My different mental health “peaks”

Good morning,

After the quite difficult work day 2days ago, I felt impelled to share my 3 very different peaks or crisis that happens sometimes with my anxiety & depression. Though I do have the help that I need, it’s important to remember that relapses and hard time is a normal process- the silver lining being how you can recoil from them, instead of being constantly living through the fog unable to see through.

Related; Managing my crisis; ignoring the thoughts & My anxiety comfort items

The anxiety attacks
Aka impacted by a “normal stressor”

Thoses are mainly the ones that I go through at work; something stressful happens which trigger a panic reaction – something that everyone else would rightfully be stressed by. The only difference being that it doesn’t stop after the stressful situation is gone, but overlast me for a few hours. Though they’re all quite paralysing, this one is the easiest to get by, i’d say.

Per exemple, this had been recently impacted by a sudden arrival of a few groups of customers an hour before closing- the random excess of rather complicated orders made me unable to complete my closing tasks that usually starts around 7pm (Closing & washing my oven, cleaning my espresso bar, mopping, etc.).

The way I respond to this is usually by feeling a pressure on my chest, only stopping possibly an hour or two after the original trigger is gone. You can clearly see it in my behavior as I begin to breathe louder, aswell as talking to myself (breathe, it’s gonna be okay, just keep going, etc.); I also walk around doing my task while pressing a hand to my chest, or lightly tapping it.

The panic attacks
Aka the problems created by my overthinking brain

Now this one is more randomized; the beauty of it being created by my brain entirely, about something entirely made up or that I can’t even do anything for. As you would guess, this one happens in the middle of the night where nothing can be done about it and everyone is fast asleep — making it really easy for my brain to ramble on itself and build up panic even more.

Per exemple, the last time this one happened was the nights I stayed awake panicking about Covid increasing and how I was suppose to protect mother.. while it is technically a valid trigger, there is however nothing that I can do about it, as I can’t control the actions of others and panicking about it won’t solve anything. The best way to go about this one is, as linked above, is trying to ignore the thoughts choking me. I can accomplish this by focusing on listening to music, or using one of my sleeping dachshund as a pillow to hear their heartbeat.. which do have the ability to ground and calm me.

The peaks of depressions
Can be tied with suicide ideation, or not

I find it harder to explain this one.. As I seem to be on a roll of anxiety, where depression were more showing it’s face earlier in the year with the quarantine and all that. It decide to show it’s face at random, without anything linked to it.

This is the time where I choose to isolate myself, don’t feel like doing anything mostly, and feel like I don’t belong anywhere. A harder storm that Iknow I need to just let it pass; though it linger longer than it’s anxiety counterpart, starting maybe in the evening up until I finally fall asleep. I’d pass the time trying not to think about it much, not giving it fuel, either by watching a comforting anime or pop on my playlist (I usually gravitate more to one song rather than others- just feeling the need to listen to this particular one on repeat) while playing something like Sims 4.