The Slow Motion Collision and The Silent Crescendo
Trigger Warning: Mention of self-harm and suicidal ideation
In mental health, crises are often silent. Sometimes someone pulls a trigger and you rocket upwards in a grand, but inaudible crescendo. But some emergencies happen in slow motion. They can creep up on you – no trigger pulled, just a blind march with the noise becoming ever louder until it’s all you can hear.
Last August, my world turned upside down in one swift motion.
Cymbals crashed when I found out that my emotionally and sexually abusive ex-boyfriend moved into my apartment building. There was nothing slow about it. I went from feeling like I was getting my post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) settled to suddenly teetering on the edge. My mind was frenetic and frantic and supportive statements were roses with thorns. Meant to comfort, these words ended up hurting me.
I was flooded by urges to harm myself and even take my own life. My doctor and I discussed a hospital stay, but ultimately I declined. My boyfriend was away on a business trip and I had no one to watch my dog, making the logistics too complicated. I also didn’t want to put anyone at my job in a bad position. It was difficult, but I resisted the self-destructive urges. While that individual still lives in my building and my fear is alive and well, it no longer pushes me to that intensely dangerous place in my mind.
Anxiety has held a place in my life as far back as I can remember.
I’ve always been shy. And I’ve always been hard on myself for making errors. Sometimes odd things made me anxious, like choosing what to wear to school. I felt like I needed everyone’s approval. But after it’s onset when I was 17, schizoaffective disorder and my flight from it dominated my attention.
I was so busy running from schizoaffective disorder and later PTSD that I didn’t realize I was walking into quicksand.
Anxiety crept up on me. I knew it was there, but didn’t realize its impact until recently. Last year, I struggled with hallucinations and other symptoms of psychosis that, upon thorough dissection in therapy, turned out to be triggered by anxiety. But I couldn’t make the anxiety or the hallucinations stop, and quickly became accustomed to experiencing hallucinations periodically. But I still didn’t truly see it.
I didn’t see the quicksand devouring my feet until it was too late.
Now it feels like every move I make just sucks me in deeper. Every tiny bit of progress is met with a stronger pull downward. I’ve got my eating disorder and depression whispering in one ear, trying to sweet talk me into harmful behaviors. But on the other side is anxiety, whispering urgently and filling my head full of fears and delusions. Like with my schizoaffective disorder, I have the insight to recognize that these are symptoms and that they don’t make sense, like that my employers will hate me if I need to ask them to clarify something. But I cannot stop the thoughts or their impact.
The severity of my PTSD in that moment last year was a collision that happens in the blink of an eye. I was sent soaring to an acute state. Had I been hospitalized, I would have gone in on fire, and returned bandaged and healing – not 100% recovered, but improved.
My anxiety is a slow motion crash.
I feel as though I’m being slowly dismantled as impact nears. Work becomes more difficult as the anxiety leaves me paralyzed or scattered. Something as simple as signing on to a Zoom staff meeting can turn me frantic. At this point there are times where even touch is too much for me. Sometimes when my boyfriend gives me a hug or puts his hand on my shoulder, I find myself pulling away as if the contact burns me. I cannot trust that something horrible won’t happen if I stop and accept a hug.
This time, however, the hospital would not be the same jumpstart on recovery that it would have been with my PTSD. Resolution will require slowly dismantling my entire world and putting it back together in a way that makes more sense. And the world is a very intricate place to deconstruct and rearrange.
But here are the biggest differences between these two crises.
I kept my mental state largely to myself during my PTSD spike. There were a couple late night calls to my doctor and words said to a handful of friends and family in confidence. And though it was serious, I continued with therapy at the usual two days a week. I lived life day to day or even hour to hour at some points. But I genuinely feared that I would take my life in the heat of that moment at the peak.
With my anxiety, I live my life from second to second and therapy session to therapy session. I now see my therapist nearly as many days as I work, and I hope to flip that number. My employers are aware and supportive, even as I plan to drop to working part time. I’ve spoken with a public benefits lawyer, and my boyfriend and I are aggressively cutting costs to try to make things work when it comes to insurance and the waiting period for federal disability benefits. But the possibility of all of this not working out is very real, though it’s not my greatest concern right now. I will sacrifice nearly anything if it will give me a shot at regaining control of my life and my mind.
On some level, this still feels like I am letting everyone down, but the fear of what will happen if I don’t get control of my anxiety is significantly stronger.
I am deeply afraid of the slow and painful deterioration that has already begun as I cease to function and lose everything. There is no peak, just a slow, constant downward pull. The PTSD was a silent crescendo, but the anxiety, while inaudible to others, is deafening inside my head.
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