You tell me to snap out of it, as though I can control my racing thoughts, my pounding heart. Don’t you realize that’s the problem?,Silencing the War Drums,You tell me to snap out of it, as though I can control my racing thoughts, my pounding heart. Don’t you realize that’s the problem?
WORRIED STIFF “Going out with two friends. Birthdays. Reading. Talking on the phone. All these activities leave me panicked and anxious.” Anxiety affects 40 million people in the US two thirds of them women. Researchers find that anxiety sufferers spend more than five hours a day worrying — five times more than the average person
I ’m hunched in a blue chair on the third floor of Macy’s willing myself to either calm down or disappear. The latter seems more likely.
A saleswoman sees my body quivering asks if I’m all right. “Yesyesyes” I babble in a panic. I’m having a seizure I’m thinking. Or a heart attack. But I know better. I know it’s a mounting panic attack because my heart starts beating hard. Not faster — harder like war drums giving the signal to attack.
Not now! Not here! The war drums grow louder fiercer. I get light-headed. It’s like my brain is using the wrong kind of battery; there’s energy flooding it but it’s 220 volts overwhelming my 110-volt brain. It’s a nervous energy that flashes and fuses my neurons together into a tangled smoking clump of goo.
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