traveling

I keep trying to motivate myself to blog about the next chapter, but I think I’m going to have to accept the fact that CYEAT posts are going to be on hold until early to mid May. Because I can’t think about anything but the two week-long trips I am taking this month. So I’m going to write about that instead.

I mentioned in here a while back that my bosses want me to travel to Virginia for a week of training. It was originally supposed to be sometime last fall or winter, but it kept getting delayed. Now it’s finally happening, during the last week of this month.

Which is about the worst timing ever, because my wife and I also planned a week-long trip to NYC that starts at the end of this week and goes into next week. That trip alone was already stressing me out, and that’s going to be the easier one. The one where my wife is with me and we go at a slow pace and she makes sure I don’t get too overwhelmed.

No matter how carefully we navigate it, I know I will experience a lot of anxiety and it will really wear me out. And now I’m going to get back from that trip, have about a week and a half to relax and get back to homeostasis, and then have to leave for the training trip, which will be a thousand times harder. And I’m pretty sure I’ll be spending most of that in-between time obsessing over the second trip rather than relaxing. I already can’t stop obsessing about the second trip even though right now I should be preparing for the first one.

There are, I guess, three major concerns I keep going over:

- The actual traveling part. I hate flying. I hate all public transportation. We’re taking a train to NYC and that’s a little easier for me, but taking a train to Virginia could potentially take a full day (or night) and I don’t want that. So I figure I will suck it up and do the plane. But I have only flown alone once before, and it was in 2007. Pre-breakdown. I honestly have no memory of how I managed it. Everything seems so much harder now. So I will have to fly and navigate an airport, because of course there will be a layover, possibly more than one. Then once I get there, my boss has arranged that the hotel shuttle will take me back and forth to the work building. Screw that. I will probably rent my own car so I can have control over my coming and going. Oh, and also, as of right now, I can’t find a good flight connection, which may mean I will have to fly into an airport in a city a couple hours away and then figure out how to get to my destination from there. And I am not comfortable driving on the interstate. The only solution I can come up with so far is that my mother picks me up (and drops me off again at the end of the trip) because she lives nearby. But I’m not loving that idea either.

- Eating, drinking, sleeping. Any time I get really stressed out, I start doing all of these things less. This always happens to me on trips. I don’t feel well, so I don’t eat or drink as much. I get super dehydrated. My blood sugar is low all the time. I feel weak and shaky and sick and weird. Everything around me feels kind of surreal. But if I try to force myself to eat and drink more, that makes me feel nauseous, especially if I am trying to eat around other people or if I attempt to eat anything that isn’t completely bland. And it starts to feel almost physically impossible, since I have no appetite. After a day or so of that, I’m exhausted and it feels like an ordeal even to get out of bed. But I’ll have to get out of bed, go to work, focus on training, and socially interact with people. I’m thinking I will probably plan out every single thing I’m going to eat in advance and try to stick to that meal plan as much as possible, but I’m not sure how successful I will be.

- The social interaction. I’m not around people much anymore, and it’s honestly a huge relief most of the time, because I have a very strong desire to appear perfect to everyone around me combined with an inability to stop being horribly awkward. Which I think usually comes across as me being rude rather than scared (ignoring people, nervously laughing at things I shouldn’t laugh at, blank stares, sarcasm, and general stoicism). My boss has planned five socializing meals for us to attend. They all sound terrifying. It sounds like a few will involve large groups of people, including many people I have communicated with for several years but who have never met me face to face, so they will probably want to meet me face to face, and it’s too much to even think about. It is my goal to get out of every single one of those. Especially because three of them are lunches on training days, and if I go to those and am not able to eat, I don’t know how I will make it through the afternoons.

Also, I have no way of knowing how many panic attacks I’m going to have while I’m around my coworkers. It’s funny, because I used to work in the building with them, so it’s not like I haven’t dealt with that before. I have had anxiety attacks during one-on-one face-to-face meetings with my boss and been able to hide it. So it’s likely I’ll still be able to hide it pretty well. But part of me worries. I’m out of practice. And then of course there’s the fact that I don’t want to have anxiety attacks, whether I can hide them well or not, because they are miserable and further contribute to me feeling completely exhausted and out of it. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to avoid that. I’m guessing I will have them during the training sessions, when I feel most obligated to be composed and focused, when I know it would be bad for me to leave the room because that is after all what I’m there for. To try to learn something in the midst of all this insanity.

