If You Can't Perform Your Pain, That's It for You. You Are to Die on Your Own
I'm in a bind.
If I speak up, I might look like the bitter bitch - the one who's just jealous that someone else is getting the attention, like the spotlight was robbed from me.
People may say that I'm trying to undermine or invalidate another person's experience. But if I don't speak up, I have to watch how destructive it is when a serious medical emergency is trivialized.
I have to watch someone set a gold standard for panic attack that doesn't resemble anything we know to be true. It warps the public's mind.
It teaches people that to be valid, your suffering must be seen. To be believed, you have to look crazy enough for the audience. You are forced to perform your dysfunction - making others bathe you to prove your depression or screaming and making cute pinky gestures to prove your panic.
It's a dangerous suggestion: that if your crisis is quiet, internal, contained or invisible, it simply isn't a crisis at all.
Let me tell you the ugly side of a panic attack.
There is nothing pretty, photogenic, frameable, performative, or presentable about it. It's foul, chaotic - and it may even be so quiet.
But in this crazy world, it feels like we are being forced to perform our affliction. Drum roll, dramatic entrance, smoke and mirrors.
Perform or perish.
If that's the case, should I just stop holding myself in? During my next attack, should I just let the vomit shoot out? Should I just let go of all control - the pee, the poo?
Would that be dramatic enough for an audience? Would that be convincing enough for someone to take my words?
Or will I always be invisible because my panic isn't showy enough?
Fight or flight isn't even an option for me. I just freeze in place.
It's a violent physical takeover.
When my system hits the alarm, the blood is just gone from my face. I don't see this on a camera screen in real time; I saw it for the first time in the look of pure shock on a classmate's face when I turned to her in a school assembly to whisper for help.
My skin was white as a sheet and my lips were almost bluish - a ghostly face.
The rest of the time, I only see the aftermath.
Years later, once I started working and wearing makeup, I'd make it to the toilet after an attack only to realize my dark circles looked a thousand times worse and my makeup had completely vanished into a pasty, ghostly mess. Waterproof makeup melts away, even when I'm not dripping in sweat.
Because I am terrified of making a scene, I follow the rules of society even while my internal world is imploding.
It is an incapacitating experience.
I feel stuck. I need to stay closer to the ground - I need to squat or sit because I'm so lightheaded - but I force myself to stand still, switching my weight from foot to foot.
I feel this desperate instinct to make myself smaller, hugging myself to seek comfort - perhaps a natural reflex for the butterfly hug - just trying to hold my own pieces together.
I couldn't sob or squeal if I tried.
People ask why I don't just ask for help; they don't know that I'm fighting to keep my stomach down. If I tried to scream, I wouldn't make a sound - I'd just be violently sick.
Instead, I couldn't stop yawning, starving for oxygen because even in an open space, it feels like there is no air.
Panic is an invisible storm; I might look completely calm on the outside, but my heart is racing at 150 BPM.
There was once I managed to rush home before the panic fully took over. I can't let outside clothes touch anything. I was so weak I couldn't even dial for help. I struggled to strip while lying on the floor, crawling to the bathroom just to sit under the shower stream because I couldn't stand.
It could pass as dramatic, but I had no witness and I didn't record it.
I have had social proof once, though. Back in the 80s, long before mobile recording and social media, I had my first full-blown attack at seven years old.
I had a massive audience - rows of classes and teachers. I even had a victim.
To the girl sitting in front of me: I am so sorry. She was the recipient of my Exorcist-style projectile vomit. There was no camera, but it was real.
Maybe for some, the term panic attack has become a catch-all phrase for general fear or a need for reassurance, even if those feelings don't align with the panic attacks I’ve endured for 37 years with such consistent symptoms.
If that's their truth, fine with me; it's not my place to invalidate it.
Perhaps some of them bypass the freeze and externalize everything - sobbing, hyperventilating, or squealing. But because those are the only symptoms that translate to a screen or to a witness's sight, they have become the default image of panic attack in the public eye.
I'm in a fight not to hit the floor; how am I supposed to perform for the camera? My crisis isn't a main character moment; it's an invisible struggle to stay upright.
The reality is that panic attack makes you feel like you are dying alone, even when you are surrounded by people.
