Taken from YC teen which is located HERE.
I stood in the darkness of my room, my bloody hands quivering to the same beat as my legs. Sweat rushed out of my pores as I looked around to see if any of my family members had witnessed my sinful act. I tilted my head to look down at the wooden floor where my mom’s pale white corpse was lying with multiple stab wounds and bloodstains all over her nightgown. I just stared with eyes wide open as the thought ran through my head over and over again: “Murderer! Murderer! Murderer!”
This wasn’t reality. I never killed anyone. Nor was it part of a script for some new horror film. It was all just a terrible dream. At least, that’s what everyone said to me, and I wanted to believe them. But as hard as I tried, my mind and body wouldn’t let go of this nightmare that I had in April 2010. It marked the start of a severe, two-week panic attack.
A panic attack (also called an anxiety attack) is a sudden, extreme fear that can be triggered by a specific, upsetting event or can happen without cause. It’s usually accompanied by sweating, trembling, and shortness of breath.
Nervous
I’ve been a somewhat nervous person for most of my life. I even experienced panic attacks before this one, but of a smaller magnitude. I had nights where I’d shake uncontrollably and not sleep, or get a feeling of electricity running up and down my body. On those occasions, I would read a book or exercise and I would feel better. But when I got my severe panic attack, reading or exercising didn’t come to me easily.
The week before it happened, I was my usual weird self. I cracked perverted jokes to my friends, hung out with my boyfriend, watched horror movies, and spent time imagining stories or drawings I should create. The only unusual circumstance was that school had been especially stressful; I was a senior, so the teachers were extra strict with grades and some classmates were acting up. I wasn’t getting much sleep, since I usually went to bed at midnight and had to wake up around 5:30 every morning. Questions and comments like “What college are you planning to go to?” and “Why are you going to that college? It sucks” had begun to crop up among my peers. It all gave me a headache, and to make matters worse, some evenings I was too busy doing homework to hang out with my friends or my boyfriend.
April 19 was a normal school day: I went to all my classes, paid attention as best I could, and came home with a headache. I went online in an effort to forget about school. I felt a bit drowsy, so I started to read The Almost Moon, a novel about a woman who murders her elderly mother, and just fell asleep. That’s when my personal hell started.
No Relief
I woke up suddenly in a cold sweat. I was shaking like a homeless man stuck in a blizzard. A panicked voice in my head was going, “Why did I have that dream? Am I going to do that in real life?”
I had no reason at all to hurt my mother; our relationship was great. We rarely fought and we talked every day. Yet after I awoke from the dream, my mind remained on that same thought like a broken clock. I kept remembering how some trivial dreams that I’d had in the past had come true—for example, I once dreamt I was playing soccer with friends, and we played soccer the next day in school. In my state of panic over this nightmare, my mind wouldn’t let go of the idea that these horrifying images might come true, too.
I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I thought that maybe I should eat, so I got out of bed. My legs felt like vibrating spaghetti. Each step felt worse. When I hit the kitchen, I poured milk on cereal and sat down at the kitchen table. I took a bite, but it made me feel sick to my stomach. I ran back to my bedroom.
I didn’t know what to do. I went on my computer, hoping it would calm me down. My sister and my dad called to me to clean the dishes, and I tried to control my shaking and act as normal as I could. I wanted to tell them what I was feeling; I usually have a good relationship with them, too. But now I was scared that they might send me to an asylum.
When night came around, my eyes were wide as the full moon. I tried everything from watching TV to exercising, but nothing helped me sleep; I spent the whole night awake.
What’s Wrong With Me?
I didn’t want to go to school the next morning, but I had to. I grabbed the pants that I’d worn the day before and a clean t-shirt. My body was still shaking and sweating and my thoughts remained the same. When I passed through my kitchen, I saw a knife on the table and my heart started to pound. I grabbed my bag and ran out of my house.
School didn’t make it better at all; I was still shaking and paid no attention in class. Two of my teachers must have noticed something, because they came up to me separately and asked, “Are you all right?” I just gave them a weak smile and said I was.
At home that evening I lay on my bed in the fetal position, terrified. It felt like the old me had rotted away and left only weak, shaken bones behind. I wanted to go back to normal.
I went on my computer to search around for information on what I was going through, and ended up thinking that I was suffering from schizophrenia. That made me freak out even more. I felt that if people found out what was going on I’d be ostracized for the rest of my life, so when my dad or my sister passed by and asked me if I was OK I called out, “I’m fine, I just have a little stomachache.”
Getting Help
For the rest of the week, I remained sick with anxiety. Eventually I couldn’t keep it to myself anymore and told my parents, my sister, and my boyfriend about the dream and what I was feeling. My mom told me, “It’s all right; it’s just a dream. Nothing happened to me; I’m still here.” But it wasn’t all right, because my memory of the dream was stuck in my head and wouldn’t budge. All of my family and my boyfriend said basically the same thing: “It was just a dream; calm down.” It felt like I was all alone with an out-of-control brain.
On Friday I felt better, and took a day off from school to hang out with my boyfriend and friends. That night I was able to go sleep. But the next day, the panic was back.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t getting any better and I wanted some help. On Monday, I went to my guidance counselor, who sent me to the school’s social worker. She asked me a series of questions: How did I feel? Did I take any medication? Drugs? Did I kill anyone?
Then she called my mom and asked her to come to the school. She asked my mom how things had been before that week, and my mom answered that I’d been normal. The social worker called us a cab and sent us to the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Medical Center for a mental evaluation. During my ride there I felt a sense of dread. I thought they would find out that I was some soon-to-be-crazy person and lock me up. I could see worry on my mom’s face, too.
We signed in at the emergency room and waited for the nurse to call us. As we waited, I overheard a boy in his early teens complaining about having pain from swallowing an object. I wished I was him. Getting your stomach cut open, getting a few stitches, and being on pain medication sounded like a piece of cake, compared with the prospect of having some serious mental disorder for the rest of your life.
Eventually a nurse came and showed us to the psych ward. I’d pictured padded rooms and people in straitjackets, but the psych ward wasn’t like that at all. The rooms looked like empty offices. The nurse bought us to one of them, took my bag, and gave me patient scrubs to change into.
Mental Pain
Eventually a doctor came to evaluate me. She asked if I knew where I was and what was happening. I don’t remember the other questions she asked me, but I remember thinking to myself, “She thinks I’m crazy.” That wasn’t the doctor’s diagnosis, however. Instead, she said I was suffering from anxiety and I should see a therapist.
The next day at school, the social worker made an appointment for me with a therapist who had an office two blocks from my school. I started meeting with him twice a week. I liked our meetings; he told me that to live in New York, you need to be a bit crazy, which made me feel better.
He also made me keep a journal to document how I felt every day, and gave me a referral to a psychiatrist (a medical doctor who treats problems of the mind), who prescribed me an anti-anxiety medicine called Celexa, and melatonin to help me sleep. The psychiatrist told me that the Celexa was going to take a while to kick in and that there could be side effects, like dry mouth and shaking.
Throughout that week I experienced the side effects, without any improvement in my state of mind. At the weekend we had to rush my dog to the vet because he was having trouble breathing and was drooling blood. When we got there, it was too late. My dog died in my sister’s arms. I started to cry—not only because I’d lost a friend of 11 years, but also because I was afraid his death would send me deeper into my panic attack, which still hadn’t subsided. I cried all day.
But before the day was over, the Celexa kicked in and I started to feel calmer. I was still upset about my dog, but I was able to sleep that night.
I Can Overcome It
I kept on taking Celexa and seeing my therapist. When I went to him, I’d tell him everything that was on my mind, especially any thought related to murder or death that had arisen since the last visit. He would give me ideas for different ways to think about what I was going through. When I felt hopeless, he had me repeat the phrase, “Whatever it is, I shall overcome it.” Whenever something horrible popped into my head, he told me to block it out by thinking of things I enjoyed.
It was also helpful just to vent to an adult who understood. Meanwhile, Celexa kept me calm and helped me pay attention in class. My mind still returned here and there to the same anxious thoughts, but I was able to push them out of my mind and think about other things.
However, my dad didn’t want me to be dependent on medication to solve my problems. One day after I’d been on it about six months, he took me to my psychiatrist and asked him to stop prescribing Celexa for me. The psychiatrist asked me if I would be OK without the medication, and I told him yes.
I was scared that my panic would come back, but I also didn’t want to be dependent on a pill. It took me days to gather the courage to get off of it, but I had to believe that I could survive without it, and I did. I was expecting to have some side effects when I came off it, but I didn’t. And I didn’t have a panic attack.
Today, it’s been almost a year and a half since my prolonged panic attack and I haven’t had one since. I’ve been enjoying my life free from that experience. Sometimes I get scared that I might have another panic attack, but I remember my therapist’s quote: “Whatever it is, I shall overcome it.” I feel stronger for overcoming my anxiety, even though I felt weak during my attack. I don’t want to go back to that state of mind again.
For more information on different types of anxiety disorder, coping with anxiety, and getting help to treat anxiety, visit the website of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America at adaa.org, or contact the Columbia University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders: anxietytreatmentnyc.org, 212-246-5740.
Filed under: Anxiety, Christian Counseling, Christianity, Mental Illness, Panic disorder
