I don't think I ever used to be an anxious person. I got the usual butterflies and jitters on first days of school or opening nights of musicals I was in, but I never felt real anxiety or panic.
Until last year.
Last school year, there were a number of things that made me feel like I was losing control of things in the classroom. That's something that I don't like -- not being in control of situations, or at least not feeling like I can gain control of a situation. I was going into year two without my mom. The previous school year was rough for a number of reasons. I was trying to manage my grief from my mom's death, but I was also trying to manage the added grief of two miscarriages. Those three things happened within a span of six months. Then my classes that year were harder to manage than they have been in the past. So fast-forward to the next school year, and I'm faced with classes that are even harder to manage than the previous year's, and I have a student teacher. Don't get me wrong -- I love mentoring student teachers, but losing control of my classroom last year was apparently too much.
I had a massive panic attack in November, the day of Thanksgiving break. Everything started out normally. I treated myself to Chick-fil-A breakfast, because it was the day leading into a holiday break. After eating, I started to feel dizzy, I was shaking, and my heart started racing. I felt hot and like I was going to pass out. I couldn't catch my breath. It was the absolute worst feeling in the world. I called the main office to see if the school nurse was in. She wasn't yet, but one of our administrative assistants told me to come down and she'd take my blood pressure. Somehow I made it down there by myself. My best friend's husband came down to the nurse's office to help out, because he's certified in CPR and is one of our emergency on-call people. I literally thought I was going to die. I thought that this had to be what my mom felt like on the day she died. I thought I'd be taken out in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. The nurse arrived and took my blood pressure. It was through the roof. She said I was having a panic attack and reassured me over and over that I wasn't going to die. She called my husband to come and get me and I rested down there until he arrived.
Since then, my anxiety has become more of an issue. My PCP gave me a trial prescription for medication. I took one pill, felt horrible, and didn't take it again. I know -- I need to give it time to work. So I started to see a therapist, thinking that maybe if I dealt with the grief that I had been pushing away for so long that it might help the anxiety to go away. It hasn't gone away, but I've gotten better at dealing with it. I also have to give a lot of credit to our school psychologist and behavior interventionist. They've been so helpful to me. But I still have waves of anxiety and panic that come and go at different times.
This week of teacher prep has been hard. Last night I started to have a small panic attack. When I start to feel anxious, I feel short of breath. That was hitting hard last night and I just kept thinking of my mom. The day my mom died, she was telling me that she couldn't breathe. So I kept thinking that the same thing was going to happen to me. It was a battle in my head -- "Sarah, you're fine, you're not going to die." "But this is how mom died. Maybe I need to go to the emergency room." "Sarah, you're fine, this is just anxiety. Breathe."
Today has been slightly better. If I don't think about school or anything about my anxiety, I feel okay. But then I stop and think about my anxiety, and I start to have breathing issues again. I sat down with a coloring book today and that took my mind off things. But like I said earlier, the anxiety comes and goes in waves. Sometimes the wave is really high. Sometimes the wave is really low. Sometimes the seas are calm.
I just don't want to have another panic attack -- especially on Tuesday. So if you have any helpful tips on how to manage anxiety (without medication -- but I do have a doctor's appointment coming up to talk about that again), let me know so that I can cope in the meantime.
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