I haven’t talked about meds on this blog for some time. And it’s been an intentional choice.

It’s been a whopping 6 years since I took my last shard of Paxil. (Yes, shard — in my final weeks of tapering off that horrific SSRI, I relied on miniscule shards of Paxil to jury-rig an appropriate dose. Often, those shards would simply pulverize under the pressure of my plastic pill-splitting device. White Paxil powder? You bet. Everywhere. On my desk, on my jeans, and on my hands. I’m sure I looked like a coke addict.)

Paxil was a difficult drug for me for many reasons. First, it was expensive. My doctor had prescribed me the controlled-release version, which was still under patent protection at the time, so of course it was pricey (think $120/month without insurance). Kinda tough for a college gal making $6/hour working 15 hours a week fixing printer jams in the college computer labs.

Second, it did its job so well that I didn’t even consider any type of psychotherapy. It stopped the panic attacks, so I mistakenly thought that my job as a patient was done. Not so.

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Every spring, I fill my birdfeeder to the brim with seeds. We get cardinals and chickadees and titmice.

They’re messy buggers, though, and they fling (most of) the seed down from the feeder into the potted flower plants on my apartment deck. Left alone, those seeds grow – into delicate-looking grassy tufts with a complex root system so badass and tough that it’s a struggle to yank them out.

THE WEIGHT OF THE 30-YEAR MORTGAGE

My husband and I were driving home to our apartment from his parents’ house today. We were mindlessly looking at the houses that flanked the curvy country road.

“You know,” my husband said, “whatever house we end up buying…I mean, we might only be there for five years or so. If there’s no work left in my industry, we’d have no choice but to move out of the area.”

Cue the minor breakdown.

It went something like this:

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Every spring, I start refilling the bird feeder on my back deck with seeds.

As the birds (and, ugh, squirrels) flit around during their meal, they accidentally scatter seeds everywhere. They fall down onto the grass, onto my deck, and occasionally, into some of my potted plants.

Birds are messy. (I should know; I own a parrot who enjoys whipping food – from seeds to fresh veggies – right out of his cage and onto my living room carpet.)

Thanks, birds.

BIRDSEED WEEDS

But this post isn’t about birds. It’s about what happens to the outdoor bird seed when it lands into the fertile soil that surrounds my potted plants.

And, in fact, this post isn’t even about that.

But humor me for a moment: the seeds fall. They land in the soil. And, frankly, I don’t know enough about cheap outdoor bird food to visually distinguish between the types of seeds.

But I do know this: when they fall into dirt, they grow into something green that resembles crab grass. A short, green, stocky stem emerges from the soil surrounding my marigolds or my tomato plants.

And I pluck them. To me, they’re weeds. Birdseed weeds.

Here’s the thing about pulling out these weeds: above the soil, they’re small. They look delicate and easily pluck-able.

But when I grab one and yank at it?

I unearth a complex and gnarly root system about five times as large as the weed itself.

And now, to the real topic of this post: anxiety and its hidden depth.

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(If you missed the first three parts of this story, click here, then here , and then here.)

The scene: a small road off of a two-lane state highway in the woods. The cell phone coverage: first none, then a single bar. My panic state: full blown.

I was laying down in my car, following the EMT-in-training’s instructions to avoid sitting up or moving around, and I was scared nearly to death. I shook, I gasped for air, and I palpitated.

I hated every single second that slowly and dreadfully crawled by. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t even conjure up the energy or the clarity of mind to reach for my Ten Rules for Coping With Panic worksheet that lives in my wallet. I was in the middle of nowhere, I was stuck, and I couldn’t escape without help. Not only was I about to receive medical help, but I’d had to call my husband and ask him to drive 40 miles to be with me.

Ugh. Failure.

The word kept repeating in my head: failure failure failure.

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(If you missed the first two chunks of this story, click here first and here second.)

This is the story of (one of) the worst panic attacks of my life. It happened in the middle of nowhere on a country road, geographically equidistant between my parents’ house and my own apartment. Thirty-five miles both east and west of the closest “safe” place, and I felt both physically and mentally unable to complete the drive in either direction.

I pulled back onto Schoolhouse Road after trying (and failing) to backtrack to the state park parking lot where I’d last had cell reception. I couldn’t do it — I felt lightheaded, the trees and the road and the sky felt cartoonish, and my body was uncontrollably shaking.

I parked on the road between two houses, reclined my seat, and waited. And waited and waited and waited. I periodically checked my phone for service as I tried (unsuccessfully) to quell my symptoms. I managed to find a Xanax in my jacket pocket. I swallowed it with water and, for about a minute, felt a mild improvement thanks to the placebo effect.

ARE YOU OKAY?

