I’ve been wondering what to write on my blog recently. As you can tell, I’m not really a very good blogger and should probably give the whole thing up. But then I’m also trying not to be a quitter so I’m going to press on.

The other day I was have a bit of a panic about having to get on a train and potentially stand up in a big group of people for an hour or so and I thought perhaps I should write about that. My anxiety that is, not my train journey.

I’ve had anxiety problems/issues/episodes (? whatever you want to call it anyway) for just under 5 years now. I’m not going to whinge about it on here, that wasn’t the plan. I just think that it affects an awful lot of people but it’s also embarrassing so people don’t really talk about it.

Anyway, a few years ago I started having ‘funny turns’ (at your grandma would call them) on the bus when I was going to Haxby to see Duncan. I assumed I had low blood pressure; I could feel myself going pale and clammy, then I felt like I was going to either pass out or throw up. Once or twice I had to get off the bus and wait for the next one. We’re not talking crowded buses either. I went on for a while assuming they were because I was too hot, or hungry, or tired or any number of other things. Then one day I was chatting to my mum about it and she (being a psychotherapist and well versed in such matters) asked if I’d thought about the possibility that they were panic/anxiety attacks?

I hadn’t. But from then on I started to see patterns and it turned out that’s what it was. Unfortunately it’s a real double-edged sword. I would see patterns, then anticipate a panic attack, then I’d have one because I’d been worrying about having one. And that’s the vicious circle that I’ve struggled with ever since. I don’t see myself as an anxious person, but these anxiety attacks turned me into one. For a while I avoided an awful lot of everyday situations; I’d end up having to leave the queue in Tesco because I thought I was going to faint, I avoided getting the bus and I never went to the bar if it was busy. It was a pain in the arse, but you kind of figure that it’s a lot less of a pain than passing out in the middle of a shop/bar/on a bus etc…

So that went on for a while and in the end I upset a few friends and risked losing some others. Because of course I didn’t actually tell them why I wasn’t coming out; I thought it sounded ridiculous, especially when my only symptoms were that feeling where you don’t feel like you’re in your body (yes, it’s a real one) and feeling like I couldn’t swallow properly (check out all the other exciting symptoms here). And in the end I decided that this was getting a bit ridiculous. I had (and still have) a lot of things that I wanted to do with my life and I was being crap and not doing any of them. So I decided to try to sort it out. But that is a story for another day, if you want to hear it. Probably tomorrow, or if not then the weekend.

To be continued…