Wow, I sounded a bit like Paul Harvey, didn't I? I think HE took Life Skills! hehehehe...gotta keep the humor!
So I think I left off with the start of my sophomore year at UNCC. I was plugging along, star student that I was, joining honor societies and campus groups like crazy. I sat down on a Monday morning in my Educational Psychology class, and a person walked in and sat down beside me that rocked my world. Without going into details, it was another woman I KNEW had been a victim of sexual abuse around the same time as mine.
I didn't know it at the time, but that day was the begining of my history with panic and anxiety attacks that stole most of my 20s from me. I know now that, somewhere in my subconscious, my brain went into hyper-super-overdrive to protect me from having the awareness of the sexual abuse as I sat next to this woman. The fears hit me from out of the blue, and the first night I had a panic attack, I wound up in the emergency room without a clue as to what was happening to me. Thank God, the doctor knew immediately and, after giving me a shot of Valium (gosh, that's good stuff!), he sent me home with the promise that I had to get help. I had to go see someone to talk through my troubles.
Unfortunately, that didn't immediately happen. I went to my home and couldn't leave the front door for three months. I remember the first trip out. My mother literally forced me into the car and drove me to my grandmother's home, no more than a 10 minute trip. I sat in her house and just cried and cried.
A few days later, I sat down with a psychologist, Wes, for the first time who worked at a satellite campus of Charter Pines Hospital that was in Concord. I began learning about brain chemistry and composition and how it impacted on panic and anxiety. We did a lot of work, and even though I'd dropped out of college, I VERY slowly began to re-enter the world. I took a part time job with people who loved me and cared about me (thanks Marvin & Tammy). After about a year and a half, I went back to UNCC to try to complete my degrees.
At Charter, a day came that I now wish I would have realized it to be the gift that it was. Wes told me, "Kara, we've done alot of great work, but next session, I want to get to the root of what is really going on." Somehow, I knew that this was a scary thing, and I didn't want to look at the root, whatever it was. (I still wasn't consciously aware of the impact of the abuse.) Amazingly, I was healed!! Wooo hooo, I never went back after that last session. I guess you could say, it scared the heck out of me to try to look back at what the root might have been. I KNOW now that God won't allow us to deal with root issues from our past until we're ready and able to handle them.
After going back on campus, shockingly, the panic attacks came back, but I think this was more just a pervasive fear going on, rather than the physical attacks themselves. I fled to the on campus Counseling Center, and began meeting with a doctor there. She recommended meeting with a psychiatrist who could prescribe medications for me. I resisted for a long time, but eventually I did agree to go on two different prescriptions. One, Buspar, I took 3 times a day as a "levelling" drug. The other, Ativan, was in case I felt a PA coming on, I could take it immediately. I used those for about 2 years until I began to wean myself off as I was back in life the way it used to be.
Ok, this is enough for now, and I'm gonna leave it here for a while. Work to do!! Have a Family Film Fest to plan for!!
Love, blessings, and giving myself some grace in the journey,
Kara
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