I created this blog for my own benefit and as a means to document the highs and lows that accompany having high-functioning panic disorder and rapid cycling bipolar disorder. After a particularly awful spate of panic attacks this summer I found myself looking through old diaries in the pursuit of a panacea; to find some tiny element of similarity between the past and the present and console myself that yes I have felt this way before and no, I did not die.
The main, entirely irrational fear my panic attacks tend to hone in on is stroke and 'locked-in syndrome'. I have no family history of this and there's absolutely no reason for me to think this will happen. Such is the joy of panic attacks.
I've spent hours trawling old diaries and the Internet hoping to find my own experiences elsewhere. I never did. The immediacy of mental illness gets less than its fair share of attention, instead reduced to a standardised list of symptoms or a personal but retrospective and incomplete account of experience. By documenting things I said or did 'in the moment', I hope to create a diary of the experiential dimensions of mental illness that I can look back on.
The immediacy of experience is always infinitely more informative (and interesting) than sterile biomedical explanations of mental illness. As I said before - this blog is for my own reference and I doubt it will reach a wider audience but if it does, and it is at least of interest to someone else then that's great. Also, if anyone keeps a similar blog and happens upon mine, send me your URL !