I probably should have fought harder to get out of this trip. I did try to get out of it, but it was a pathetic attempt, because I get too embarrassed to lay out exactly how bad it’s going to be. And I get scared thinking “am I really going to bail on something else? am I seriously going to be this person all my life?” I want to be able to do things. This particular thing feels way out of my reach, but I don’t know. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I’m imagining. I just have to do it. I have to do it, because it’s even harder to handle the thought of saying ‘no, absolutely not, you have no idea what this is going to do to me.’ And part of me worries I would end up getting fired.

I have internalized so much mental health stigma and it makes me feel guilty to even be saying some of this, because I believe people should push back more in these situations and advocate for themselves. I just feel like I can’t do it anymore. I have done it so many times and gotten so many horrible reactions. I had teachers in high school who literally made me cry because they were so mean to me for refusing to give class presentations, even though I told them I didn’t mind taking a zero for the assignment. Wouldn’t it be nice if the automatic reaction was to say ‘that’s fine, there are of course perfectly valid alternatives to presentations (or intense week-long out of state training sessions) and this doesn’t make you a lesser person at all‘? I think society is heading more in that direction, but it’s taking a long time.

forums

I haven't had another panic attack since that one at the grocery store last month, but my anxiety levels have still been all over the place. Some days have been perfectly fine, others not so good. I have been meditating and doing deep-breathing exercises more. I have been looking through my affirmation flashcards. Hopefully this is helping me even out, but I haven't noticed a significant change yet. That might be because I am still not doing these relaxation exercises consistently enough. I should be doing them every night, but right now it's more like twice a week.

Another change I made that I do think is really helping me is that I stopped going to emetophobia forums. Up until maybe a year or two ago, I never went to these forums. I mean, I can remember popping into them a handful of times during my teen years, but they bored me. I really had no interest in putting more effort into handling my phobia then. I felt like I did well enough. But when things got worse, I started visiting them, thinking they might be helpful.

It's been just the opposite for me. I feel like they have made me worse. And they were somewhat addicting too. I couldn't stop logging in for a while, reading everything, leaving comments with advice occasionally. I tried to avoid threads that looked like they might contain information I didn't want to have in my head. For example, I try not to read anything anyone posts anywhere ever about norovirus. I don't care if it's facts about it, helpful tips on avoiding it, how it's spread, good news about it, whatever. I know I have the potential to get so unbelievably obsessive about it. The information gets stuck in my head, and I find myself changing my behavior.

But it wasn't always easy to tell what might be in a thread, and I still kept coming across this negative information. I remember one night I had just eaten Pizza Hut for dinner. Then I logged into one of the forums, and the very first thing I saw was a thread titled something like "Pizza Hut food poisoning" or something like that. So I didn't even have to click on that one for it to make me anxious!

That is what annoys me so much about groups of people with emetophobia getting together. Inevitably, 90% of what is discussed will be things like that. People asking which foods or restaurants are best to avoid. People posting in a panic asking for someone to give them a safe/benign reason why they feel sick. I wish there was more discussion of how to deal with the anxiety/phobia itself. But I notice that when people bring up this point on the forums, they usually end up getting attacked by people who are "anti-recovery" I guess, that stress they would rather it be a "support" group than a "recovery" group. I find it odd. I think the best support is encouraging someone to recover. If someone had encouraged me to work on recovery when I was younger, I'm sure I would have ignored them, so yes, I agree that no one can/will recover before they're ready. But at the same time, during those years that I was technically "anti-recovery" I wasn't "pro-support" or at least not that kind of support that seems like a merry-go-round of scaring each other. I don't see how that helps anyone.

I have become very afraid of eating out at restaurants during the winter, and I know that is a direct consequence of hanging out on these forums and seeing other people constantly post about being worried about this. It's something I never thought about before. I have eaten out at restaurants year round my entire life, and I have never gotten sick from doing so. My method of eating out whenever I wanted to did no damage, and there was no need for anything to change. But I have changed and am now extremely reluctant to eat out anywhere until it's spring/summer again.

I feel frustrated with myself for letting myself be influenced like this. It seems I can't read the fears of other emetophobics on a regular basis without being affected by them. So I have stopped going to these forums, and now I'm hoping that as time passes these extra thoughts/fears I've acquired will drift out of my head again.

