I spoke too soon

Yep, those panic attacks I spoke of are back.  It had been over two weeks since my last one and I thought that I was done having them.  I even mentioned to a few people that I thought I was in the clear because they appeared to just stop as suddenly as they started.  Wrong.

I am still really on the fence about taking anything pharmaceutical for it.  I asked a group of autism moms how they handled their stresses and mentioned my panic attacks and the most common recommendations were either Klonopin or Xanax.  I did a great deal of reading on both of those and the side effects listed made me nervous just reading them.  I also checked into more natural methods of battling those attacks and think that going that route might be the least scary path for me to take.

I'm not one of those all-natural, crunchy or even semi-crunchy moms at all.  The minute I get a headache or any kind of body ache I am literally sprinting for the bottle of Aleve.  I don't look for all-natural methods to get rid of things like that; I rely on what I know to work and makes the pain go away in the quickest manner possible.  I insisted on drugs the only time I gave birth and the thought of doing that without them gives me the cold chills almost 11 years later.  Nooo way.  Uh-uh.

I understand why they started happening, or at least I think I do, now I just really want to make them stop.  Each time I get one I feel a bit hungover for a couple hours.  At least with a hangover you generally have memories - albeit cloudy ones - of a good time that was had.  There's nothing fun about these. 

I'm overwhelmed most of the time but what parent isn't?  I've been that way for years but having these panic attacks makes everything seem that much more strenuous to me.  The fact that these began right about the time that my son was about to start a month-long break from school also well.. sucks.  When he's in school I have a small amount of time each day to myself and try to take necessary breaks to keep me going.  I love my job as his mom and wouldn't trade it for anything, but like any full-time job time off is needed.  I'm hoping that when he goes back in less than two weeks and I have that time again that these will stop and I'll feel more like myself.  If they do continue and I am still feeling the need for help maybe a return to therapy might be in order.  Whatever I have to do I will do it because these aren't fun and these just need to go away.