Skip to main content

Anxiety Attack

Required message:
I'm not using cookies or collecting information on anyone.  Anything like that is coming from Blogger, not me

I am having an anxiety attack right now.  I feel intense fear: the kind you might feel when hurrying up the steps of an unfinished basement in the dark.  Dread, I guess.  I have just taken a clonazepam for it.

I'm on Trintellix.  It's the fifth medication my psychiatrist has tried.  I've had bad reactions to both benzodiazepines and SSRIs.  Trintellix is not a benzo but an antidepressant.  Like Celexa, another SSRI, Trintellix gives me restless leg syndrome, which might be unusual as my psychiatrist said he'd never heard of that when I reported it with citalopram.  I have a sensory processing problem, as is apparently common with people on the spectrum.  The sensation of restlessness and pins and needles in my legs is very upsetting and, as I also have PNES, can cause seizures.  Last night I had some mild RLS symptoms.  Then all my skin began to itch and feel irritated.  I had two seizures.  When I woke up at 9am to feed my cats, my anxiety was high.  I felt the aforementioned dread and even hiding under my blankets didn't help.  I had another seizure in bed.  It was a bad night and a bad morning and it's been a bad afternoon so far.  I'm hoping the Klonopin starts working soon.

Autism spectrum disorder isn't my only diagnosis.  I have also been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, minor depressive disorder, PTSD, and a non-verbal learning disorder along with a provisional diagnosis of ADHD-inattentive type (ADD).  My pharmacological journey has been frustrating so far, as my brain doesn't seem to like or respond well to medicines messing with its chemistry.  I'm sticking with it, though.  I'm trying really hard.  I want to get as close to better as I can.

Now I am feeling groggy and slightly foggy and disoriented.  I've already been experiencing some mild derealization.  More may be to come.  I should lie down, it's getting somewhat difficult to focus on typing this post on my phone, but I still need to take my daily walk and I still need to eat, too.  We will see what happens.  Writing this blog entry seems to have helped, but then I'm bad at noticing subtle changes in myself.  I suspect autism is to thank for that.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Man Is Not Great: The Evolution of Anthropocentrism

Why do humans care whether their species is special? Why are they so invested in their specialness that they're uncomfortable with the idea that they aren't? Why is it a bitter pill to swallow that humans aren't uniquely important in the universe, that they aren't the intended end of evolution, and that their wondrous and diverse subjective experiences emerge from the same physical processes observable in "lower" animals? I think that the maladaptive human tendency to insist upon their specialness in the universe is an extension of an adaptive tendency to self-advocate in their tribes. Consider fear. The predisposition to turn around when you feel like something might be behind you is likely to save you when there really is something there. Most of the time, when you can't help but turn around on the dark basement steps, there's no threat. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s better to turn unnecessarily than to do nothing in a moment of danger. That...

Threat and Opportunity

Humans see everything as either a threat or an opportunity. These are the only classifications they have. A threat could be a corporal threat, like a violent person, or it could be a threat to their attention, like a boring person or a waste of time.   You're not in control of whether something looks like a threat or an opportunity. You can certainly apply control to turn one into the other, but your first impressions of anything are unconscious. I'm a waste of time. There's nothing to be gained from socializing with me because I'm profoundly socially impaired. I have no status and no way to earn status, so I'm a threat to attention. People who choose to pay attention to me find the endeavor prohibitively expensive of their energy. Attending to me is necessarily a struggle against the Darwinian impulse to conserve energy.  We can call this a rejection response.   I've said that humans naturally have a psychological allergy to me, but that's not a good...

The Human Protocol

Humanity is a spectrum. Some people move through human society without ever belonging in it. I'm such a person. Every thought, every emotion, every sensation, everything your internal organs do, your balance, your muscle tone, your proprioception, every experience you have, from the big ones to the little ones, corresponds to something that happens in your brain: a neural event. Most neural events are beyond our direct control. Every neural event has a trigger. Someone says your name and you turn. You like a song, so you turn it up. What triggers neural events is determined by things like your genes, your upbringing, your culture, and your values. Many neural events are reserved for human-to-human interactions. If you encountered a mosquito that spoke English, you'd recategorize it, and you might change the way you went about trying to keep it from biting you. It would qualify for a kind of consideration that we don't usually offer mosquitoes. It would be more than just an ...