It's a little disappointing, because, first of all, it is exhilarating to be in contact with so many people who understand the way you think. And also, every so often, I would come across something that was uplifting or helpful. But it was so rare, and it's just not worth digging through all that negativity for those few positive gems. 

I think I'm much better off sticking with blogs. I've always found they tend to be more recovery-focused and positive, since they are more about sharing information than getting support. I've never seen a blogger post while having a panic attack and expect someone to immediately show up to talk them through it (maybe because bloggers know they're addressing a smaller audience). I really like that. I'm looking for less agitation in my life and more understanding of the fact that anxiety is really something you have to handle on your own. Not that I don't sometimes rely on my wife to calm me down, but I like to see those times as times where I have failed myself. Any time I can fix a situation on my own, I know I've just done something that is so much better for me in the long run.         

tired of panic attacks

I had a panic attack tonight during what was supposed to be a five minute trip to the grocery store. It was pretty shocking to me, and I don't really know why. There has been so much going on over the past month - the panic attack I had at the movies that I talked about in my last post, Thanksgiving, people visiting, holiday parties to attend, holiday gifts to buy, etc. I know I've been stressing more than usual, so it's not that surprising that this would happen.

Still, it seemed like it came out of nowhere. I left my house feeling absolutely fine. When I walked into the store, I noticed I was beginning to feel kind of weird and unwell, and I thought "well, that sucks, but oh well, I'll only be here about five minutes, no big deal." I only needed to get five things. I got the first item and was on my way to get the second when I started feeling what I interpreted as waves of nausea, although they might have been waves of panic. They were really intense, and after the third or fourth one, I was convinced I had gotten sick and was going to vomit in the store. Sometimes I think about how if this ever actually happened to me, I would have to explain to the people around me, "I know I should have noticed what was happening, but I have this phobia, so I try to ignore sick feelings" and how they wouldn't get it at all. Which is a terrible thought and only makes me more panicked, but whenever I get to that point where I really start to believe what's happening is real and not anxiety, it pops into my head.

Anyway, I immediately walked out of the store, leaving my basket with my one item in it on the floor somewhere along the way. I went back to the car and sat in it, trying to calm down enough to go back inside. I was determined not to leave. I sat there for probably ten to fifteen minutes, thinking things like, "you are going to go back inside. If you don't go back inside, I will be so pissed."

(By the way, word of advice: don't be as hard on yourself as I am. It's definitely not helpful.)

I wasn't feeling much better though, and I couldn't convince myself to get out of the car again. I finally gave up and drove back home. I took my temperature, even though I knew what the outcome would be - as usual, no fever, nothing wrong with me, all in my head. I knew because of how much better I felt as soon as I walked in the house. It restored my confidence, and I then drove back to the store and had the quick uneventful shopping trip I had originally been expecting.

Well, that's not entirely true. When I got in the checkout line, the person in front of me was buying a green pepper, and the cashier couldn't figure out how much it cost. The confusion went on for a while, and I was on edge and wanting to get out of there as soon as possible to avoid anything else bad happening. Not knowing exactly how much longer I was going to have to stand there, I experienced another wave of panic/nausea. But there was no way I could leave the store then without having people notice and question me, because I had already put my items on the belt. So I mustered up every bit of thought-control ability I have and willed myself not to think anything related to being trapped there or possibly being sick or anxiety or how much longer it would be. I stared at magazines and tried to clear my mind as much as possible. I wasn't entirely successful at doing so, but I kept myself calm enough to get through the next few minutes until I could leave.

As awful as it all was, I did feel very proud walking out of the store with my bags of food, almost deliriously victorious. It was like anxiety was an external opponent I had beaten, and I felt like laughing (in its face) or shouting "HA!" or something like that. "I got what I needed, what are you gonna do about it now?"

I'm tired of this though, really tired. It might be time to start doing daily meditation again, at least for a while.         

high-anxiety week

I am having a high-anxiety week, and it's been pretty unpleasant. Yesterday I went to a movie and had a panic attack during it. I wanted to get through it without leaving the theater, but it got to be more than I felt like I could handle. So I went to the bathroom and stood in a stall until I stopped shaking and feeling so "sick."

It was the movie itself that actually set off the attack. Since the events of 2010, I have had a hard time distancing myself from stories the way I used to be able to. Especially during times when my (baseline) anxiety is high for whatever reason. An emotionally charged scene of a movie (or part of a book) can then make my anxiety spike. Of course, that almost always manifests as feeling, or imagining I feel, nauseous.

