Trying to park at a mall, in Toronto, in early December one year (so Christmas shopping ramping up) … amusingly for an appointment with a psychologist.
She had to come out at park the car for me.
Drivers in this city… so, so toxic.
Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn’t hear a thing and I couldn’t breathe.
That was the worst one I’ve ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I’ve learned how to calm myself down in therapy.
It was right before realizing I’m in a burnout. Too much in my private life going on, kids, housing, study, full time jobs.
The last time before that must’ve been years, but I’ve been holding it in for as long as I could, I now realize.
Few days ago over an imaginary situation lasting 8 hours. I did write it all down, and I still have it saved, but it’s pretty weird.
I wrote this down shortly after and it’s just been residing in a note-taking app. Perhaps you could consider it NSFW since it discusses death in not the best manner.
I’ll just plop it here into a spoiler if you want to read it:Fucked up text
So, we had a discussion on 1st aid also involving CPR. Apparently mouth-to-mouth is also required where I live.
I tried to imagine such a situation, and over the course of around 8 hours spiralled into worse and worse thoughts as I kept overthinking every aspect of it more and more.
I’ll try to just lay them into separate points:- I was thinking about how I’d approach the rescue breaths (mouth-to-mouth). I realized that this would likely end up being a problem for me. It would be hard to encourage myself into it, in the end wasting a lot of precious time letting the person’s brain starve of oxygen. I don’t know why, but this part feels very hard even to just imagine.
- I started thinking of what if I was that person. Problem is, I would want to just die. This would be an opportunity without me having to do anything myself, and of course there would be no physical way to regret it.
- What if that imaginary person would feel the same? (DNR doesn’t exist where I live) I feel like forcing someone to live against their will is the worst thing I could do to someone.
- What if I was actually causing more harm even physically? Combine the point 3 with hypoxia causing permanent brain damage. That would make matters even worse. I got to the conclusion that this point goes both ways, because it could also be caused by not doing CPR if the ambulance got there quick enough to still save the person, even if with severe brain damage at this point, as opposed to just permanent death.
- Not being able to handle it, what if I tried to exit it by killing myself, perhaps by jumping under a truck? I felt like this would be most morally correct as it wouldn’t leave me alive.
- That could traumatize the driver or even escalate the existing accident.
- At this point I was just exhausted, alternating between crying and feeling rage towards myself.
- I took my dog for a walk which finally allowed me to calm myself down.
I don’t know how I’d deal with this in reality. Of course I wouldn’t have 8 hours to overthink everything.
Of course, this is just imagination with lots of overthinking, but I often spiral into thoughts like this. It feels like I am internally fighting myself about what’s right and what isn’t. Twice I got into such thoughts so much I couldn’t physically stand until I calmed down at least a bit.
Sup.
I am an awful person.Hey I have literally no advice, but as someone who similarly spirals over hypothetical anxieties, I don’t think you’re an awful person. I can see how a conversation about something high stakes like CPR could trigger that.
Have you tried cbd
Nope.
Does wonders for these kinds of things
It’s usually something setting off memories of childhood abuse and tossing me into fight/flight/freeze mode. The “why” isn’t really the trigger itself so much as my brain having issues with hypervigilance.
Just a generally overwhelming day. Got slammed at the end of my shift, had to work over handling customers on top of the absolute mess my coworkers had left me, traffic was an absolute hellhole turning a 15-minute commute into 45, and when I got in, the air conditioner, at some point, had a malfunction so on a nearly 90 degree fahrenheit day, my house was almost boiling on the inside.
Was kinda the last straw, and I was rushing to get my pills.
Right now. Mostly just cause my brain felt like flying off the rails. Can’t afford my meds right now, and yet we need $25k for our wedding still in 4 months, and we can’t seem to dig ourselves out of the financial hole I dug us into after leaving my last job for my mental health and be incomeless for 3 months. Fun stuff for sure.
I thought I had Steven Johnson syndrome
Smoked weed.