In 2016, from February 17 until and including February 19, when I was in the last year of the high school, I participated in a spiritual retreat with some of my classmates and two of my teachers.
On February 17 evening, we watched the movie
"Of Gods and Men" in its French version. I didn't understand everything in this movie, but the elements I understood triggered a panic attack for me. So, when the movie had finished and when my classmates had left the room, I came closer to one of my teachers. I was breathing so fast that she said : "It looks like you have just come back from a marathon!". I answered her that I was stressed because of the movie. So, we left the room and we went upstairs together. While we were going upstairs, she said to me : "What is this breathing? And you are so pale!".
When we arrived near the bedrooms, she advised me to take a shower so that I could calm down, and she said to me : "Good night, sweet dreams, no stress and remember to breathe deeply and slowly if you are stressed". So, I wished her a good night and sweet dreams.
Then, I took a shower, I brushed my teeth, I wrote in my diary, I set my alarm (on my original Nintendo DS) so that it would ring at 7 AM and I went to bed. It was midnight.
That night was terrible for me. First, I was still stressed due to the movie. Thanks to the deep breathing exercises, I ended up calming down and falling asleep. Not for a long time : I woke up suddenly because I remembered that I had set the alarm. Effectively, alarms are very stressful for me. Usually, I don't use them, but that night, I decided to set an alarm because it was late when I went to bed and I had to wake up early the next morning.
So, I woke up, I checked the time, I fell asleep again, then I woke up again because I was afraid of the alarm, I checked the time, I fell asleep again, and so on until I had to go to the bathroom. It was 5:30 AM. So, I went to the bathroom, I did my business and I flushed the toilet, but the flush continued to make noise for over half an hour. As a result, I couldn't fall asleep again. When the flush stopped making noise, there was less than an hour left before the alarm. Consequently, I couldn't sleep because I was too afraid of the alarm. Finally, at 6:40 AM, I got up and I disabled the alarm.
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