My shoes are full of water

Tom Cruise: thank you so much. By the way I feel that we have been through enough together - you doing a Misery on me and breaking both my legs, etc - that you can just call me Tom

Once a day, shadows briefly bring back to life the beautiful ‘Ghost of Ungru Manor’ Estonia...

A very long thread on it: https://twitter.com/lmrwanda/status/1505646738627088389?t=06aHTTZkf1ZaJyCDhWUzTg&s=19

Because as someone who has felt this I can not stress how different it actually is from anxiety. Which is saying a lot because I have a massive anxiety disorder.

I’ve only felt this twice in my life - once when I was going into kidney failure due to an infection and again when my body was going into shock due to dehydration and malnourishment due to GI issues - and I can not stress how much it saved my life. It’s hard to even put it into words. It’s not like a panic attack, or anxiety. It is a horrific gut turning feeling of absolute dread.

Especially if you have anxiety you’ll know the difference honestly. It’s so much worse. It’s every cell in your body and your brain screaming that there’s something horribly wrong in a way you’ve never felt. It’s your brain screaming out that you are going to die in a way no panic attack has ever done before.

For me, it was very quiet. For me, there was a deep sense that I could just lie down on the floor and not have to ever get up again, no effort required.

That combined wrongness/relief was so weird and so unsettling that I drove myself to the ER.

For me, its the overwhelming, near calm certainty of doom that distinguishes it from the jittery panic of “but something could go wrong.”

There’s no “what if?” There’s no room to question it. It just IS. And it’s very different from the “calm” of disassociation too. I’m not disassociated from myself when it happens. I’m probably actually the most present ever.

I called emergency services and tried to explain what I’m feeling. I thought I would be written off, but when I started describing the feeling, immediately the dispatcher sent paramedics to my apartment. Good thing too, as I had a stroke in the ambulance.

It was this “Something is Wrong” feeling and it is very difficult to describe just how urgent and different it feels from the usual “Whelp, I’m going to die.” feeling anxiety has.

I am someone with severe ©PTSD that predates my experiences of almost dying. Before knowing what the “impending doom” of dying actually felt like, the fear and anxiety caused by my ©PTSD felt very much like what you think death should feel like.

The danger feels so real, and it has driven me to the ER a couple of times because there was no way my body could feel this cold, this hot, this shaky, this fast, this full of dread, and for something to not be wrong.

And there was something wrong. My body was flooded with all kinds of stress hormones in response to trauma. It was my brain misfiring and insisting we had to run because there was a metaphorical tiger stalking me through the tall grass, and we needed to get away now, now, now.

I still experience episodes like this – largely due to the repeated trauma of almost dying several times, but while I know the danger feels real (and that there could be something else wrong with me, I do not dismiss that), I am now also in a unique position to know that this feeling is not what they mean when they talk about Impending Doom.

Even when I’ve been detached and disassociated from myself or had psychosis from medication interactions, part of me still knew on some level that I was panicking, and I was alive enough to panic.

Impending Doom is not like that.

There is no franticness to impending doom. No room for questions. It just is. It’s in every cell of your body; every piece of your brain resonates with it. There’s no anxiety. There’s no panic. There’s no fear. There’s no fight, flight, or freeze. You’re just certain.

I know it sounds trite to say it, but you will know because there is no way to mistake it for anything else.

You are going to die, it’s a fact, and you are eerily calm about it.

Like I don’t think words can ever fully express how still everything feels. How still you feel as a person. It’s like your body just shuts everything else off but in a very present and coherent way.

It’s like feeling the weight of the ocean bearing down on top of you and still somehow being able to think, “hm, this isn’t good. I should probably call an ambulance” in a way that I have never experienced from ©PTSD or anxiety.

And it freaks people out.

I had a doctor friend tell me once it’s a bit like the uncanny valley of calmness. No one should be able to look at you and describe what they’re feeling at that moment with that level of calm certainty. If they do, something is very, very wrong, and it pings a sense of urgency that you don’t always see in the ER, even when someone’s sitting in the corner holding their detached finger on ice.

I wasn’t in my body in the same way, I had ringing in my ears so loud I couldn’t think from the aspirin but I was in a quiet place and all I knew is I needed to get my mom. All I could do is look at myself and go I fucked up.

I felt so much love for myself outside of me at that moment.

Panic attacks felt buzzy, hot and make my mouth feel tingly.