I had this awful panic attack one night. I know that this is something that I should be used to by now. It is true that I am used to a lot of the symptoms of an anxiety disorder to the point where it is all just a normal part of my daily life. But panic attacks… there are still quite different for me. I could never quite get used to them.

I should probably start by saying that there are two different types of panic attacks for me. There are the small ones that I normally get from every uncomfortable feeling or situation like a couple times a day. I do not really pay that much attention to them. But there are also the big ones, which are truly terrifying and are one of the few things that I feel like I have zero progress in.

These mostly happen at night and are like the end result of a lot of scary thought that I have been having in the prior days. They normally happen two, three times a month now. However, the scary thing is that I have zero control over my mind during those panic attacks. It is like my mind is perfectly okay and then there is this switch, someone (something) pushes it and panic mode is activated. The doors in my head are closing in on me, I am a prisoner to my own mind, every single worst case scenario is coming true in my head and I cannot escape. It is as if I am in this car without brakes, completely uncontrollable, aiming to kill me. I just can’t live with myself and everything that is going on in my head, but I can’t escape it either.

The only thing that has ever helped me in these situations is talking to either my mother or my boyfriend. Them trying to distract me and bring me back to reality with whatever techniques is the only thing that helps me to not completely lose myself.

Naturally, this makes me feel even worse, because I feel somehow dependent on someone else. I fear the times when I do not have a way to contact them and this gives me major anxiety. But still I have not learnt a way in which I can help myself. I do not trust myself and my head especially during these awful panic episodes.

Now the thing that makes me feel truly awful the day after such panic attack is the realisation that after more than a year efforts on recovery I still have such debilitating episodes of panic and that there are still things that I have completely no idea how I am going to get better at.

I follow my own progress meticulously and try to pay attention to every single thing that I do better than before, to everything that is easier, to every new better thought that pops into my head, to every good day and to every good feeling. This all gives me hope that things are getting better and probably there will come a day when everything is better.

However, no matter how good you live, reality always hits and it hits bad. For me reality is the big panic attack which discourages me for a moment. But then I think “is it worth giving up? Is it really going to be better? Or am I just lying to myself because I am sick of trying?” and I realise that there is no point in giving up, I won’t get any faster to where I want to be by giving up. These moments come to show me that there is still so much more to learn and that “the good things are worth fighting for” even if this is a never-ending fight that you have to face every waking hour of every single day.

I believe this is true for every aspect of our life. Sometimes reality hits bad, so bad that we feel hopeless, tired and meaningless. But this is the whole point. It is like a test, a real-life test on what we want to fight for and how much we are willing to give to save something.

Remember… If it is worth having, it is worth fighting for.

As always thank you, guys. ❤

Lots of love xx