Personal experience: Anxiety, panic attacks, problem solving and the likes...

Have you ever experienced bursting into tears without any valid reason?
Have you ever felt like the whole world is moving so fast and you have to rush just to keep up?
Have you ever felt like crying, laughing and being angry at the same time?
Have you ever felt like your throat is tightening and you're not getting air in the lungs?

Except for the last one, I have felt like this almost all my life, the earliest recollection of such experience went back as early as when I was 13... puberty hit early for me. Didn't know if it made a difference, but I guess I do have a problem with my endocrine system. I used to experience this adrenaline rush almost on a regular basis, sometimes the sound of the pump from a fumigating sprayer triggers a series of feeling like the whole world is going so fast, like watching a movie at 2x the normal speed. I get nervous pretty easily you might say. It was so common I never gave it much thought, I almost always reacted to the adrenaline rush. Sometimes I enjoyed it because that meant my homework got finished twice as fast too. The downside of it though, I was easily burned out, wasted. My parents didn't understand why I needed to sleep so much, I was always labeled the 'lazy one'.

I broke down, few days before 2015. I sat watching TV one evening, then I felt out of breath. I checked for chest pain (no heart attack), hand numbness (none), nothing, I just couldn't breathe... I had that experience once, many years ago and it freaked me out. I stood up, walked around, jumped, hopped just to distract myself. After about a half hour, I calmed down and the feeling went away. Maybe I was nervous, that's all. Then the next day at work, I made myself a cup of tea, while sipping the hot tea, that breathlessness came back. I got up and walked it off. After a while, I was alright, luckily I got to work early. Few hours later, it happened again... I grabbed a bag and breathed into it, didn't work. I went out of my office and paced along the corridor until I caught my breath again. The receptionist later told me I looked like some lunatic, pacing the corridor, like I was waiting to kill someone haha. By lunch hour, I had 3 attacks... I survived lunch. By 4pm, I was too nervous to work, I told my boss I was leaving early to go to the doctor.

And I did. The doctor gave no explanation and suggested nebulizer, I took it, I got my breath back and I went home. The next morning I was back at the doctor for another doze... The third day I had a few more attacks, I was jittery, nervous and on the verge of breaking down. I was in panic the whole time. Finally I got off work early and went to my usual doctor, I was in tears, sobbing, full-scale break down. He calmed me down so he could run some tests, then he asked if I was breathless first then the panic, or panic first then the breathlessness. I didn't remember. So he gave me some Xanax and an inhaler. Preliminary diagnosis was stress-related anxiety attack and/or asthma. The pills and inhaler became my 'shield' because no more attacks after that. I only took one pill, and quite many puffs on the inhaler, but having them around calmed me.

Few days after that, I dropped that bag of pills. I was in tears the next day, at the doctor's clinic, panicking. The doctor gave me more pills (more than previously prescribed). I asked him what next? Was I crazy? He smiled and told me to finish the pills first, then go back to him and take it from there. I never took those pills either, I just felt 'safe' having them around. But I relied heavily on the inhaler, I was still feeling nervous all the time. I wasn't sleeping well. Blocked nose triggered my anxiety attack, when I cried, my nose were blocked, my ears felt clogged and that felt horrible. I didn't want to rely on medication. I was turning to the Internet for ways to calm anxiety and all self-help stuff I could find online.

Until a friend posted something on Facebook, she was a life-coach, motivator of some sort. I spoke to her briefly and that night, I slept well. I knew she could help me. I engaged her service for help. She had also been through anxiety attacks herself. Her words resonated, they made sense. I didn't tell her what I was going through, she told me what I was going through (no, she's not a fortune teller) and they were spot-on. She explained why I was feeling different emotions all at once. I told her my first major breakdown were black clouds on the sky (it was cloudy and about to rain) and I broke down and cried, I couldn't stop. She said that was because my brain could not process the image and it didn't make sense anymore. That was how I felt... it's like my brains were clogged. She introduced EFT tapping techniques to me, you could YouTube or Google it, lots of examples and guides on how to do it. She introduced Human Design, which she told me of my design. Everything seemed to fall into place, everything made sense finally. I was tapping the emotions from everyone around me and tagged each of my own experiences to the emotions, then amplified them. Finally the system crashed and I couldn't process any emotions, hence the panic attacks. With her suggestions, I began to observe the emotions I felt and be reminded they weren't my own. I began to see these 'emotions' as a solid body. I was able to identify the source, observe how I felt them, let them pass through me and leave my body. I learned not to tag my own experience to any emotions, which was hard at first, especially happiness are addictive, but then so were the negative emotions. I never experienced any anxiety attacks after that, not even the little panicky feeling when my nose was blocked. Although cat fur still triggered my asthma, nothing else happened. I felt calm for a long time afterwards. As long as I was aware of the emotions around me, I was in control. I read that anxiety happens when our mind felt like we were losing control. I learned that the mind need not be in control all the time, in fact, I'm learning to let my body be in control now.

SO... what I experienced after the coaching session? I began to become more aware of the emotions of people around me. I felt the excitement of a friend when she was getting texts from a girl she liked. I cried the same time my friend did when her grandfather died (I didn't know we cried the same time until after she told me). I was able to tap into people's emotions, not without permission. I had come in contact with people who are pleasant, smiling and all but I could not feel their emotions... they had their guards up for whatever reason of their own. I finally understood I need not feel anxious when things are out of my control. I learn to listen to my own body and ignore the 'ego' playing in my mind. There are so much more to learn in Human Design, I have no knowledge to talk about it, but if you want to know more, you can find out more on Google. Just type Jovian Archive, or Ra Uru Hu, or just Human Design.

If the problems weren't too serious, I usually do my own problem solving. Of course, from time to time, too many things happen all at once and that leave us feeling overwhelmed. It is easy to be entangled in the web of helplessness. It may be hard to keep a clear mind with all the mess.

I always suggest to:

1. WRITE THEM DOWN, in point forms, short and concise, leave the drama out for a moment.
   Writing them down clears your head, so you don't keep going back to the same awful thoughts. Writing them down lets you see a clearer picture on where you can work on resolving the issues one by one... well, until you've mastered the art of segregating the issues in your head, writing them down helps.

2. CATEGORISE the issues: Within your control or out of your control. If you decided you can't control the issue, let it go. If you decided you could control the issue, TAKE ACTION.

3. TAKING ACTIONS. Take on the EASIEST task first! Of course, some of the actions had to be taken simultaneously, but get to the easiest ones first. Small success boosts your confidence to keep going.

Life is a wheel... when you're down, there's no way else but up. Just keep going.

We always hear about people DECLUTTERING their household. Throw out old junks, minimise and all... sometimes our minds needs to DECLUTTER too. Otherwise, one day, the pressure breaks, the cover blows and you find yourself panicking for all the wrong reasons. It is not shameful to talk about anxiety, or other mental health problems. This taboo about 'crazy' and 'mental' has to stop. Homosexuals were considered a mental health disorder back in the 70's, stress-related anxiety weren't an issue in the past, but that doesn't mean it would not change.

If there's one thing I learned from my anxiety attack? Don't listen to your mind too much. Animals do not suffer from self-induced mental health problems... only human do, and why is that? Sometimes we let our minds tell us things that put us down so much. No animal takes their own lives by choice, only human do... and it's all in the head. We use our minds to find ways to resolve problems, not letting it play with our lives and our health.