Monday, February 11, 2013

A(n Obvious) Revelation

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