Not until you start experiencing it. Which I have the last couple years. This morning I had a full-on panic attack. It started with waking up earlier than I thought. I got a glass of water and tried going back to bed. Then...
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I couldn't sleep. My heart started racing. To the point it was going to leap out of my fucking chest. Sweating. Crying. Nausea. Every single thing in my life was wrong, and will go wrong. Something horrible was going to happen. Or happening now.
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What triggered it? Easy. I have lunch plans today and I still feel kind of full. Seriously, that's it. This boring, insipid, completely normal life detail sent my stupid body into a system-wide panic. And sometimes it takes NOTHING.
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That's the nature of these things. Traumas, even traumas of your own creation, just throw a wrench into your operating system. They fuck up a perfectly normal functioning thing. And some people have this happen since birth. They only know that reality.
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And to admit "i sometimes don't feel like a functioning person," to a society that functions very, very differently, is fucking terrifying. The shame of f eeling different and letting people down and being a bother on top of the horrible feeling itself.
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I understand wanting to hide the bad moments of mental health issues. People sure talk about empathy, but they have no idea what to do with it. And it is terrifying to be seen as "unreliable" that people often go through life wage a secret battle amidst the functioning.
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So I write words about it. It's all I know how to do, really. To name it. Recognize it. And remove its overwhelming unknowability. But ultimately, all I have is insane, outrageous, incalculable empathy for the people who experience it. <3
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Thanks for taking about it, Hulk. Honestly your body acts on its own, even if nothing is wrong and some mornings are worse than others. It aches so much.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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All of this. One incident I remember is the weekend I had a panic attack. Any time I tried to go to sleep, it was like I couldn't breathe. I went for 3 days without adequate sleep and was horrified because I didn't know what was going on.
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Then I learned what they were from someone I knew who also told me how to deal with them. All it took was focusing on my breathing. I've had anxiety for quite some time and it wasn't until recent years that I learned to adequately deal with it.
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