My Brain and Emotions?

Carol McLeod

That’s a loaded subject for me. My brain and my emotions seem to be duking it out lately. Just when I think I’ve achieved some kind of equilibrium (brain), I get hit upside the head with a fast ball called a ‘panic attack’(emotion).

Nowadays I can tell when I’m susceptible to running amuck. I’m ready to run away and join the circus or live in a cave or disappear under the bed. I start imaging things – emotional things. I see a distorted and hostile world. I constantly look over my shoulder. I think I am un-likeable. My dispassionate brain tries to catch the attention of my emotional self and throw it back into the closet before I make an ass of myself.

These unpredictable emotional episodes started many years ago, before I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. At the time I thought I was showing signs of Alzheimer’s and was  turning into a neurotic shrew. I was suspicious and loaded with angst. One day I realized just how unlikely the scenarios in my head were. That was when I began to take notice of ‘the anti-matter Carol’

Back when I was diagnosed there was no literature about panic attacks in the neurologist’s office. I had heard nothing about them. They can literally scare you to death when you get them without warning. What a relief when I learned what was happening to me. That meant I might still a good person after all.

Then came the day I began taking an anti-depressant.  After being on them for a few months my husband and I were in the kitchen talking about something and I laughed. He looked at me with surprise on his face. “What?” I asked him. He said “You just laughed out loud, you haven’t done that in years!”  That was food for thought.

I realized that my world had changed. What had long since faded to gray over the years was now in living, blooming color again. I’m not always cheerful though. I still have “Wuthering Heights” days. And I have days that seem to be medicated into a fog .

 Sometimes I feel like I’m from “Stepford”. I know people who have those pill cases that chime “it’s time to take your pill” at a pre-set time. Those reminder pill boxes are a great invention, but they remind me of ‘The Stepford Wives’. I feel  I’m now medicated into normality (as normal as it gets for me), but that I can be a loose cannon when my meds get out of sync. I still prefer the medicated Carol.