I had also felt "sick"/anxious the day before the movie. Today was better, at least the morning. In the evening, I again felt "nauseous" and freaked out a little about it.

I hope this bad period ends soon. I think I must sometimes come across as the Pollyanna of emetophobia, because I try so hard to be positive/upbeat in this blog. In my experience, that's what helps the most - negativity leads to me feeling much worse. But that positivity doesn't always come right away. It takes effort, and sometimes I need a few days. Sometimes I don't even believe what I'm saying as I'm saying it, but it still helps to write it and have that positive viewpoint to go back to later.

I walked out of that movie so angry at myself and at the situation that I had to fight to keep from crying. I knew that by retreating to the bathroom temporarily, I had let the anxiety win a battle, and even though I still believe I am winning the overall war, I hated that.

So I am still pulling myself together right now, trying to get some perspective on this incident. I wish I could figure out a way to get back to having normal reactions to books/movies. It bothers me to be unable to tap into my emotions without the risk of them becoming out of control.

I will say, in the spirit of positivity, that I am sure this is just an off week and not a sign that I have stopped progressing or am getting worse. It also really drove home how well I have been doing, and I was reminded that it's been a long time since my anxiety problems led me to feelings of complete despair and hopelessness. Comparatively, a few days of frustration and self-criticism don't seem so bad.      

self-healing rituals

Most people have heard of the placebo effect. A person is given a fake cure for some ailment, but it actually does make them feel better, because they believe it will work. Usually the person receiving the placebo doesn't know it's a placebo. They think they are getting real medicine (or surgery).

But some studies have shown that placebos can work even on people who know they are taking a placebo. This article from NPR gives more information. The theory as to why this works is that taking the medicine or having the surgery creates a "self-healing ritual" - which is just another way of saying that you're taking action to fix the problem. Your mind is aware of that, and then both your mind and body "expect" that this action will have good results. So it does.

A.J. Jacobs talks about this effect in his book Drop Dead Healthy:

"You could view placebos as depressing, I suppose. So much of medicine is a sham. Your brain is a three-card monte dealer running cons on the rest of your body. But I don't see it that way. I find placebos uplifting and exhilarating. It means that taking action - no matter what that action is - might help you feel better. The key is just to get your aching butt off the couch."

I'm not saying placebos are all you ever need to be healthy. When it comes to more serious illnesses, actual medicine would be necessary (although optimism - believing you will get better - is always a good thing). But for something like emetophobia, or any other kind of health anxiety, or even problems like IBS or chronic pain syndrome (that have been shown to improve using psychological treatment), I think self-healing rituals are extremely important.

I remember that when I started having those horrible panic attacks two years ago, I felt anxious almost constantly. It was like my brain was full of it, like I was always on the verge of hysteria - except when:

• I went to the hospital. On the drive there, in the waiting room, explaining how I felt to various doctors. I felt calmer this entire time - still not normal, but much better. I trusted that they would make me feel better. (It's been said that even seeing the usual attire of a doctor creates a placebo effect.)
• I went to the doctor to discuss trying psychiatric medication.
• I went to the pharmacy to pick up the medication. This one I remember the most. Even now, whenever I drive by that particular pharmacy, I feel my spirits lift a little, remembering how it was a beacon of hope for me at that moment. Even though I hated the medication and didn't continue taking it, I was so relieved at that time to have it as an option. I can see why many people believe medication is a quick fix. I told myself over and over that this wasn't true, but your desperation overshadows what you know.

Once all this was behind me, I realized there would be no quick fix, and I would need to keep working very hard on my own. I kept creating my own self-healing rituals: meditating every day for a certain amount of time, writing out affirmations over and over in a little notebook, and (my favorite, in terms of making me feel more hopeful) flipping through The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook and reminding myself that there were more things to try if what I was doing didn't work - that there was even the possibility that combining certain approaches would work best, which meant there were almost unlimited options.

So I am in total agreement with A.J. Jacobs when he says that taking any action can help - and that this concept is extremely uplifting. Anxiety can feel like it is paralyzing you, but taking steps, even small steps, to conquer it can be a powerful "weapon" in itself.

signs of emetophobia as a child

I haven't ever known someone else with emetophobia in my "real life" (offline). I did have a strange indirect encounter with it several years ago when I happened to hear one of my bosses talking on the phone about her seven year old niece being hospitalized for refusing to eat while sick, because she was terrified of vomiting.

