In 2021, I was riding an Amtrak train when it derailed at 80 mph. Several of the cars, including the one I was in, fell onto their sides and slid a significant distance along the ground. Three people were killed.
After spending the night in a hotel, they arranged for me and several other passengers to get on another train to get us home. I didn’t think much of it, I just wanted to get home, but the moment the train got up to speed I realized I had made a mistake. I spent the entire journey in a state of extreme stress, on the verge of crying. This train (the Empire Builder) is timed so that you get to sit in the diner car and eat dinner while passing through the most scenic part of the trip, the Rocky Mountains of western Montana and northern Idaho. But I didn’t enjoy any of it. I remember staring at my dinner, desperately trying to hold myself together, wincing every time there was a bang or jolt (and for those who’ve never been on an Amtrak train - there are a lot of those).
I had never experienced an anxiety attack before, and based on this experience I never want to have one again. The train got to my home station at about six in the morning, and I didn’t sleep at all.
Anxiety stopped having nearly so much of a hold on me when I realized that there usually wasn’t a “why”, that it was just anxiety chasing its own ass and only pretending to have anything to do with the stimuli.
Agreed, it took a decent chunk of therapy for me to figure out that a lot of times I was reversing cause and effect. I’m not anxious about xyz because of whatever rationalization I came up with, it’s literally just my body dumping adrenaline and my brain looking for an explanation for why.
It was right before realizing I’m in a burnout. Too much in my private life going on, kids, housing, study, full time jobs.
The last time before that must’ve been years, but I’ve been holding it in for as long as I could, I now realize.
Trying to park at a mall, in Toronto, in early December one year (so Christmas shopping ramping up) … amusingly for an appointment with a psychologist.
She had to come out at park the car for me.
Drivers in this city… so, so toxic.
Family problems, health problems, carreer problems, and just GAD piling up on me. Someone took my pulse and it was running a sprint while I was sitting. Hands were absolutely numb and my fingers were twisting by themselves into weird poses, I couldn’t hear a thing and I couldn’t breathe.
That was the worst one I’ve ever had, and thankfully, the last one. Over a year ago. Every now and then I can feel one coming up but I’ve learned how to calm myself down in therapy.
