Category: Health/Wellness ISBN-10: 1452354472
Copyright: Aug. 19, 2009
ISBN-13: 9781452354477
Panxiety by Ron Keys. Panic disorder from a male perspective. Follow along as he confronts suicide and his apprehension with getting help.
After his first panic attack in his mid twenties the fabric of his reality started to fray. This is not a self-help book but a memoir of one man's battle to over come his inner demons that fuelled his anxiety disorder. Follow along as he confronts suicide and his apprehension with getting help. Now at the age of forty he shares with you his story on defeating this disorder.
Excerpt
Chapter Twelve - Will alone
I used up all but one session with my therapist. She thought it would be a good idea to keep one aside in the event that I required it sometime in the future. I thanked her for helping me and left her office for the final time. But that was not the end to the story.
I continued to have the periodic panic attack. They were not happening as often any more and they were not as severe as they had been, but they were still happening. I lived in fear every waking moment that a bad attack was just around the corner. Sometimes so much so that just the worry about having a severe attack would trigger a minor one. I had gone from one extreme to the other. In the beginning a large percentage of my panic attacks happened without warning while the remaining times the attacks were triggered by my own thought. At this point those roles had been reversed. The majority of my attacks now were being triggered by my over active mind. I was running out of options and hope that I would ever get better. How could I defeat myself and survive?
One night as I lay awake in bed, with the television on in the background, I felt an attack coming on. I got out of bed and went to the washroom where I had locked away the pills that my doctor had given me for depression. I stood there in the washroom, with the door locked, trying to convince myself to take one.
Important Side note - again
If a medical doctor prescribes you something you should take it as prescribed. If it wasn't going to help they would never have given it to you in the first place. If you have questions or concerns about what they are giving you, make sure you discus those concerns with your doctor. Don't do what I did.
I held the bottle of pills in my left hand and took the lid off with my right. I turned the bottle to an angle where I could see it's contents and stared at the little red pills for a moment. I was confronting one of my fears. The fear of losing control of my mind. I couldn't chance that. I had to be in control and fully aware to maintain that control. These pills could take that control away.
I looked at myself in the mirror while still holding the open bottle of pills in my left hand and it's lid in the other.
"You don't have a weak mind" I thought to myself.
"You can defeat this."
"You're stronger than this."
"I'm stronger than this" was my last thought as I poured the contents of the pill bottle into the open toilet. There they sat at the bottom of the bowl. The pills were something that could help me but came with a risk, one that I was unwilling to take. If it was the right decision or the wrong one it really didn't matter anymore as they were not retrievable now. I reached for the toilet lever and flushed them away. I was going to continue to face my panic attacks with only the strength of my will to aid me. I'm stronger than this I repeated to myself in disgust.
I returned to bed and laid back down feeling like a crumbled mess as I tried to over come the panic attack I was currently in. The whole time I repeated "I'm stronger than this" over and over in my head. I let that become the only thought that resonated in my head and before I knew it the panic attack had passed and I was asleep.
Over the next year and a bit I continued to battle the attacks. Again, sometimes they came without warning but most of the time I triggered them. I had come to the realization that this was something that I would be dealing with for the rest of my life, how ever long that would be. I added an old statement that I would repeat over and over in my head during an attack. It was that promise to myself that I would kill myself first before I would hurt anyone around me. Not a very healthy statement but one that worked for me.
Every day I continued to search for that one thing that would end the panic attacks forever. I knew it wouldn't be found in an apology or in forgiveness. It would only be found in an understanding about life and my place in it. With what I told you in the last paragraph it is obvious that I was losing hope.
Then, one night, it happened.
A moment of clarity that hit me like a lightening bolt. It wasn't an understanding about life. It was more of an acceptance about how things are. From that night to this moment I have yet to suffer another panic attack.
It had been a very rough time leading up to the night my panic attacks stopped. Like many other families we were struggling just to get from paycheck to paycheck and most times falling short. We found ourselves relying on institutions, that we had supported in the past, to help us get through those few days when we did fall short of the next paycheck. I have no clue as to what we would have done without those institutions and the generosity of our families.
As a man, it was very tough to accept the fact that I needed help to support my family. Am I lucky to have such a support structure around me?
Re-Release! No longer back-listed. Return to the Olde Ways. The hustle and bustle of modern day life has brought many of us to a quick fix attitude.This book is for those of you who are fed up; have looked at your life and your loved ones and realize
