Living and Panicking
Hi my name is Maggie, and I have panic attacks, but most of you probably know that by now.
A lot in my life has changed lately. In the past year, I graduated college, got a job, started traveling, and arguably most importantly started to recover from my debilitating anxiety for no one but myself.
Labelling mental health issues can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, everyone going through something has an entirely different experience, but with a few similar symptoms, so it is frustrating that they are all lumped together. On the other hand, it can help people recognize each other for what they are going through concisely. While it does not define me or my life or my choices, I have agoraphobia and OCD.
I've been working through both of these issues since I first started encountering them. I've done therapy, I take medicine every day, and I even started a mental health advocacy organization on my alma mater's campus to encourage others to find ways of conquering mental illness and mental health issues.
Despite all this work for the better part of 10 years, I've had my ups and downs, and there have been countless moments where the agony of chronic panic and anxiety has made me want to give up. But, there's something that always draws me back. As selfish as it sounds that thing is me.
According to my family, I'm a "life person." I seek joy and wonder and experience and connection in everything that I can possibly get my hands on. So, when I faced this gut-wrenching and paralyzing feeling that I was going to die multiple times of day, my anger towards it was enormous. It was after I turned around on my way towards a flight to London for fear I'd have a panic attack on the plane, that I realized I wanted to live my life on my terms.
Agoraphobia is the fear, and this is my definition, of not being able to leave a situation in which you may have a panic attack. Thus, the coping mechanism for this fear becomes, not entering those situations at all; this was me when I let the plane to London take off without me.
For someone with this fear, panic attacks feel like the moment in which you are about to fall off the face of the earth, and unless you're ready to face them, they can make you believe, truly believe, you are dying.
So, to me, agoraphobia became a fear of dying that was so strong that I was scared to live.
It was this past year when I realized that I was going to have to accept that fear. I did it in what seems like small steps like riding the commuter train I take to work every day by myself instead of with my friend. The train loves to get stuck, and if I'm having a panic attack while being left to my own devices, it can end up in tearful and frantic texts to my mom. But, I did it, and I did it again and again and again.
Each time I got on the train and stayed on it, the actual transportation part I was able to do and I didn't panic, but each time the doors of the train closed I felt this twinge in my chest of, "what if this time I do?" Eventually, that twinge got smaller and smaller, and I got bigger and bigger. It will never go away, but its place in my chest is different than it has ever been before.
I did other things too – drove on highways, flew on planes, ate foods that I had long feared, and overall made a choice myself to recover.
In the past ten years, I was continually working through my panic attacks and agoraphobia, but it was always with an end goal in mind like high school graduation, finishing college, getting a job. But, when there was no definitive goal insight I became the one who made every conscious choice to work and maybe its age, maybe its utter annoyance of this stupid disorder, or perhaps something greater than all of us, but I've made more progress in the last year than I have ever before.
There is a list on my wall that is not a bucket list but a list of what I want to accomplish and while there are many boxes yet to be checked the ticking of any feels like being given an extra moment to live.
