August 27: Panic Attacks, New Cartoon, Barbecue

I have a person I care about very much who has recently been suffering from severe panic attacks.  This person has always been the one in control, the one everyone expects to have all the answers.  He has a pretty important job, and his work has been causing him a huge amount of stress.  He's been on vacation for a little while, but the time off hasn't seemed to help ease the unhappiness he's been experiencing.  When anyone mentions medication or therapy, he turns defensive, almost downright hostile.

The last detail in the previous paragraph has surprised me a lot.  The person I'm talking about is in a position to know a great deal about the benefits of medications which ease anxiety and depression.  Yet he seems to think that he can somehow wait out the problem.  That it will in some way disappear by itself.  I'm afraid he's going to continue to get worse and worse, until hospitalization is the only option.  Either that or he's going to turn into an agoraphobic.

I'm not sure why I'm sharing this story with you.  I guess it's to ask for prayers for this person.  He's very unhappy, struggling a great deal each day.  Mental illness, whether its mild or severe, still carries so much shame and stigma.  People are afraid to admit they need help, people in a great deal of pain.  And they suffer in silence, feeling alone and abandoned.

Tonight, I have to go to a barbecue at my sister-in-law's house.  My wife's father is visiting from downstate, and we have to go pay homage.  I made a brownie trifle this afternoon as my offering.  That's the reason I'm posting so early today.  I'm not going to be near a computer this evening.

Life is so difficult sometimes, with no really easy solutions to problems.  I don't know what I'm going to do for the person I just wrote about.  There's not much I can do at the moment, except wait for Humpty to fall off the wall and then pick up the pieces.

Saint Marty's feeling a little powerless.

Confessions of Saint Marty