Panic At The Disco: Anxiety

Until today it had been awhile since I remember us having an anxiety, or panic, attack.
It's worse when it's provoked by something unidentifiable.

Blood rushing in our ears, heart feels like it's racing, can barely breath, feeling panicky. Like we we're running. But we were just standing/sitting in one place.
And all we were doing was opening the refrigerator.

Obviously we can pinpoint some potential causes.

Having to move in a few weeks, with nowhere to move to (yet); being on the cusp of investing our life savings into a fixer-up property in the country (hopefully); recent significantly increased pain and trouble sleeping; we expected to be out of The Mother's house by now. We've been here nearly a year (give or take four months in England, and over one month on a roadtrip in the USA) and we're starting to feel unwelcome; then there's the world in general...(it's a madhouse)

I wasn't thinking about any of those things at the time though. (Maybe one of us was?) Just opening the fridge, looking for a snack.

I have very little understanding of general anxiety, even though we were diagnosed with the social anxiety form way back so far in the past it's amazing we're still breathing, (our social anxiety attacks feel different than the general panic/anxiety attack from today) and I have never really understood the sources (other than being in public places on the "wrong" day) of the various bouts of anxiety we experience (though we can identify which of us suffers the worst. Catherine (me) is the worst with social anxiety). But there I was...holding my chest, gripping the handle of the fridge...telling James breathlessly that I feel like I'm having a heart-attack or something.

So I sat down on the sofa. Posted about it to friends on Facebook where we got great advice from some kind people there, breathing, hugging ourselves, laying down. In the end we just slowly breathed, and stopped focusing on the feeling and it disappeared...but for those 15-20 minutes I wanted to lay on the floor and cry helplessly.

It's rather surprising we don't get those more often (maybe we do and I am not aware), but we have always had textbook perfect-to-low blood pressure and heart rate (what heart), which probably, maybe, helps somehow in the end.

Just another day. What's for dinner.

~ Catherine, F, et al