How It Feel To Have A Panic Attack

How can you explain to someone that you feel like you might be dying or stuck in a panic forever without sounding completely crazy and having it make some actual sense? It's hard to know exactly what you need when you're having a panic attack, and sometimes it's hard to even accept that you're having one. So in attempt to help people understand what happens during a panic attack (although it differs from person to person), this is the best explanation I've come up with so far:

It's like being engulfed by everything around you, one at a time.

It's like one by one, each and every stimulus around you takes over your mind and body. One by one, a sound or a feeling or a visual will become so engulfing that that one stimulus becomes your entire reality. That one thing becomes every thought that goes through your mind and every physical and emotional feeling you have.

Music seeps in through your ears and gets stuck pounding inside your brain, up against your forehead and against the walls of your seemingly hollow yet incredibly weighted down body. Voices and conversations invade your thoughts and echo themselves over any other thoughts.

Every space condenses itself so small that you become paralyzed inside it. Every space becomes the wrong space to be in and every second the feeling of needing to escape but not knowing where to escape to only worsens.

You can practically see yourself being trapped there as if it's not yourself.

Shaking spreads from your fingers to your toes until your legs wobble so much you can hardly stand. Your chest pounds and your stomach knots until you think you'll either vomit or explode. Tunnels cloud your vision until you can no longer focus or see. Your head feels light, like it's going to float away or fall right off. Your lungs suddenly shrink to half the size and can barely hold enough oxygen to keep you conscious.

Thoughts of being stuck that way forever overpower any rational thought. You don't understand why or how it's happening, but you're sure that there are no possible scenarios where it ends.

You're sure that you're stuck with an insane panic in your body and in your mind forever.

Artists I've Found Through Tumblr

     I spend a lot of time on Tumblr doing pretty much nothing, but one of the main reasons I do is because I follow so many different art blogs. I'm always stumbling across all sorts of great and weird art and inspiration so these are some of my favorite ones at the moment that I think are definitely worth looking at.


BevShots
These are really interesting because they're photos of alcohol through microscopes. Every different kind of alcohol looks different and they're almost like crazy abstract paintings.

Julie Sarloutte
This is a really cool portrait made of embroidery and it's so, so impressive.

Cheuk Lun Lo
This is one of my favorite photography series right now. It's a bunch of people's shampooed heads but when I first saw them, I thought they were some sort of abstract design or something.

Reedus Germanotta
This guy's work is a little bit difficult to explain but I'll try. It's basically photos with moving parts, almost like gifs. You have to look for yourself because they're completely different from anything I've seen.

Klaus Kampert
I love this photographer A LOT. He does all sorts of abstract photos of people's bodies and makes them look like something else completely. One of my favorite projects on this website is the one called Porcelain and it's amazing.

Elicia Edijanto
All this work is a combination of drawing and paintings and they're like black and white silhouettes of nature and animals and they're way, way cool.

Danny Ivan
This guy is a graphic artist and he makes all sorts of really abstract colorful things and they're beautiful.

Gesine Marwedel
This German dude is seriously awesome. He takes these incredible photos of people's painted bodies to look like animals and landscapes.

Why Bo Burnham Is The Best

 

     To begin with, Bo Burnham is just flat out funny. He's clever as hell and honest and makes fun of everything, including himself. He can talk about anything, serious or not, in a lighthearted way and give a new perspective on pretty much any topic. Not to mention, he's an awesome song writer and makes everything ten times more enjoyable by turning it into a song. Basically everything about him is gold, even the fact that he's 6 foot 5 and apparently did nearly perfect on his SAT's, so here's why I love him.

     In his comedy special "What" he addresses the topics of gay marriage, religion, and rape in a song he says is written from the perspective of God. He talks about it in a way that's clear and he doesn't beat around any bushes. He says exactly what he thinks about how it's ridiculous that it has to spelled out that people shouldn't rape and how masturbation is weird but totally okay and how God created gay people but it backfired. He's funny about it and knows that there's a chance people will be offended but says what he wants to say anyway. He's completely honest and straightforward but in an interview at Duke he says that he can stand behind everything he says and that he never sets out to offend anyone. He even says that if someone were to approach him and say that they were offended or hurt by something he said in a performance that he would be apologetic and understanding about it.

     He also never fails to call people out on their bullshit whether it's just someone's beliefs that are totally out of whack or hecklers at his shows or the government or corporations taking advantage of people. In the song "Repeat Stuff" he talks about how music is made to prey on young girls who are "in love" with musicians in order to make money off of them, even though it's overdone and redundant.

     In the song "Sad" he talks about how sad it is that there is racism and sexism and war while also acknowledging that he can't possibly know how that feels because he's a privileged white male who doesn't have to go through any of it.

     He makes fun of himself constantly.

     He's punny. Just watch "I'm Bo Yo" or "New Math" which are some of his older songs from Youtube that are basically just joke after joke and pun after pun.

     He sings nearly everything. He puts all of his jokes and everything he says to some catchy tune on a piano which makes it even better and he's so creative in the way he does it.

     The moral of the story is that Bo Burnham is an awesome, hilarious, smart comedian and musician and you should go watch his videos so you can laugh and be happy and thank me later.

Awesome Mash Up Covers

     I hardly ever come across mash ups of songs that are actual covers that I really like but I've come across a few lately that are worth sharing and here they are with links to the Youtube videos.


Blank Space/Style by Louisa Wendorff

This one is super popular and Taylor Swift herself tweeted it, so if you haven't seen it yet, you need to.

Cool kids/riptide by Less is More and The Queen and King

Home/Dirty Paws by the Gardiner Sisters

Love Story/Viva la Vida by Tanner Townsend

This is a little different than the others and there aren't vocals but it's awesome and I feel like I could play it in the background of my life forever and always feel good.

We Can't Stop/Price Tag by Megan and Jaclyn Davies

Taylor Swift 1989 by Sam Tsui and Kurt Schneider 

This is every song on Taylor Swift's 1989 album and it's incredible and so impressive.