I don't really like telling people about my phobia in detail, and it especially seemed weird to tell my boss, but after hearing that, I couldn't resist emailing her and attaching some websites with more information. She thanked me for the information and said she would pass it on to the girl's mother. We never talked about it after that (which was a relief to me), so I don't know what happened with the girl, but I hope that if she did have the phobia, she got help for it early on. I know from experience that it only gets worse and more ingrained as you get older - you keep developing more and more avoidance behaviors.

I can think of so many obvious red flags from when I was younger that I'm sometimes shocked my family missed them:

• The biggest one, of course, being that whenever someone around me vomited, I would become upset or panicked. When I was very young, this usually bordered on hysteria. I can remember one time in a restaurant where I catapulted over a chair and ran out of the building to escape (and refused to go back in). As I got older, I tried to hide the response more, but I still would usually walk away quickly, avoid looking at the person, and then get extremely upset if I had to be in a confined space with them. I would try not to breathe or would bury my face in something thinking that might protect me from the germs. I would cry or sulk. Sometimes I would get really angry and be hostile to everyone around me.
• There was a time period (not sure how long it lasted) where I decided it was not safe to touch my food at all and would lift my plate or bowl to my mouth and eat like an animal.
• If anyone in the house was sick, I stayed in my room as much as possible. I tried to eat very little. I would sneak "safe food" into my room like individually wrapped packs of crackers. I was afraid to use the bathroom where someone had vomited, which usually meant I would start using my parents' bathroom, because the sick person was almost always one of my sisters.
• I can remember at least a couple freak-outs over me getting a little food stuck in my throat. It wasn't even enough to make me cough, but I still feared it meant I was choking, and that could lead to vomiting. One day my mom explained to me that I wouldn't be able to breathe or talk if I was choking, so then those panics stopped.
• I became extremely opposed to taking vacations with my family, because someone would usually get sick on them. When I vomited last, I was on one of these vacations. I also once had to spend eight hours in a car with my family after one of my sisters had almost vomited that morning.
• I would miss school because of my stomach hurting. From second to fourth grade, this happened rarely, about twice a year. In fifth grade, I had a period of about two weeks where I went home or stayed home every day. Each time I tried to go back, my stomach would hurt again as soon as I got into class, and I would have to leave. Since I was perfectly healthy, people were all over me asking what was "really" wrong, but I didn't know what to tell them, because I had no knowledge of anxiety at that point. In the years after that, I still sometimes went home "sick" because of panicking about something I imagined I felt, but never that many days in a row. I would say it was probably about seven days a year, spread out.

Those are all the signs I see looking back, and I imagine they'd be similar for any child developing this phobia. Not that I'm in a position to give parenting advice, but I would hope that any parent who saw their child exhibiting such irrational and anxious behavior would sit down with them and try to talk to them about it. And then if it does turn out that they fear vomiting, get them some counseling. I'm sure it's much easier to get something like this under control at a young age, maybe even cure it completely.     

irrationality, exhibit A

This morning while I was still sleeping (about twenty minutes before my alarm was set to go off), one of the neighbor's kids started coughing right outside the window, and it woke me up. I wasn't alarmed at first, but it kept going on and then started sounding more like choking and gagging. I pulled the covers up over my head, covered my ears, and started humming really loud. I could still sort of hear it in the background, so I hummed until I wasn't catching snatches of it anymore. I have no idea if anything even happened or if the kid just coughed for a while, but I've still had about a thousand worries today related to this 15-20 second event, starting with the ridiculous idea that the germs might come through the wall or window. Almost every real or far-fetched way illness could reach me is running through my mind. I've been doing so well this winter, not obsessing over contamination, and I'm finding it really annoying. I guess I always hope the thoughts are gone, but really it more seems like they just settle down temporarily. Like the thoughts are leaves and anxiety is a wind. The wind's picked up again, so the leaves are flying around all over the place. It's such a pain. Even if the kid did actually get sick, I know I have no more reason to think and worry about this than I do on any other day, days when other kids in other places might be getting sick without me there to see or hear it. It's just been a while since any of my senses have been exposed to it. If it even happened!

