I had an anxiety attack after work today.

I knew it was coming – I’ve been able to start predicting when they might happen after having so many of them. I figured it’d happen toward the end of work today, if it was going to happen at all.

Problem is, it doesn’t really help me all that much when I know they are coming. It isn’t like I can just schedule them for an exact time slot. “Oh yes, I have my anxiety attack scheduled from 4-4:30 today, can you book your meeting after that?” isn’t a thing. Frequently, I’ll even have to have a meeting or work through it due to a scheduling conflict with my brain’s fantasy land calendar. All I can do is set up for the attack in advance, make my comfy little weighted blanket fort on my bed and just head there when it happens, letting one of my cats provide my grounding.

This one lasted three hours. Do you know what it is like to have an anxiety attack for three hours straight, non-stop without your brain even taking a moment to get a drink of water? I’m sure some of you do, but for those who don’t it is freaking EXHAUSTING.

I am left afterward drained, fatigued, and dehydrated (especially when I start crying for a large chunk of that time). My brain is likely going to malfunction for the next few days at a minimum from that one. I don’t know if I’ll be functional enough to work tomorrow morning and I don’t even have to commute more than a walk downstairs. My cats get scared because they pick up off of my emotions, so I’m going to be cleaning up cat vomit for the next couple of days. I’m not really capable of cooking during that time (especially need to stay away from sharp objects, just in case), so that means spending a bunch of money on delivery and not necessarily eating well-balanced meals.

The worst part? Those three hours cost me my recovery time from work, as though I worked on something super intense for an extra three hours today… which is the trigger I had for this anxiety attack to begin with. My primary trigger for anxiety attacks is an anxiety attack the day before.

This will likely continue until Sunday, where I can finally try and get all of the crap I’ve needed to do after work got the past few days done. I say try, as I’ll still be exhausted from my brain acting like I had a 60h work week.

It is important for me to share mental health things with my friends, as it isn’t all that apparent due to how well I hide these things. I’m functional, and on good days I can even cope well, but I’m not going to fool myself into thinking that I’m doing great. This pandemic has been pretty horrible for my mental health, and I’m just going to accept that these things are going to happen.