becomes so scary. Every sound gives me cold shivers and then, I just cannot stop. This is the reason why I never think about it much and this is the reason I ignored it half of my life. It just makes it worse and I never know what to do. It freezes my body physically and haunts me mentally. This is why I don’t want to know more about it or even face it.

Darn it, It’s 12:50 AM right now! I should be asleep, but I decided to write this and now I probably won’t be able to sleep all night. It happens so frequently. If I hadn’t gone through such a serious situation a while back, I would have probably slept by now. I just made it worse for myself. I didn’t realise that by writing this, I was slowly getting deep into the place I should never let myself go to.

What’s the solution, though?

How do you get out of this thing that has almost become a part of you?