And the tune I hummed to myself was pitiful. In my fear, I couldn't think of one specific song to commit to, so what I came up with barely qualified as musical at all. It got me thinking about how maybe I should pick a song now to use if this ever happens again, which then got me thinking about the movie My Girl. Remember Vada and her "do wah diddy" meltdowns? Maybe I'll just steal hers, it's a pretty good one.

Joking, by the way. Believing I'll be able to handle the next situation is probably a better idea than picking a "panic song."

vacation update

I'm still on vacation. I have had Internet access but up until now have been either too busy or too overwhelmed to even think about what to write here. I'd love to make this entry have a coherent message, but I'm guessing it's going to be more of a blow-by-blow recounting of events. I haven't gotten the best sleep this week.

The first two days were the traveling days. We drove for six or seven hours each day. We got lost twice, once around NYC, once around Philadelphia. I managed my anxiety pretty well while in the car, except for the fact that I hardly ate or drank, because I felt "nauseous" a lot of the time. It was the first nights in the two different hotels that really threw me. It took hours of reassurance from my wife (that I wasn't going to throw up, go crazy, die, or always be this way) before I felt okay enough to get any sleep.

As is usually the case, two days of bad sleep and inadequate eating/drinking led to me feeling horrible. When I woke up Tuesday morning, I felt slightly less anxious but couldn't get up and walk around without feeling nauseous and dizzy. I decided I needed to cancel all my plans for that day and just spent the day in the hotel room forcing myself to eat and drink as much as possible. It was upsetting / frustrating, but necessary. Sometimes the hardest thing about all this is having to accept that I can't do whatever I want whenever I want. I get jealous of other people who can keep pushing themselves without taking a break, who could have packed a million activities and social interactions into a vacation this long. Sometimes I have to work within my limits, and for now, sometimes that includes missing out on things I was really looking forward to. But I'm sure that won't be the case forever.

I did visit my family briefly that night, because I thought I might get a guilt trip if I didn't make it to their house within 24 hours of arriving in the city. That went well, no anxiety attack there, so I knew I was heading back in the direction of normal.

The next day, finally, was like actually being on vacation instead of in hell. I felt almost 100% better physically. First thing in the morning, I went back over to my parents' house, because now my older sister was there with my 15-month-old nephew. I got to meet him for the first time. He wasn't sick at all. I still worried he might throw up on me whenever he coughed, but he didn't. I spent a couple hours with him, and we played with all his toys together. He is adorable, and I love him so much. Spending that time with him really cheered me up.

I also went to the company I work for and saw all the coworkers I haven't seen in two years, which was awesome. I love them all too and have missed actually being around them. My anxiety got really high again though. I think it was partially because I'm not used to being around so many people who know me and are all looking at me, and partially because I knew some of them had been sick recently. I ended up spending a few minutes hiding in the bathroom until I didn't feel so nauseous and shaky. I didn't even really care though. I was so happy to be there that I couldn't muster up the usual annoyance I feel at myself. Seeing them plus seeing my nephew made me feel certain that this trip was a good idea, that it was all worth it, even though it has been challenging. Besides, I'm almost positive I'm not going to get sick. I took Emergen-C for a few days before we left, I take a regular multivitamin every day, and I'm generally very physically healthy and have a great immune system.

The afternoon was a lot of fun too. I hung out in the hotel room with my wife and an old friend of ours from high school. I went to see my grandmother, who is the sweetest woman in the world. I don't think I know anyone who knows how to love people as unconditionally as she does. In the evening, I went back to my parents' again to hang out for a while. Despite doing all these different things, I managed to eat well the entire day!

Today I'm "embracing" my limits again. Both my family and my wife's family are having Thanksgiving meals / gatherings, but I decided not to go to either. I really wanted to go to the one with my wife's family, because I haven't gotten to see my sister-in-law or mother-in-law very much while here. But both gatherings are in another city, and I know a long drive, lots of people, and pressure to eat is likely going to result in me feeling "nauseous" for hours. I know I could handle it, but I really don't feel like forcing myself to get through something else. So I'm hanging out in the hotel for most of the day and seeing my family one more time tonight after they get back from their party. We're leaving early tomorrow morning, and possibly these last two days of driving will be just as bad as the first two days, so I'm sure it's a good idea to have a "chill day" before that.

This trip has really driven home the fact that there is a lot more work I need to do in order to get to the point where I can function the way I want to. I'm definitely going to be recommitting to recovery hardcore when we get home. Less thinking about and resenting my anxiety all the time and more actually doing the things that will help.

