So what is a "functional panic attack" anyway?

 I had one yesterday.  It was not a fun time.

TW: yellow jackets, wasps, stings, injury

Yesterday we did some much needed yardwork.  The kid who cuts our lawn for a very small price (literally $35 for both front and back) hasn’t been by in over a month.  The grass had gotten out of control.  We both hate yardwork and grass in general, like actively making plans to kill the grass and replace it with something that doesn’t need mowing.  It’s the first time in weeks that it hasn’t rained, it’s 5pm so it won’t be hot as, well, Georgia.  We gear up in pants and boots and head out.  I continue my project of pulling up pokeweek by the root to stop it from growing in my yard (it wouldn’t be a problem, but it gets to like 8 feet tall and doesn’t look “purposeful” enough for my county’s codes.  My husband works on getting the mowers to start working.  I mow the back with the regular mower, he tackles the front with the brush mower (yeah, it was that bad), and we meet in the middle.

It’s almost sunset and we talk while catching our breath about plans to kill the grass.  I bring up my thoughts about expanding the idea for the pavers from the driveway to the front door and the idea of a vertical vegetable garden.  We have a tiny little concrete walk that runs parallel to the house in front of the out of control box bushes, but it’s practically useless.  I want to use the pavers we have literally on our back porch and make a larger triangle from the door to the driveway.  Like something sturdy that we can put the trashcans on and walk to and from the cars.  He nodded, tiredly.  Project approved.  Yay.

I had brought up the idea of a vertical garden before.  But the kind I had seen were like a wall of vines on an angled trellis, which would block the sun, yes, but also block our view of the street, and we get a little paranoid about being able to see the street.  We like to be aware of what’s going on.  What the kids are playing with these days, which families like to talk walks around the neighborhood, what the dogs across the street are barking at, just being aware.  

So the idea that I had seen most recently that I loved was a curved half of a cylinder of pvc pipe, reaching about 8 feet at the pinnacle.  Because it’s curved, it would cover a lot of the yard, it would open at the ends that hit the front of our house, so we could see around it and through it, and the vegetables, like peppers and squash, would hang down and be easier to pick.  With both of us hating yardwork, this is a beautiful idea.  And if we don’t have the spoons to pick the veggies when they come ripe?  Put a sign on the side of the road that says “Free Vegetables.  Pick and take home.”  If the birds and squirrels eat them all?  Okay! I still don’t have grass in an 16x16 feet square.  Mission accomplished.  He also liked this idea.  So, project approved pending we can afford pvc pipe.  

Did I mention I’m out of work right now?  I’m looking, but finding remote work that hits my monetary needs is hard, and I’m still on unemployment right now.  The closer that gets to running out, well, what we need to live on won’t really change if I get a job that pays less, so I guess that’s the roc and the hard place.  

So yeah, no money for pvc pipe project right now, but that is the plan.  

So we have taken our break, decided on the things, and head to the back.  I mention that he said he was going to cut the no man’s land between the end of our “yard” and the There Be the Jungle Ivy at the back end of our property.  I love how I’m talking about this like it’s so much, and it’s not a really big yard.  We have less than a 20th of an acre.  But there is a small strip of wild along our back fence, full of ivy, and starting to get full of bamboo, thank you neighbors.  Before that there is a strip of no ivy (because we have been beating it back for a few years) and the beginnings of small trees and bushes.  So he goes, “Oh right, how far back should I go this time?”  I point my suggestion, he agrees and mows a perimeter.  I approve non-verbally, and everything is good.

Except it’s not.  

My husband is allergic to yellow jackets.  

So is my father.  

At my parent’s house, I have a very vivid memory as a child of my mother mowing my back yard, because my dad was allergic, and mowing over a yellow jacket hive.  I remember hearing her screaming from the back yard.  Running up the stairs to the deck and having her strip to her underwear while splashing and rolling around in the kiddie pool of who knows how old water, then doing an inspection of her, through the closed glass door that they were no longer on her, in her hair, buzzing around her, so I could let her safely into the house.  

It was a bit traumatic.  For her too, I’m sure.  But I’m pretty sure that’s where my spheksophobia comes from.  I was today years old when I learned the name for phobia of wasps.  

I’ve gotten better with my phobia.  Don’t run from the wasps.  Gently sway when they’re around, if one get in the house, it’s my job to take care of it.  Because my husband is allergic.  Being around kids who freak out has made it easier for me to keep from freaking out, because if I am calm, they can be calm, they see it’s no big deal.  If I get stung, that would suck, and I very much don’t want that to happen, very much, I mean, I’m not using the term “phobia” lightly, but with more experience, I’ve gotten better at acting calmer when I have to step up and deal with them.  

