I am quite late to the “year/decade review” party, as I don’t think 2019 was a particularly glorious year for me. However, when I’ve finally got a chance to give it more thoughts, I realized there was something personal and important, although not at all “glorious”, that I wanted to share with you. If I have to pick a word for my 2019, it will be “healing”. To me 2019 was a year of healing.
Around this time last year, I had a full-on panic attack in the office. After a short meeting on a Monday afternoon, I started feeling…weird – for the lack of a better word, something I had never experienced before. My anxiety was shooting through the roof all of a sudden; I felt my “spirit” was floating outside of my body (I learned from my doctor later on this is called “depersonalization”); I walked back and forth in the hallway; my heart started racing; and I was breathing faster and faster to the point that I felt I might pass out at any minute. Although I was extremely embarrassed for acting so abnormal in a professional setting, I managed to drag myself to my manager’s office and said this: “Hey, I don’t know how to say this, but I think I am having a panic attack.”
I spent the next 30 minutes in his office. Surrounded by three colleagues trying to calm me down, I drank some water, sweated like crazy, (politely) rejected the idea of calling an ambulance (as I heard it was very expensive), and also (politely) declined the proposal of breathing into a brown paper bag to alleviate my hyperventilation (as I didn’t want to look any more ridiculous although I learned afterwards it could be helpful). After a while, I finally felt that my “spirit came back to my body” and was sent home.
I slept for 15 hours that night. I woke up the next day feeling exhausted and frightened. After a full day of flashbacks of my panic attack, at the end of that day, I was neither sure that it wouldn’t happen again nor confident that I knew how to deal with it if it happened again. Therefore, I decided to take a leave to figure out what was going on with me.
I did not know how long this leave would be, and it turned out to be 75 days. When I started my leave, I immediately went on a desperate search for psychiatrists and received a consistent diagnosis from all (four!) of them: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (“GAD”), with panic episodes. I was prescribed with medications and took them religiously as I thought those would work magic to make me feel normal again, soon. Well, while meds definitely helped stabilize my emotions, nothing was really “magic”. Per the suggestion from my doctor, I simultaneously worked with a therapist up to a point that I finally felt less frightened to go back to work in April.
While I can go on and on to bore you with all my frustrations, fears, and doubts I experienced during those 75 days, more importantly I am hoping to share a few thoughts on what to do if you encounter a similar incidence:
It’s so easy to think you are the only one in this world suffering through this, but please believe you are not alone. You really aren’t.
Start with a consultation session with a doctor/a few doctors to get a sense of what is going on and if you feel connected to the doctor.
Be prepared for a long haul (as I am still seeing my psychiatrist regularly since this time last year).
Take medications as directed but manage your expectation that there are no magic pills.
Find a therapist if possible to figure out the root cause of your issue. I ended up seeing a therapist specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (“CBT”) and it helped me realize that some of my biggest fears were not caused by other people but my cognitive bias.
Time could heal some wounds. Something that used to scare you may not be that way some time later. However hard it feels at that moment, it will be over.
Besides the professional help, another factor that I cannot emphasize enough is the support system. I was immensely fortunate to have all the resources to help me get back on track. My parents insisted on waiting until I woke up to Facetime me so that they could make sure I was doing alright (there was a 13-hour time difference). Blowfish accumulated quite some firsthand experience dealing with mental breakdowns, and he stuck through it. My friends who knew my situation checked in with me and encouraged me throughout those not-so-easy days, shared their own experiences dealing with mental struggles and recommended various resources. Among those friends, there was Mai.
Frankly, besides seeing doctors, the only thing that was actually on my to-do list during those days was an engagement photoshoot scheduled a long time ago with Mai and Yasser. While I was looking forward to it all along, as the shoot came closer, I also grew increasingly anxious as I wasn’t sure if they would still like to have me as their photographer, given my psychological condition then. I gave Mai a full disclosure and you know what, the only word I got from this lady was a firm “Yes”. Therefore, we had this 6am shoot at the iconic Brooklyn Bridge.
My stories in 2019 were not particularly fun, but I was not a tad less grateful for the overwhelming love, care and support I received. It was a year of healing, thinking and growing. I learned some lessons the hard way, but sometimes it is the hard way through which one could learn.
Mai and Yasser are off to a new chapter in Chicago soon. Although this blog is “just a few months” late, I guess it is never too late to reciprocate the love to the ones who loved you, and to pass that love forward.
2020, here I come.
