4/4/18

4:00 pm - BP 130/80 Pulse 90 Anxiety Level 3. (Today first reading 150/85 and third reading 118/78 Pulse was oddly fast compared to usual lately) Last 2 days have been interesting. Felt ok in the am. No needed .25mg xanax in the morning. Never occurred to me to take it which is odd because mornings is usually the hard anxiety packed time. At about 11 or 12 I started to have anxiety attack. Yesterday trigger was while I was working and I started to perspire. This was during moderate physical activity my bp and heart rate increases as well. The light to moderate sweating started the intrusive thoughts and dizziness. I began to enter a panic state. I ended up taking a .5mg xanax to calm it down. I listened to anxiety coaches podcast while I continued to work at a slower but steady pace. Within an hour I was calm and perspiration was normal. Of course I was now tired…. Today similar situation but not at work. This time trigger was dizziness and derealization. Again .25mg xanax was used to calm symptoms. Again tiredness ensues. Frustrating that the improvement from Pristiq seems difficult to pinpoint. I still feel the attacks are less frequent, less severe and shorter in duration. However I do somewhat regularly use xanax in small doses and continue to have somewhat regular attacks or anxious state scenarios. There is a 20-40% improvement but it seems to be stuck. As you can see through my journal posts, I seem to have a good 2 weeks then a bad week then a good week then a bad two weeks. It is normally in cycles. I still have health anxiety. I am learning quality tools that really help in dealing with the attacks from anxiety coaches podcast with Gina Ryan. My main issue continues to be panic attacks while at jobs or events away from my “safe places”. This is what leads me to carry “emergency” medication in my wallet. I have endured so many attacks while working. And of course I have always made it through and haven’t died yet. But man is it awful. The battle in your mind and body and trying to keep it together in front of clients. There isn’t much worse than that. It’s really hard. But I can do it. The only reason I know for sure is that I have done it hundreds of times. Keep moving forward. How I long for freedom. I’m not sure if I remember what that’s like or if it even exists