My latest major mental breakdown

My latest major mental breakdown

Most stories start from the beginning. However, I would like to share with you my latest anxiety attack that turned into a downward spiral that brought me lower than I had been in a while. Let you know just who you’re dealing with right?

I also would like to share this story now, because it is fresh in my mind and I tend to forget a lot of things dealing with emotions especially. Really, I forget a lot about myself in general. I have sick long term memory in some situations, like patients at work. My co-workers are always impressed; if something can jog my memory so many details come flooding back from patients and situations that may be years prior. But back to myself, please do not ask me my favorite color, my favorite song, a name of someone who just introduced their self to me. Once, I was asked some of the best and most special moments of my life and I blanked. I recently learned that maybe this is an ADHD-inattentive thing. Anyway, speaking of ADHD, where was I going with this?

Mental Breakdown

That’s right: mental breakdown. Well a couple of weeks ago, I could feel myself just getting kind of low on the emotional stability scale. Nothing too major. Down mood, low motivation, a bit more socially awkward than normal. I always think “meh” is my baseline, but this was a bit lower than the average meh. On a Thursday morning, average morning, day off of work, I was taking my daughter, Kylie, to school. Nothing out of the ordinary. Kylie was just chatting about her classmates and mentioned, I hope everyone is at school, Lenny hasn’t been there, not sure what is wrong with her. Next, she said sometimes her classmate Livy isn’t there because she gets “stress sickness”. I asked her to elaborate. She said well I know she has anxiety, but sometimes she gets stressed and upset and it makes her body sick. I was silent. How to reply? Third graders already know what anxiety is? And some already carry the diagnosis! 😱 

Well, for some reason that must have triggered me. Another trigger, I know I had while driving. I am very sensitive, my therapist says I am a highly sensitive person or empath, meaning extreme empathy. I often take on other peoples problems and emotions as my own. It feels like a curse. A co worker of mine recently had a horrific car accident where she hit a pedestrian on a dark road and the man was crossing right in the middle of the road. The pedestrian passed away pretty immediately. My co worker is a lovely caring person and she is torn up. For some reason, I am having a hard time separating myself from this situation and driving is making me tense. I got home and felt my heart rate rising, my hands shaking. I went to grab my weekly pill container to take my morning meds and it was empty. Ugh, need to sit down and refill. Every. Single. Week. Super annoying. Well that sparked feelings of why am I even doing all this self help BS. Why do I take all these medications and vitamins, go to all these appointments, listen to all these self help audible book and podcasts, for what?! I still feel like shit half the time. I am tired of the meds, tired of the appointments, tired of therapy and thinking about my problems and thinking about why I am currently stressed. Stressed about my sheer level of stress and my management of that stress, seems like a new low. So I knew the anxiety was rising, I knew I should call someone.

I have a loving husband that would want to help. But he really does not get it. He is so mentally healthy and neurotypical that he cannot even imagine how someone could feel like this, seemingly out of nowhere. My best friends name is Eureka. Usually I can call her. I hadn’t spoken to Eureka much in the past month and it felt rude to call her hysterically crying. Then naturally, I felt like I had no options. No one to call that would understand. I felt very alone. Which brought me to the climax. I could call my Aunt Donna. She is who I could call with anything. Even if she didn’t give great advice or know about a certain topic, she lead with compassion, plus I wouldn’t feel rude of judged if I dismissed her advice or gave her misdirected anger. But I cannot call her. She died this past fall of Covid and it was a major loss in my life. I let out a scream cry that I felt viscerally, deep in my stomach. I was getting dizzy, most likely from hyperventilating, I felt like I was going to pass out. So, I made it to my bathroom and took a Klonopin; it wouldn’t help much and would take a while to kick, so I went to the pantry and grabbed a jar of Nutella. Nutella is basically a mood stabilizing drug right? 

After that, I had a headache and felt exhausted the rest of the day. If you’ve read this far, thank you and congratulations, that was only the beginning of the breakdown. 

