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Panic attacks when on holidays

Yaffi

Dear all, 

I am very sorry if this has been covered in other conversations, please accept my apologies in advance. I normally have a well regulated life when everything has a routine, work, nursery, house life, good plans for weekends, well managed breaks to recharge, I live in a nice natural spot with green, seaside which allows me to go for walks (very helpful for me) etc. I love going on holidays too as I love travelling, but recently whenever holidays are in the horizon I start getting panic attacks, before and on holidays too. Specifically when holidays involve going to my home town and stay with or close by to my parents things are worse.  This Christmas things really went out of control.  I have seen and see currently therapists, counsellors, psychiatrists, GPs etc... everyone super supportive, with plenty of sources of help. I have been prescribed antidepressants of various types but all ended up with unbearable side effects which disabled all other aspects of my life given that this really is only confined to holidays....so everyone seems a bit puzzled on what to do with me. The reason I write here is that I feel very alone and I am terrible at expressing this feeling, I wonder whether anyone has experienced something similar. I am not asking for a solution of course and I understand that everyone is different, just wanted to know if anyone has experienced anything similar. 

Thanks a lot! 

Parents
  • Yaffi said:
    I am not asking for a solution of course and I understand that everyone is different, just wanted to know if anyone has experienced anything similar. 

    I used to get really anxious about these sorts of things when I was in my teens / early 20s but this was 40 years ago and there was no real support available back then.

    The approach I learned to use that helped me was to keep really busy in the run up to the events to distract myself, use checklists to make sure I had all my obligations dealt with (presents, packing clothes etc) and developed a variant of meditation to help me come down from the stress highs (lows?) and force my shoulders to relax so I could lower the cortosol levels in my blood and operate in less of a fight-or-flight mode.

    If you are finding these mental health professionals cannot help you with this then I think you have not found very capable ones. A licensed psychotherapist with a track record of working with autists would be your best bet in my opinion. Psychiatrists are more suitable diagnosing and medicating patients, counsellors & therapists have a lot less formal training than a licensed psychotherapist so may not have the same knowledge and finding someone who knows how to interact with autists is very important as we have complex needs.

    There is no "solution" as such, just a process to help make it less problematic for you.

Reply
  • Yaffi said:
    I am not asking for a solution of course and I understand that everyone is different, just wanted to know if anyone has experienced anything similar. 

    I used to get really anxious about these sorts of things when I was in my teens / early 20s but this was 40 years ago and there was no real support available back then.

    The approach I learned to use that helped me was to keep really busy in the run up to the events to distract myself, use checklists to make sure I had all my obligations dealt with (presents, packing clothes etc) and developed a variant of meditation to help me come down from the stress highs (lows?) and force my shoulders to relax so I could lower the cortosol levels in my blood and operate in less of a fight-or-flight mode.

    If you are finding these mental health professionals cannot help you with this then I think you have not found very capable ones. A licensed psychotherapist with a track record of working with autists would be your best bet in my opinion. Psychiatrists are more suitable diagnosing and medicating patients, counsellors & therapists have a lot less formal training than a licensed psychotherapist so may not have the same knowledge and finding someone who knows how to interact with autists is very important as we have complex needs.

    There is no "solution" as such, just a process to help make it less problematic for you.

Children
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