surfing

So tonight I am surfing a resurgence of anxiety.
I'm just off an old med, and coming up the curve on a new one, and apparently, the universe decided to have some fun with testing my new chemical balance and created a close-range trigger.

This is panic attack stuff, with a frosting layer of anxiety about the anxiety. It is a crazy thing, being abducted by aliens crazy.  My brain and body feel hijacked, and I become both a sufferer and an observer.  I know that I will be fine, but it does not matter what I know. I feel horrid. Tender, raw, reactive, vulnerable, at-risk in existential ways.

I like feeling together and competent. I like feeling happy and good. I like focusing on the positive. I like looking ahead with happy anticipation. Anxiety is like a kick in the gut. I know I have written about this before, but it is my right now, and I wondered if I wrote about it as it is happening if I could pretend to gain some control over it. Or at least ride it out doing something I love (writing) in a place I love to write (I can't whistle), to people whom I love (Hi Shelagh!).  So here we are.

My brain feels buzzy as the chemicals ache to run their usual course, but my new medication keeps the chemicals from flinging themselves totally out of control.  My new medication kind of traps anxiety, at least initially, in a cage in my solar plexus. It actually rattles there. But with smaller triggers, it rattles and then abates, leaving me watchful but not overtaken. This trigger, today, was the perfect one for me-- direct triggering-- and instead of staying a rattly feeling, I felt the whoosh of chemicals down my arms, through my torso, and up behind my face, my scalp, and the immediate dislocation and desire to fall asleep Right Now, which is probably adaptive.

Some old ancestor of mine probably learned taht right in the middle of the crazy, they would run in circles and make noise and be loud and attract lions. But if they just went to sleep, their brain would reboot and they would not wake the real or proverbial lions.  I think now, when I am super stressed, this desire to take myself out of the game through immediate sleep must have roots that kept my line alive up until now. 

So the first rush of panic comes and then a wave of sadness comes too. Sadness that the panic is "back".  It is as if when it is gone for a while, I dream it possibly gone forever. And when it comes back, I wonder -- why????? how much? how often? how long will it stay activated?  and Anxiety is abusive. And I am scared of it. And that is the second layer.  My response to it is one of fear.

I like to feel like I am in control of.....? everything I guess.
And feeling / knowing / facing that I am not is scary. I wonder if I am competent and capable enough to be able to handle what comes.
I wonder if I can do what needs to be done or if I will freeze, or disassociate from my injured self so far that I will not be functional.

All this to say, I am in a momentarily but deeply sucky place right now.
I am trying to bring my curiosity but really I have impatience and fatigue and a sincere desire to never feel like this ever ever ever again.

thank you for listening.