Daniel W wrote:
I couldn't understand anything. It was just white noise with a kind of loud hum. Anyone else experience this? It was frightening and actually made my anxiety/panic worse.
The same happens to me when I have a panic attack, melt-down, or shut-down; my language circuits are usually one of the first things to go (because they're probably the most over-stressed). Leading up to that, yes, my language processing fades with stress; finding words starts to get harder, following the flow of conversation gets harder, and I have more trouble getting words from inside my brain and out of my mouth.
I agree with
jimmy m, though, it's surprising how much control you can take if you can stay rational about what's happening. If a situation is really extreme, I can force a potential melt-down to be a shut-down or even just a partial shut-down - directing my mental energy to what I need most for calming me down (find quiet, sit or lie down, give a warning signal to a friend or colleague, etc.) It's not always effective, because some situations are just too extreme or too sudden; but it has made my life a lot safer (I sometimes run away for miles across busy roads etc. when I melt-down, so a shut-down is much preferable!)
It's a bit of a trade-off; there's only so much mental energy to go around, so if you direct to one thing, other things have less. The quicker you can direct it at a survival mechanism that you know will work, the better. And if you really have to get away, it's better to do it while you can still explain what you're doing. Don't grit your teeth and just hope that you can hang on for the sake of not being a nuisance; it's better to risk a little embarrassment so that you can excuse yourself than to have a shut-down or melt-down - for you, and for the people around you who might not know what they should do if things get more extreme.
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When you are fighting an invisible monster, first throw a bucket of paint over it.
19 Feb 2019, 7:15 pm
