I know I should process what happened today.
I know I need to get it out of me.
I know I should, but I am exhausted.
I was sitting in therapy. Having a regular talk session. Not even. Just shooting the shit.
I was seeing my therapist at her office in the residential facility I had gone to. Outside of her office is a room that’s used for various things. A yoga nidra session was beginning, and a weird instrument that sounds like a church organ started playing.
This “organ” has always made me uncomfortable. I always skipped this group. I’d leave the area, and go where I couldn’t hear it. I didn’t know why it made me uncomfortable. I just know it did.
Today, I couldn’t leave. There was no way out of the office except to interrupt and go through the room the “organ” was playing in. I figured “oh well, this is a little annoying, but fine”.
And then it happened.
One second, I was feeling slightly uncomfortable, and the next I was in full panic attack.
“You’ve heard this before?” I heard my therapist ask.
I nodded, realizing I was starting to breathe heavier.
And then I couldn’t breathe.
At all.
I was trying to catch my breath, but I couldn’t.
I was in full blown panic.
I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t stop hyperventilating.
I know my therapist was talking to me, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
At some point she asked if she could sit next to me, and I nodded.
At some point she got me to breathe with her and I calmed down some. I was shaking. She kept trying to get me to leave the room but I didn’t understand why. I told her I couldn’t move. I was frozen. I was too scared to go where the music was. She got him to stop playing. We walked through there and sat down outside. I was still shaking.
“Where are you right now?” She asked, knowing I was definitely not present.
“Church”
“Shit” I think I heard her say, but my mind is so foggy and I was so far away.
“Can you come back here?”
And I could. Which is progress.
#Therapy #Flashback #PanicAttack #MentalIllness #CPTSD #PTSD