So this brings me to our topic de jour.  A panic attack is when you are panicking.  You are at a 6-10 on the SUDS scale.  Rational thought is impaired.  Sensations and symptoms can range a bunch: hyperventilating, crying, tingling and numbness, cold sweats, shaking, stuttering, suddenly yelling, outbursts of anger, fear, dissociating, racing heartbeat, increased blood pressure, a whole bucket of fun.  So a “functional” panic attack is when those things are true, and you need to do something anyway and it gets done.  You’re in a meeting at work that you have to be in.  You’re actively completing a project.  You are driving to the hospital.  You are cleaning your room.  You are trying to rationalize so that you can calm down your angry partner.  You are dealing with a crisis.  

In a perfect world (panic attacks wouldn’t happen), you would be given the 15-20 minutes you need to completely calm down and recenter yourself and complete whatever task you need to.  But we live in the real world and it is far, far, far from perfect.  

I grew up undiagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, and potentially Autism, Borderline Personality Disorder, and traits of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (I haven’t done testing on the last three, just worked with multiple medical professionals on trying to find strategies to make my life easier to live).  As a coping mechanism, I used my panic as an adrenaline dump to get things done at the last minute.  It is not a healthy or sustainable coping mechanism, but as I was undiagnosed, I heard a lot of talk about laziness, procrastination, living up to my potential, messy, daydreaming, glued to the tube, reading instead of doing homework, applying myself, you know, the neurodivergent grab bag.  So, working at the last minute?  That’s when some of my best work happens!  

At least, that’s how it felt.  Because at the last minute, I could get it done, and then I would be praised that I did it.  

Reinforcing harmful coping mechanisms?  In this society?  Pshhhhhhh.

At some point I need an entire post about internalized ableism.  Maybe several.  Maybe many until I stop doing it.  

So, back to the yellow jackets.  

Every time my husband cuts the yard, I worry about yellow jackets.  Every.  Time.  This is a part of the Anxiety that I deal with on the regular.  Things I worry about that don’t come true.  Every time he leaves the house, I worry about a car wreck, or getting the call that he is in the hospital.  I worry about him dying in bed while we sleep.  I worry.

I push these thoughts to the back of my head.  I challenge them with logic and statistics.  I move on with life and pretend I’m not worried.  I guess that is another part of a coping mechanism.  Ignore the irrational danger and maybe it’ll go away.  That’s how I get on planes.  But that, too, is a phobia for another day.  

Today is yellow jackets.  

I thought, before he went into the No-Man’s-Land, “What if today is the day he’ll mow over a yellow jacket nest?”  I think this every time he mows the lawn.  Why then, is it his job to mow the lawn?  I mean, back home, it was mostly my mother who mowed the back yard for this specific purpose.  

Because we’d talked about it and one of my husband’s reactions to my panic is to forcefully state that, “It will be fine,” and do the thing I’m scared about.  And usually it is fine.  

Yesterday, it was not fine.  

He mowed over the nest.  Stopped to say something to me, then look down, and jump to the side.  Then he started brushing things off his shirt, and his pants.  It was happening.  I started to panic.  He had enough thought to cut the mower and I yelled at him to get into the house, visions of the story of the yellow jacket nest that my dad stepped in as a kid, then when he was walking through the same woods, without provocation, getting attacked again by the same nest because Yellow Jackets Remember You.  I imagined a swarm seconds from attacking.  

So he jerked off his shirt and ran inside and towards the front door.  I followed.  

Again, killing yellow jackets that get into the house is my job.

Because of panic, the next bit, I don’t remember extremely clearly.  I have clips and flashes of memory.  I remember brushing the one out of his hair.  I remember, one flying around my shirt, and going outside to attract it out.  I remember, the one that landed on my shoulder and stung me.  I remember that I calmly walked outside with it stinging me so it wouldn’t take flight and very gently pulling my shirt off of my arm, watching it sting the fabric over and over, and then gently pulling the shirt over my head, away from the yellow jacket, dropping it on the porch, and running back inside.  I remember him struggling to get his boots untied so he could get off his pants.  (Later he said he saw them stinging his pant legs and so as he pulled his pants off, he rolled them down, trapping them inside.)  I remember stepping on several wasps inside the door.  I remember one flying around him, and attracting it with my arm, and as it stung the band of my fitbit, over and over, trying to blow it off, and then flicking my magnetic clasp on my fit bit to send it flying before again going back inside.  

I can’t kill wasps with my hands.  It’s part of my phobia.  I just can’t.  

So, when we think we have all the wasps outside or dead, I state we’re getting him medicine and going to the hospital.  I see at least 2 stings on his arms, and at least 6 more on his legs.  He says no.  He doesn’t think it’s that bad.  Get him some meds and we’ll see.  I don’t argue.  I go to get him some meds.  I can’t find the benadryl.  I, panicking, ask google if I can use zyrtec instead.  Google doesn’t understand what I’m asking for, which doesn’t matter because of course I can’t find the zyrtec either.  