Oh, but the good news is that I didn't take any anti-nausea, anti-emetic, or anti-anxiety medicine on this trip. I either talked to my wife or used word searches and crosswords, my emWave, and affirmations to calm down. I'm really proud of that, and of how well I managed to eat overall despite feeling "sick" for hours every day. I suppose I can go as far as to say that this trip has been a good representation of the "emetophobia shmemetophobia" mentality. Not everything went perfectly, but I bounced back like a badass.

celebrating progress

I am usually hard on myself. I think all the time about things I do that I shouldn't be doing, things I avoid that I shouldn't be avoiding, etc. I try to pin down every single way that I am failing to function as a "normal" person due to anxiety so that I can fix it all. I'm not doing that today.

One year ago today, I was in the hospital for almost the entire day because of panic attacks. I knew that was what was happening; I've had anxiety my whole life, so I was familiar with the symptoms. But this was different than anything I had experienced, panic attacks that were hitting me from out of nowhere - while I was sitting safely at home - and lasting for hours. I really thought I had reached the point where I was going to lose my sanity. I couldn't stop thinking about those brief biographies that are written about authors like Poe or Plath or Hemingway, the kind that paint them as people who were doomed all along to a life of insanity, and it was just a matter of waiting for that final blow, the last nervous breakdown or institutionalization.

The panic attacks didn't start from an emetophobic place, but of course they ended up there. Before I even went to the hospital, I had gotten to the point where I wasn't eating much, because I was so overwhelmed. Then that turned into (what felt like) an inability to eat anything, which lasted for about two weeks. I did eat during this time, but only because of my wife. She would bring me something and insist that I eat it. I never once felt aware of being hungry, and everything I put in my mouth, including water, made me feel so "nauseous" that I was terrified of swallowing. I remember her bringing me a small bowl of dry Cheerios one morning, and after one or two bites I started sobbing, because it felt impossible to eat the entire bowl. I was scared I would never want to eat again and couldn't imagine a lifetime of forcing myself to do it every day.

I know the anxiety set this off, and taking Ativan one day, attempting Lexapro another day, and then trying Cymbalta on another, all on a practically empty stomach, can't have helped the situation. Especially when it was my first time ever taking psychiatric medication (I didn't end up sticking with any of them). But I think what caused it to last for so long was my own inaction. I was clinging to my long-held belief that 'not eating is the best defense against feeling bad,' even though I felt absolutely horrible, and it was clear that not eating was perpetuating that.

But since I'm celebrating progress here, I'm not going to talk about how I should have handled that better and could have gotten myself accustomed to food again much faster. I'm going to talk about how I did handle it better the second time around, because about two months ago, this happened to me again. I had a few panic attacks, and once again, I felt like I couldn't eat.

I'm really glad this second bad period happened. At first, it shook me up and made me feel that in spite of all my hard work, I hadn't gotten anywhere in the past ten months. But it became obvious, from the way things played out, that I had changed. There was no hospital trip. Instead of missing about five days of work, I only missed two. I still had some Ativan, but I didn't end up taking any. I increased my focus on affirmations and practiced breathing / visualization exercises. Most importantly, I made it one of my top goals to eat as much as possible. I still wasn't consuming anywhere near the amount I should have been, but I was at least having enough every day so that I didn't get into that emetophobic cycle where it just gets worse and worse: hunger = nausea = don't eat = more intense hunger = more intense nausea = still don't eat, etc.

I was back to eating normally within a week, and it never got so bad that I was crying over a meal. I was able to drink water the whole time. Plus whenever I did eat, I actually thought about what would be the best choice, given that I was somewhat malnourished and might not be able to eat a sufficient amount. I tried to choose what had protein and actual substance, versus a year ago when I only went for "safe" carbs like crackers, toast, cereal.

So looking back over this entire year now, I feel like I've come so far. It's strange even to remember being in the hospital and how I was desperate for them to send me home with some drug, because I figured it was all over for me, and that was the only way I might possibly be able to live a normal life again. It's incredible to know that when these bad anxiety periods happen, I don't have to just fall into that state of helplessness and passivity. I have some control and can do things to reduce both the level of anxiety and the length of time I feel that way. I've been trying to convince myself of this for the past year, and I am finally at the point where I believe it most of the time. Now I just have to figure out how I can prevent these bad periods from happening in the first place.