Jigsaw Puzzles and Raised Beds
I am sitting at home, watching the TV when I start to feel my heart rate increase – beating heavy in my chest (like I had been for a fast run), the first rush of adrenaline sweeps through my body making the hairs on my head stand on end, giving me shakes in my legs. Am I scared? Am I nervous? I am aware of my breath becoming faster and shallower and can feel the muscles around my shoulders and neck tightening, my hands are clammy, and I have no idea what to do and how to make it stop. The first time this happened I thought I was dying. The reality is that panic attacks are something that are now part of my life – me and another 8 million people in the UK, but at least I know now what they are and how to manage them. Admittedly they happen rarely now but they occur in the strangest of moments – sometimes I can identify a trigger and sometimes not, but usually if I can catch it early, I can control it.
For me the root of my panic attacks started when I started peri menopause (not that I knew what it was then), it transpires that as my hormone levels dipped and peaked it was causing what I can only describe as chaos in my head. In the early days I was getting multiple daily attacks, and finding it almost impossible to leave the house, meet friends or even go to work. Every instinct was telling me to stay at home and curl up in a ball, I felt like a shadow of my confident former self. I obviously went to the doctors, but finding the root of the problem takes time, during which I was desperate to help myself.
Like many others, I frantically googled, catastrophised, and then tried everything I could find on the internet which mostly resulted in more frustration. I did however find a few things that helped me, and I wanted to share those because I know how scary it can feel – to not understand what’s happening to your body, to be scared, vulnerable and desperate for solutions. When I was at my worst, I found these actually helped:
– Focusing your body and mind through a creative outlet. Creativity could be anything from painting, colouring, knitting, crafting – For me, it was jigsaw puzzles, I found them an immersive task that calmed my mind and have since found out that apparently doing puzzles releases dopamine (our feel-good hormone).
– Gardening is also something that give me a small amount of respite from anxiety attacks which does make sense now, fresh air, being out in nature, increasing vitamin D and working your body – all known to be good for mental health.
– Yoga, this is something I still do! It didn’t cure my anxiety attacks, but it did make me feel more connected and in touch with my body which I found comfort in, plus the breathwork that goes with yoga I definitely used and still use to calm myself when I feel my heart rate start to increase.
– My true turning point was Solution Focused Hypnotherapy, and it had such a profound effect on me that I decided to train, so I could help others in the way that I was helped. Understanding how my primitive and intellectual brain worked helped me to understand what happens during a panic attack. The trance section gave me deep relaxation (which I had not experienced for a long time), and between the therapist and myself we came up with solutions to help me move forward with my life, become more present and therefore feel more confident about finding a way to carry on.
Obviously everyone is unique, and I’m not suggesting for one second that you by-pass the doctor, but knowing that it takes time to find the root, if these things can give you even just some relief from your anxiety then I’ve achieved what I had hoped to do.