Apparently, I didn't see something that was right in front of me. They
say that most people who have bipolar don't realise when they're
hypomanic because they simply feel 'elevated' and happier, but that
outsiders can often distinguish it from the more central, normal moods.
While I've always been pretty keen on my different moods, even at
different levels, I've apparently been extremely blind toward my
anxiety.
For years, I've had problems with hyperhydrosis -
unnecessary sweating - and always figured that it was just that, not
that there was actually an underlying cause. It's not the most pleasant
thing to admit, but my family knows one thing about me that I try to
hide from the world - I often stink, badly. And it's not really my
fault, I just can't control how much I sweat. Well, I decided to do some
digging into the matter since I knew that there were two types of
sweat: sweat caused by heat, activity, and more normal causes, and sweat
caused by distress, anxiety, agitation, and the like. I knew that one
stank and one, for the most part, didn't (this mission to figure my
sweating ordeal out was mostly triggered by my realisation that I've
been sweating more lately, where I've been more anxious than usual, but
just prior I had gone quite a while without much of a problem and seemed
to be doing fine.) Well, I found what I was looking for; my...
sebaceous, mordacious sweat has been caused by such anxiety, just
anxiety at levels I couldn't quite detect. You see, stress- and
anxiety-induced sweat is the sweat that smells (perhaps why people are
often told 'It can smell fear!' when dealing with some strong, deadly
animal or creature.
So what does this mean? Well, the next time
that I start sweating uncontrollably while simultaneously feeling like
I'd taken an ice bath, I'll know that it's my cue to try and calm my
body down. I suppose I never really caught that it was anxiety-induced
because I never got the clammy palms like so many people with anxiety
get, nor the dizziness with those much lesser episodes of anxiety. The
anxiety that I usually notice involves a pounding heart, and dizzy head,
and cyclical thoughts - it never occurred to me that I could be having
more subconscious or simply less obvious anxiety. I've also had a few
nightmares recently, and I seemingly never have anything I would deem a
nightmare, and I'd wake up in a cold sweat. It seems that, for some
reason, my level of anxiety has been going up lately, and I have no idea
why that would be. I've continued avoiding... well, essentially
everything, as to not have anxiety, I have no life or social life (and
haven't really for at least a couple years), I dropped out of school, I
barely go outside the front door of my house, probably averaging 5 to 10
times a year, not including doctors' appointments. I've avoided
everything that could induce anxiety and panic, more now than ever, so
why am I still anxious and agitated?
I've also noticed that I've
had some more hyperactive, erratic behaviors/moods, without even quite
qualifying as hypomania, but not truly ADHD, either. It's like a
sub-hypomania (like quarter mania), agitated state where I have
difficulty sleeping, concentrating, staying still, maintaining a single
thought or stream of thoughts, where my mood can fairly easily shift by
external stressors, I can get anxious very easily, and a number of other
symptoms that bear resemblance to both hypomania and ADHD, but don't
seem to quite be either one. It might be a mild mixed episode (a cross
between hypomania/mania and depression), but I've had plenty of those
in the past, and it doesn't quite feel like that. I just know that it
seems like it's sole purpose is to exacerbate problems, or to be easily
exacerbated itself and cause its own problems.
So, embarrassing
personal information aside, anxiety... It's creeping closer and closer
to my comfort zone, making the comfort zone ever smaller, and I have no
idea as to the cause. It should be dealt with, somehow, and if I can't
deal with it, then I fear that I'll become an agoraphobic who'll never
leave the house (oh, wait, I already am!) Not dealing with the
constantly encroaching anxiety will make it so that I would, with almost
complete certainty, never be able to function or live a reasonable
life. At least, at this point, I have a little bit of a chance. Sounds
like I have some comfort zone expanding to do, soon... It almost makes
my heart flutter just thinking about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment