How to Self-Induce a Panic Attack: A Twelve-Step Program

Have you ever just sat alone for a minute and silently thought to yourself? I have. I did this a few days ago actually. The difference between this particular time and every other time I silently thought to myself is this: I decided in about three minutes that I wanted, no, needed to move to Spain. Seriously. All it took was three minutes to myself and my brilliant idea was to flee the country.

Don't worry, though, because the crisis was averted just a few days later. But, knowing what these few days entailed, I feel inclined to share the story of my mental breakdown. Let me take you on this short lived journey and explain the ups, downs, lefts and rights of this four day life interruption.

I've been planning and preparing for what I call my European backpacking trip. The reason I say, "what I call" is because I have been told by many people that I cannot consider it a backpacking trip when I am riding the high-speed rail from city to city. Psh.. i'm walking with a backpack attached to me for three weeks - I can call it whatever I want.

So, in thinking about this backpacking trip and all of the events that recently happened in my life (break up that I took pretty hard, graduated college, realized I saved up a lot of money over the course of the past few years) I decided that in stead of leaving for three weeks and returning to the same ol' crap, I would just flee the country and move to Spain instead. Why Spain, you ask? No idea. I just picked a country that I could pronounce. Speaking a bit of Spanish might have swayed my choice a tiny bit.

Now here I am with this idea planted in my mind like the seed of a sunflower (I hear those ones grow pretty fast). Without much care or attention, this seed had grown tall and bloomed to it's full figure within a few hours. After little research and thought I had decided that I was for sure moving to Spain. I called my mom and told her I would be visiting their house that night to talk. When this happened, I explained everything I knew (which wasn't much) and made it sound just as brilliant as it sounded to be before and they bought it. Both my mom and my dad said "Go for it!" That was a problem. A big problem.

See, usually I am a very rational person. I plan ahead; I save money for necessary items or trips I want to take; I think about consequences for actions before I do them. When I start to ease away from that, my parents are the first ones to pull me back in. When they do this, I usually listen. For example, I recently wanted to buy a puppy. My dad told me no. I went to the pound anyway and met one I wanted to take home. Instead of being an adult and deciding on my own, I sent my dad a picture of the puppy, called him and asked if he still thought it was a bad idea. He said yes. I left empty handed.

You can probably see why this was a problem now. My parents said go for it, I am now going for it, full speed. This started a whirlwind of emails, Facebook chats, questions, discussions, online research and more. I started looking at schools I could attend, intensive Spanish classes I could join, jobs to apply to, places I could live, apartments I could rent and more. You name it, I looked it up. You have a question about it? I probably asked someone, if not two people. I had friends writing their friends asking questions to relay back to me. I'm am very serious when I say this: I went crazy.

I told my roommates that they would have to find another person to rent my room. I told them I was going to sell all of my things, including my car, bedroom furniture, kitchen appliances and more. I told my ex boyfriend he wasn't going to see me for over a year because I would be 6,000 some odd miles away. I told my parents that they were going to have to ship me boxes of clothes because I can't pack it all with me on the first trip out. If anyone was serious about moving to Spain, it was me.

Then, surprise surprise, I ran into more issues. Legal issues. I had no idea how hard it was to enter into another country and stay there to live and work. Why couldn't I just to go Spain and find a job and work? It's not like they stop people from doing that in America or anything...... [insert cricket sounds here]. Yes - you could say I wasn't using my brain in the most effective way at the time. And as the story goes, I did more research and found out that this simply wasn't going to happen the way I planned (or didn't plan). However, like I said before, I was determined to move there so I decided I would wing it. That's right - I was going to move to a completely different country and decide what to do when I got there. I really lost my mind now.

After thinking about this for a night, I came to the conclusion that I should not risk it and in stead, I should make an online profile on a nanny/au pair website and become and au pair for a child who needs to be taught English. (Are you following the mind-loosing yet?) I went to school and studied Journalism and Public Relations and I am going to spend a year in Spain teaching a little boy English and picking up all of his messes. Right. Exactly.

The natural next step would be to tell my employers, so I did. I wrote a nice long email to the business consultant telling her all about my need for self-discovery and world travel and that I would be quitting instead of taking three weeks off to go backpacking. Done. Awesome. Now I am on my way to being an American nanny for a 3-year-old boy in Spain with no other plans but that.

Oh god. What did I just do? I am going to Spain to do what? Cue the mental breakdown.

Personally I have never experienced an anxiety attack. I use to work in an Emergency Room where I saw them on a daily basis, however, I had not gone through anything close to what I saw.. until today.

My heart started racing, my breathing became labored, I began perspiring, I felt a little faint and I would have broken down into tears had I not been walking down the street in public. I could not believe what I had just done. There was no way this would work. I was going to fail as soon as I got there. Then I would come home to no job, no place to live, no car, and basically no belongings. I was freaking out more than I had ever freaked out. I was worried. I was scared. I seriously felt like the world was going to come crashing down on me any second. (Dramatic, but this is apparently what a panic attack feels like.)

I called my mom. I texted a friend. I called my ex. After all these contacts with people in hopes of calming down, I quickly texted the business consultant from earlier in the story and told her the plan was off. I told her that I was having an anxiety attack just thinking about it and I was not going to go through with what I told her before.

I was so embarrassed. I knew I must have sounded like I was bat shit crazy and escaped from some looney bin down the street.

Luckily she understood and she hadn't made any decisions based on the ludicrous email I sent her.

And just like that the plan was off. I was no longer going to flee the country. I was no longer quitting my job. I was no longer selling any belongings and I had to end all communication with those friends who were frantically helping my quest to find myself.

Talk about mid-mid-mid-life identity crisis.

I blame this on my parents.


Just for laughs, I will leave you with this: If you ever find yourself wanting to make similar crazy decisions and need to refer back to the stress, anxiety, apprehension, worry or fear I forced upon myself all at the same time, here is the twelve-step process to self-induce a panic attack... enjoy.

1. Have an mid-mid-mid-life identity crisis
2. Decide that fleeing the country is the absolute best thing for you at the moment
3. Confer with the adults in your life to get their opinion
4. Further consider fleeing the country
5. Tell close friends and family you will be fleeing the country
6. Research what it might actually take to flee the country
7. Decide to get a job doing something completely opposite of what you went to school for, in order to be able to support yourself in said country.
8. Write an email to the person who hired you at your perfectly good job and tell them you are fleeing the country
9. Apply to be an au pair overseas.. again, something totally opposite of what you went to school for
10. Think some more about what it's really going to take the make this country fleeing happen
11. Think about the fact that if you fail, you will come home to no car, no job, no place to stay and you will probably be broke and have to live at your parents house in the basement forever and your life, as you know it, will be over.
12. Proceed with your new self-induced panic attack