So I tell him to get clothes on and to get into the car.  We’re going to Walgreens.  

He gets this adorable puppy-dog look and asks, “Can’t I take a shower first?”  I say no.  He asks if he can stay there while I go get meds.  I say no.  “Because if you stop breathing, I’m not going to have you stop breathing here alone where I can’t help you or call for help.”  He agrees and asks me to get his phone that is in his pants pocket.  I say, “Fine, but you call my dad and get him to tell you what to do because he is also allergic.  Not your mom.  My dad.”  His mom was a registered nurse.  My dad was a PA.  We get into tiffs sometimes on who to call for medical advice.  He agreed to call my dad.

I get a new shirt, a can of wasp spray and head to the porch.  What follows is me, again, panicking, so not thinking entirely rationally, battling the yellow jackets on the porch trying to unroll his pants enough to pull his phone out of his pocket without getting stung and trying to kill any wasp I see.  I am capable of killing wasps with spray.  I have a harder time stepping on them because I have personally seen someone do that, miss, and they just get more pissed off.  They already had my scent as someone who is not okay.  When they did fly far enough away from his pants, a couple of them started to come at me.  

The first time this happened, I slipped in the bug spray that was on the concrete and tripped down the stairs.  I spent most of 2019 on a knee scooter while trying to heal my torn ligament in my ankle.  I was so scared of hurting myself further that the purpose of my fall at that point was to fall well and not injure myself.  I managed to push my momentum over the concrete and sprawl out and slide into the yard.  Most of my aches and pains today are from that fall.  I have some scratches on my elbow, a bruise on my hip where I landed on the can, which I dropped during the fall, and a bruise on my knee.  I got some puncture wounds in the fall that I didn’t notice at all until much later, and they weren’t that bad, thankfully.  I even had enough not hurt to bounce right back up and run to the street.  Let me tell you how long it had been since I’d run.  But I did that sprint and it felt good.  

After that, I placed my feet better on the porch, and did have to run again, watching my feet placement.  When the second rusher came at me, I realized I was out of bug spray and after retreating to the driveway and taking a few centering breaths, this was wasting time.  I told him through the closed door to get my car keys and wallet and come out the back.  While he did that, I finally managed to get his phone, which was not dripping with bug spray as I had feared, and we got into the car.  

Functional.  It doesn’t mean I’m thinking perfectly clearly or rationally.  It means I’m doing things that need to be done.  

I took a few more breaths and then we drove to Walgreens.  Dad had given us the symptoms to watch out for, fuzzy tongue, swelling tongue, and while his stings were a lot redder, larger, and angrier than mine, his tongue felt fine.  

We found the benedryl, got water, grabbed feel better Oreos now that the strike is over and they were two for seven.  I tried to find topical antihistamine, but they didn’t have any.  I saw some numbing spray and dismissed it as helpful (which it would have been).  I didn’t even think about hydrocortisone because while I’m allergic to that, but it would have helped him.  

We both took benadryl in the parking lot.  He took two, while I took one.  It was my first time being stung by a yellow jacket, and while it didn’t look like I was allergic like my dad, it still hurt like a mother.  

On the way home, I called friends in the neighborhood to help us put the mowers away (they take two people to lift into the shed, and I wanted someone to hold bug spray ready, just in case) and we had a sleepy night on the couch after much needed showers.  The meds started to do their jobs and his swelling stopped and eventually subsided into blotchy red painful marks, still larger than mine, but not life threatening.  

Being able to move and make rational-ish decisions in a crisis.  That’s what I call my functional panic attacks.  Because, yes, that was a crisis, and if he’d been stung in the face or throat, we might have had a much worse night.  But that level functionality during a crisis is what happens to me when I need to go get gas.  When I need to go into a store.  When I need to talk to the doctor.  When I need to call a stranger on the phone and ask them to come and kill the yellow jacket nest in the back yard.  My body has gotten so used to working through that level of panic that it feels normal.  For years, decades, I literally thought that was normal.  That this was how everyone feels.  

I am thankful to my extremely toxic work environment for showing me how bad and how abnormal it was so that I could finally get the help I needed.  But that’s a trigger warning for another day.  

So yeah.  I have functional panic attacks.  The pandemic has made them worse, made some of the symptoms even harder to ignore and to work around.  I have strategies and plans for what to do when I have the time to calm down and get them under control.  But the one thing, the only one thing I am thankful about having Generalized Anxiety Disorder is that in a crisis, I know I won’t freeze.  I know I can act.  I know I can make decisions.  That those decisions will not be the best decisions.  But that the panic and adrenaline dump can push past my Executive Dysfunction and can make me move.  It makes me capable of killing a bunch of yellow jackets, make decisions, and drive to the store safely.  

And that, Mom, was why I could get my project done at the last minute, but I couldn’t start it before the day before it was due.