You are locked in. You see everything, but you are unable to reach out. It's like being awake during a surgery - you feel and hear every agonizing detail, but you are paralyzed. You are just… locked in.
When you live with panic attacks that are internal and quiet, seeing a theatrical version on social media feels like more than just a performance; it feels like your own experience is being systematically misrepresented and minimized.
How does one make eye contact with a camera when one is feeling like they are dying?
There are real-world consequences for me, and a very real tension for others, in the massive gap between how mental health is portrayed for clout and how it is actually lived in the shadows.
When the loud version becomes the only version people believe, those of us who freeze are left behind in the silence.
©Britt H.
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You vomit because of stress, or rather, you vomit after the stress, and that's not really going to change, especially if you focus on it and can't find another way to express yourself.
I know plenty of people and children who do this; some get over it and others don't.
I agree with you that what we see on television and what is written about panic attacks is certainly far from the truth and paints a distorted picture. But isn't this true of all illnesses?
In your case, it certainly won't help if you scream loudly and then call for help. By now, people are used to you and see you as someone who wants attention; you've already been labelled as such.
What might help is if you ask for help and say when you feel nauseous: I think I have food poisoning, and then run away. Food poisoning is more tangible than feelings you may or may not have and express or not express.
The reason no one listens to you or takes you seriously? It's not because you desperately try to cover everything up and keep it inside, but because you actually always have something wrong with you. And this makes you part of a very large group of people who are in fact chronically ill. People who are chronically ill are no longer taken seriously because they are the ones who 'always have something wrong with them'. People who always have a little ache or fear are no longer seen. Regardless of whether this is true or a form of attention-seeking. Someone who has a silly cut on their finger or a loose piece of skin on their nail and the oven is beeping gets all the attention. These are usually people who are considered pitiful, but who also have a 'problem' that can be solved immediately. When it comes to chronic conditions, there is never a solution, and I know how often people would rather not have problems and recurring problems. And they would rather not be confronted with them either; it's just exhausting.
I don't cry or complain either, and I don't raise my voice. Even when I fall down the stairs, I don't swear and you won't hear a peep from me. I can't throw up either, because that was forbidden to me as a grandchild. Swallow it down was the warning.
The consequence of always being left to your own devices and being threatened is that you learn to save yourself, even if your self-reliance seems to be at a very low level. By running away and just making it to the toilet or home, you protect others and not yourself, because you remove all evidence that something serious is going on that everyone thinks or wants to admit. And here, too, you wear a mask.
I don't have a solution for this at the moment, except to try to be your own dirty, ugly self as much as possible. You know, that person that no one wants to see because they think you should put on another mask. It will be a long period of struggle, or is it resistance, but eventually you will see that you have space for yourself and that the people around you will matter less and less, but also that you will attract more and more pleasant people. People who take you seriously. It won't be a very large group, but they will be there and that will make your life easier in any case.
❤️🍀
Never once I was able to scream but eventually I managed to tell someone I'm feeling unwell. Not sure screaming was possible. It needed so much additional energy.
Right. People would think "She's always like that" and don't even bother anymore.
I learn to minimize my 'noise' and pain because I'm really afraid of making a scene. When I had my injection during primary school, I was really scared but I look at the girl in front of me and she seems so brave. So I learnt that from her. Put on a fake brave mask.
I can imagine that no one would know that you fell down the stairs.
It's not necessarily true that the girl sitting in front of you was brave. Everyone reacts in their own way, and perhaps she was in shock or simply couldn't do anything else at that moment but sit there and watch. You don't know how she felt at home or how she feels today when he says he can still remember that incident. I recognise a lot of what you're saying. It's not that if you have something chronic, you're no longer taken seriously if you have something more than twice. You're also not taken seriously if you never complain. If you never open your mouth, if you never shout, then you are not taken seriously, and people with a strong personality are not taken seriously anyway. People say: yes, yes, I know you're having a hard time, but you'll be fine (this is something my father literally said to me before he turned around, got in his car and drove away).
In nearly every case no one knows I fell of the stairs or have been seriously ill. I simply continue, with or without pain, high fever, although today it's less (the continuing...)
You mean the fell was a recent incident?
I don't really know how that girl feels inside but it was the only way I could copy others and pretend to be like everyone else.
Yes...yes...we look back and we know we had survived
Thank you
@event-horizon