panic ep 2
This is followup to I get exhausted so fast
It didn't feel like exhaustion today. I decided to put in 2 hours of productivity again. Started about 1:30 (3:00 now). Also, since Friday I decided to expand what my intentional productivity time could include. It's not just house chores now, but can include: Meditation, shower, piano, and other positive activities that I often struggle to engage in.
I vacuumed (doing this every day to try and get rid of flease). That's 20-30 minutes.
The psychic "pain" wasn't really there. Maybe a poke after vacuuming, but nothing bothersome.
I picked all the ripe tomatoes from my garden (except for the cherries. Sidenote: My cherry tomatoes are HUGE and its weird. They good though.).
I did that without much mental struggle. Some tomatoes were spoiled, had been gotten by insects, or had sat on the ground and gone rotten. The yucky feeling from their juices was ... bothersome. Had to rinse my hands once. Couldn't bring myself to clear out some of them bc I was at my yuck limit. Mostly, wiping my hands on my shirt was okay.
After tomatoes, it was ... still okay? I think the anxiety or whatever was rising, but it wasn't severe. I believe I felt fairly ready for the next task.
There were like 20 items in a box on my dining room table. Stuff I needed to sort through.
It went well. I sorted everything, threw away a few things, put things in their places.
But while I was doing this, the pain was rising. The dysfunction was rising. Still kept below the surface, but threatening to pop out.
When I was done with it, it was starting to be bad. I'm looking around, trying to decide the next thing to work on, and ... I just keep getting hit with these waves of pain. I toyed with the idea of taking apart my old tiny cat tree type things, so that I can maybe reconfigure them into something better. But I had to just nope out. I couldn't process any more. And trying to figure it out was causing these big spikes of anxiety. The anxiety is painful. Sorta.
So anyway, I decided to shower. I'm walking to my room to get clothes, and I grimace. A big grimace, which I hold for a solid 5-10 seconds. This is the pain face, and I think its the first one I made today, the first big one anyway.
I grimace several more times as I collect my clothes and get ready for the shower. At one point, I was deciding whether I want my comfy pants after the shower or my shorts, and that caused a spike of pain/anxiety. I chose the comfy pants.
And I get into the shower. At this point, everything is very routine. There's really no decisions to make, nothing to struggle with mentally, right? I had put music on because the stimulation makes me more comfortable. I'm glad I did that.
But while I'm rinsing my hair (I couldn't stand a wash today, bc then my hair is too fluffy, and it makes me really anxious, its a sensory sensitivity that I just don't have the capacity for today), I keep having these huge spikes of painxiety. anxiety pain. painxiety. Whatever. Basically, I was having thought cross my mind that would trigger it.
I didn't keep track of the thoughts, but I believe most of them involved some kind of "what am I going to do" question. What am I going to talk about in therapy. What am I going to do after the shower. Am I going to go see my case manager today.
Or things I did. Things I'd said. Different things I could have said. What should I have said. What could I say next time. You know, just like in minor disagreements or misunderstandings or whatever.
During the later spikes of painxiety, I started doing physical stims - shaking my hand(s). It helps.
Oh, and the physical symptom of all this. The difficulty moving. Just, like ... My brain is having a hard time communicating to my limbs what to do.
This is an anxiety (or something) symptom. I don't have this problem unless I'm on the verge of panic.
I noticed this most significantly when I was putting on my T-shirt after the shower. And yaknow there's a lot of fabric and you gotta get a head and two hands through 3 different holes (assuming you have both arms!).
And there's this moment where I just kind of have to pause. Putting on a shirt is a pretty automatic activity, typically. I don't have to think through it or process or figure out how to move my hands/arms. I just put on the damn shirt, I've done it a octotillion (surely not a real number, but it sounds big, right?) times. But this time, I'm trying to put on the shirt, and I feel the panic bubbling, my right hand is sorta tangled in the fabric (but no more than normal). And I have to kind of pause, and process what I'm doing, and be slow and intentional with my movement. This calms the anxiety. The pain.
And uhh. Yeah. So now I blogged about it. After getting dressed I blogged because I want to document this.
Oh and I decided on my shorts over my comfy pants bc I have to leave for therapy soon.