Ranaldi Way of Life

Have you ever had a panic attack or anxiety SO bad you were physically ill??

I never have until last night.

Before being pregnant I handled stress differently. I could redirect my attention and take a few deep breaths and be better.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed occasional moments of overwhelming anxiety.  You feel stuck in a hole so deep you feel like you just keep falling and then are buried with everything you are stressing about needing to get done, do or take care of. I struggled with being able to pull aside those thoughts and shovel them into a well constructed “to do list” so I could climb out of the hole and feel accomplished and on top of the world by the end.

I felt things getting a little more difficult to control as time went on… after each child…my girls in fact, messed with my hormones so bad to the point that I spent a few months where I would have such terrible anxiety every day at the exact same time in the afternoon.  I don’t know if I was just tired or what but even if I didn’t have a lot to “do” I still found my train of thought going years and years in the future and stressing about life, decisions completely out of my hands, situations that had yet to even exist…yet here I was 4pm sweating and gripping the edge of my seat in fear of the future.

If you know me, you would know this is not me.

I spent a few months working really hard to get back to normal and eventually found my groove. I could tell when the anxiety was creeping up on me, I knew my triggers.  I came up with a game plan and fought them head on. I learned how to make my fix it lists in the order of the way I needed them to be so I can feel productive and ease my stress. I learned to let the mess in the kitchen go and take care of something more important.  I learned to take a deep breath and accept that I can’t always DO EVERYTHING.

But of course I’m not perfect.

Recently I have been getting caught off guard by my old familiar friend, but something is different…

I feel my chest tighten up, you know like when you take a step out in the cold air or as if someone is sitting on your chest and you struggle to open your lungs and breathe in. I feel the frozen tension from deep within my chest all the way up to my throat.  And then as I sit there trying to breathe through it I feel my heart pounding, It feels like adrenaline is hitting me and my body feels tingly and shaky, I feel lightheaded like I just ran a mile and I could fall over at any moment because the world is spinning…Its almost like that “medicine head” feeling like when you have an intense sinus cold…

I breathe through it, try to break my way past it. struggle through getting out of this hole I am in, its so hard to breathe in here. Panic has set in.

Yesterday I ran to my bed to get away from these feelings, to hide from all the fears. It was late, I knew I was tired and tried convincing myself my heart was pounding out of my chest because of the coffee I had nursed the whole day.  Hiding did not help me. I could not sleep, I was physically ill.  My body was lashing out in every way it could.  I cried, I prayed and I cried some more.

Finally sleep came just as I was entertaining the idea that maybe I just had the flu. I closed my eyes with nightmares of how tomorrow would unfold with three kids and mommy sick in bed….

In the morning I didn’t feel quite right, but I was a little better. My heart was still pouding and I had to take a step back and catch my breath every now and then.  Something wasn’t right, whether I was sick or not… this was different.  Throughout the morning these feelings came and went in concordance to my activities that day. It seemed as long as I was busy and participating in something I was okay and then the moment I sat down with myself and had time to think, my chest tightened up again and then Bum bum…bum-bump!

*sigh*

I hate thinking that I had taken care of a problem only to find out that… iiitttssss Baaaacccckkkk…. and with a vengeance.

Time to take a trip to the good ol’ Doctor.

I appreciate your prayers.