This weekend was fall break — Mark was off from school on Thursday and Friday, so it was a long weekend together.
Last night I had a small panic attack.
As seems usual, the fear was unspecific — a sense of doom, of hopelessness, confusion, uncertainty, and just plain fear.
It was an opportunity to practice some skills.
I noticed that the fear was unspecific, and told myself that’s a sign that the fear is not worth being alarmed by, but just something to experience and let pass.
I breathed — worked on calming the physiological symptoms of anxiety instead of letting them escalate the fear in my mind.
I considered the suspicion that I must be missing something, that the fear must have something to tell me, that if only I could figure it out, I’d learn something important, and if I don’t figure it out, something terrible will happen. Or that maybe I need something and that something will turn out to be unavailable for some reason or other. I told myself that God is not about confusion, and if there is something I need to know, he will tell me more clearly than by vague unease. It’s not like I’m consciously ignoring anything or closing myself off to anything. I’m willing to listen — as far as I know, anyway. I also told myself that if there is something I need, there will also be a way to get it. Certainly I don’t need to get caught up in worrying about it being unavailable until it’s proven so.
A little while later I woke up, and after a few minutes, I suddenly remembered how afraid I’d been, and I smiled.
Today the meaninglessnesses and depression and anxiety have murmured here and there, and I am doing my best to trust they will pass and stay engaged with present reality.
I am also trying to not let my mood dictate my behavior. This is a relatively new idea for me (from DBT) — that there’s a big difference between pretending to be what you’re not, and acting one way despite feeling another. It’s actually possible to have a feeling, acknowledge it, fully experience it, and still act differently — to take a shower, get dressed, prepare and eat food despite being depressed and unmotivated and wanting to stay in bed, for example. Such action doesn’t have to mean denying or trying to transcend the feelings — it just means acting differently even in the midst of the feelings.