Therapy & Psychiatrist

Several days later, I had therapy via FaceTime. I hate FaceTime therapy, because I hate looking at myself in that almost always unflattering angled little square picture. Usually, I have a hard time getting started in my therapy appointments because I cannot think of what happened or how I felt the past two weeks. This time I knew what to talk about and immediately broke down crying and spilled my guts. She gave me all the typical therapy speak, how she is a therapist so she knows for sure that I am not alone in my struggles, that I should not feel burdened calling friends and family when I need to talk because most true friends are looking for the special connection. Standard therapy.

The next day I had an appointment with a new psychiatrist. To my luck, the past two providers I had within this same group have left the practice. Am I that difficult to care for? In that appointment, I remembered I had run out of my Wellbutrin prescription after my last provider left the practice. She ensured me she would make sure I have enough refills to get me through until my next appointment. But of course, I ran out and the pharmacy sent a refill request and no response. Apparently, you are not supposed to stop Wellbutrin abruptly. This new doctor told me I was most likely going through withdrawal and that once I tapered back up, hopefully that would have me feeling better. I told her, wow maybe that could explain the headaches I have been having. She told me I could have a seizure from the withdrawal. Greeeeeaattt. At least, after this appointment, I had some hope and a plan to get back on track. 

So, I decided to call out of work the next day so I could make sure to go to the pharmacy, take some time for self care and get my shit together. Which causes serious guilt. I rarely call out, plus we are pretty short staffed at work these days. No one wants to be a bedside nurse right, we are sick of it. Anyway, I go to the pharmacy, which is inside my hospital. I large hospital; its not just easy to talk in a walk out of. I had 5 prescriptions ready for me to pick up. I get back to my car in the parking garage, 5 prescriptions and none of them are Wellbutrin! Ahhh! Well, I won’t totally bore you with the phone calls and steps I made there after, but trust me, those are hard tasks for me. Like I am unmedicated, going through withdrawal, and you expect me to take care of all this myself and get beyond these roadblocks. Would we expect a blind man to drive himself to his eye doctor? I lost my shit. It felt like this was the end of my life. I could not take one more thing. I had to drive home, while I was hysterically crying, intermittently closing my eyes, then realizing “your driving open your eyes, idiot!” Which brought me back to my driving anxiety mentioned earlier. A day that was meant to be a mental health day very quickly turned into a major mental illness day. 

Can’t Turn Off the Mom

My time to sulk and live in misery was short lived. Later in the day, I had to pick Kylie up from school then turn around and drive her back to school for her spring tap performance. Motherhood can’t always take a day off, and mental illness does not give a shit what’s on your to-do list. Luckily, I was able to get things sorted out and pick up my Wellbutrin the next day and started on the smallest dose and will taper back up. That night, I sat down, refilled my TWO pill containers for the week. Picture of all my prescriptions included for reference. When I look at all these, I feel super crazy. Some of these are for RA, but most relate to psychiatric care. Logically I know these all have a purpose, and through a lot of trial and error, maybe I can find what is actually helping and what isn’t and streamline a bit. This is an insecurity that comes from societies stigma on mental illness and treatment I am sure. I’m quite sure if I had diabetes and it took three different types of medications to get it under control, I probably wouldn’t judge myself so harshly. Actually that’s a lie, I definitely would. That is who I am. Very harsh self critic. 

Long Story Short

Long story short: I had an anxiety attack, not purposely was withdrawing from my medications, thank God I didn’t have a seizure, insert full mental breakdown from the overwhelm of trying to get my shit together, weekly medication containers filled, back to regular life as a struggling mother and nurse. Blog started. 

If you’re reading this and can relate, I’m sorry you have to deal with this too. Maybe my therapist is right, a lot of people are struggling right now. If you can’t, well good for you, must be nice being normal (“bitch” insert eye roll)!

ashley

Mental Mommy, RN