Some young kid in a giant white pickup truck rolled up to my window and asked me if I was okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m just waiting for something. Thanks for checking.”

He drove off. Had I just missed my only opportunity to get help? My panic level increased.

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If you’re too ill to work, how can you wrestle a shark?

That’s the question that Paul Marshallsea’s employer asked after seeing footage of the Welsh man dragging a shark away from swimmers while on vacation in Australia.

According to the BBC, Marshallsea and his wife were both visiting some friends in Australia when a shark was spotted in the water during a beachside barbeque:

Mr Marshallsea ran into the sea where he was filmed dragging the 6ft-long (1.8m) dusky whaler shark into deeper water.

The charity’s former project co-ordinator, said: “If I hadn’t gone in to save the kids on that beach that day my wife and I would still have a job.”

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(If you missed the first half of this story, click here first.)

So, there I was: holding my cell phone and sitting in the driver’s seat of my car on a small side road in the woods with no reception.

Yeah.

AM I GOING TO DIE?

I was shaking like a leaf and I barely had any control over my limbs. What should I do next? I tried to think, but only one thought kept breaking through into my consciousness: you are going to die. You are going to die. You are going to die.

First, because of how lightheaded I felt, I instinctively tugged at the lever that reclines the driver’s seat. Wouldn’t laying back — and thus increasing bloodflow to the head — prevent me from passing out? Yeah, that sounded good. It sounded like a good idea…

…for about three seconds, that is. It sounded like a good idea until the very fact that I was lying down in my car made me all the more aware that I was having a terrible panic attack. It’s superstition, I guess: My panic resume boasts some real doozies, many of which involve either driving or being a passenger in a car — and for the worst of those attacks, I laid back in the seat to keep that light-headed feeling at bay.

The very fact that I was reclining reminded me of other panic attacks, which, in turn, made my panic worse.

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The title alone tells the story…right?

But allow me to fill in the gaps and explain why, over the past week, I’ve been doing so much mental hopscotch over this incident.

Panic disorder sure has its ups and its downs. And sometimes — and this is the part that’s incredibly confusing and frustrating to both sufferers and their loved ones alike — those ups and downs are back-to-back events.

Case in point: last Monday, I had a huge “win”. I drove 60 miles (by myself!) from my apartment to my parents’ house…AT NIGHT. IN THE DAMN DARK.

WITHOUT PANICKING.

(This is crucial, people. Absolutely crucial. It’s been forever since I’ve done something of that magnitude in the face of so many triggers [driving, driving at night, being alone while driving, and driving where cell reception is poor].  It’s the kind of thing, really, that filled me with so much hope.)

Then, more small wins: I attended a funeral service for a family friend on Tuesday (without panicking!) and joined everyone for lunch afterward (without panicking!). And, afterward, I spent the afternoon and evening with my dad — I love him to pieces, of course, but we tend to butt heads sometimes — and my anxiety level remained low for the entire time. Low low low. Like, I-feel-like-I’ve-taken-Xanax-without-taking-Xanax low.

I was pleased with myself. And with my progress.

…AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Then, enter Wednesday morning.

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(Note: the following is a guest post by Justin Matheson, a fellow anxiety sufferer and blogger over at Anxiety Really Sucks!.)

I had my first panic attack about a year and a half ago, and it was the scariest moment of my life. Knowledge from undergraduate courses in abnormal psychology helped me to recognize what was going on fairly quickly. However, that recognition afforded me little comfort. I’d heard all about the most common symptoms of panic attacks: accelerated heart rate, sweating, trembling, hyperventilation. I had all of these – but that wasn’t what was troubling me most. It was the feeling of detachment, the feeling of pulling away from the world around me, that really frightened me.

As I stood in the Walmart parking lot, a smothering feeling of unreality clouded my mind. Thoughts raced through my head: what is going on? Am I going crazy? Am I dying? Is this a nightmare? That was my first experience with dissociation.

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Awhile back, I wrote about how nervous I was to speak at my local TEDx event in Williamsport, PA.

I was pretty scared. Would I get lightheaded? Would I pass out? What if I couldn’t remember anything I wanted to talk about?

I wanted to talk about panic attacks. I wanted to talk about how hard it was to work in a call center while dealing with panic disorder. I wanted to talk about those dreadful “inspirational” posters on workplace walls and I wanted to talk about ducks in wintertime and mastery and autonomy and purpose and — let me catch my breath — motivation.

The theme? Breakthrough. I wanted to re-frame a breakdown into a breakthrough.

If you’ll pardon my cliché, everything went better than expected. I hope you’ll watch my talk to see exactly how an otherwise panicky gal can compose herself for this once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity:

And I didn’t even need the chair.