panic attack | Moody Gem

Feeling out of control, stuff your face.

Feel excited about something new? Stuff your face.

Tired and or bored? Stuff your face.

Scared about the near future? Stuff. Your. Face.

That's what pattern I used to follow. They call it emotional eating. I blamed my depression and thought that I needed to curb my habits of eating when I was sad. But what about all of the above?

I had no self-control. I thought how come I can't stop eating a pint of Haagen Daz half way through? Why did spoon have to touch carton bottom? When it came down to it, I was suffering from anxiety. I thought anxiety only happened when I was having some sort of attack. A really bad panic attack in 2017 lead me to believe that the only way I was feeling anxious was when my breathing was out of control or my extremities began tingling or going numb. I didn't find the need to address my anxious symptoms in therapy until I finished grad school in June 2020.

Quarantine made me privy to the emotional changes I was seeking in therapy. I was doing the work. And I was seeing results. So when I recognized a big shift from not staring back at my past, I realized I was starting to zoom too far into my future. I was starting to worry about my employment 6 months down the line. I didin't feel like celebrating the huge feat of earning my Master's degree I'd accomplished, mind you during the pandemic. Instead I wanted to curl into a ball and sleep. And when I did finally get up, I was met with the desire to eat. To be productive I would trick myself into earning food after finishing small tasks. 2 months and 8lbs later, I finally confessed to my therapist that I might need help with my anxiety as I felt I was on the brink of a panic attack.

I kept telling her I just wanna control it. I thought I may just need a small prescription short term of what they gave me in the hospital. Lorezapam is a controlled substance that later my psychiatrist let me know were highly addicting and steered me away from. But in that moment, I wanted a safety blanket.

I had stopped turning to food to get life done because I wanted to get healthier. But I just felt even more terrible when I couldn't binge eat. I was super excited because I had stopped myself twice that week alone, yet it didn't feel sustainable. Upon her suggestion, I reached out to my insurance to find a psychiatrist. I made a same day appointment and by that evening I was driving to Walgreens to pick up my prescription.

Lessons I took away from this experience:

Anxiety is asking you to listen to your body and be present. It shouldn't be feared and can be regulated with medicine.
Binge eating can be related to anxiety more closely than what I thought, as it has been two weeks and I haven't had a desire to binge or have the inability to stop eating when I am full.
While depression keeps you stuck in the past, anxiety keeps you fearful of the future.
In the wrong hands, excitement can be turned into fear as a way to control our expectations. This act of trying to protect ourselves in fact creates anxiety that upon being proven correct reinforces the negative self talk brought about by depression. What does this look like: Denise is excited to learn how to skate. She has just conquered her first weight loss goal and is trying out new forms of fitness. As the days come closer to her first lesson, Denise starts to wonder what to expect. She knows its a fact that people often fall when they are trying to learn to roller skate, but she starts to wonder if her knees will be able to handle a nasty tumble? She starts obsessing over it so bad that the night before she nearly cancels her appointment. The day of, she forgets her knee pads at home because in her dread, she procrastinated properly packing and ran late thus rushing out the door without them. When she arrives, she is so scared to fall that her body tenses up and she falls nearly every time. Halfway through she decides to stop. She drives home, cries in bed and tells herself she knew she should have never tried something as silly and difficult as roller skating. She feels depressed because at the end of the day she was right all along. She should have never even tried.

Depression and anxiety work in a terrible cycle that keeps us stuck and fearful of living and having courage to do so. We just have to see through the fear, take back our excitement, and have the faith to know that we have survived 100% of our worst days. This is not easy at all. I take anti-depressants, anxiety medicine and speak to my therapist once a week. I am blessed to be able to qualify for these things. My hope is that seeing a connection between anxiety and depression will help someone else out there who struggles and may not know why or how to regulate it.