Panic

I've been nearing my stress limit here in Montreal for the last few weeks. Not overwhelmed, but nearing it. For anyone who is concerned by what I just wrote: don't be. I put myself into all of these classes. I intend to do all of the work. It is a test of myself and it is only going to help me in the future.

But in this state, a few times I have realized that I was just about having panic attacks. Generally I am known for being stoically cool under pressure. This is of course just an outward appearance, and just like everyone else, I get nervous and tense.

But I noticed these panics attacks. A part in my stop motion puppets armature had broken and I could feel the panic building in my body. It felt nearly physical. I couldn't think straight. Thankfully, part of my mind kept itself separate from the rest and continued to analyze what was going on. It saw that something was going on that needed to be rectified. There was an unnatural lapse in my mind that was causing a loop of negative feelings that was getting disastrously powerful in my brain.

So I managed to do a little research on the topic, and recognized what was occurring. And the recognition has allowed me to feel a lot better.

I was negatively predicting the situations. I was thinking of the broken armature, and then thinking about all the possibilities in the future that were also broken and wrong. I was thinking through all of the results of the single broken part and creating a web of horrible possibilities for myself. And this overwhelmed me.

This web of negative predictions only produced a larger web of negative questions and more negative predictions. It was a self fueling fire that was only getting worse.

But by recognizing the pattern, it is easy to throw a wrench in it. All I had to do was think of the solution to the initial problem and the whole web of failure disintegrated.

Even if I couldn't come up with a solution at the time, simply recognizing the panic as a result of outrageous negative predictions, everything started to feel better.

There is a purpose to being really busy, of getting yourself in over your head: it is one of the only ways you will ever learn what your real limits are.

Kyler