A few days ago I was at
the dentist getting an old filling replaced.
I’ve never loved the dentist, but I also don’t have a strong aversion
like some people do, so I go every 6 months like I’m supposed to. This time, the dentist showed me a clear
mouth guard-like piece of equipment that he’d use to keep my jaw open. It suctioned and did other fancy things, and
he told me to think of it like a snorkel.
I didn’t think much of it until it was taking up every bit of space in
my mouth, and I started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. Or swallow.
Or talk or tell them it was uncomfortable and I wanted it out, out, out,
out. Out! As my mind raced away from me at an
unstoppable pace, an image of my shivering, still-intubated father freshly out
of surgery on the stretcher invaded the space of my brain. It was so sudden that I can’t help but
imagine that it was some kind of PTSD-related image, something my brain tucked
away in a dark corner but in that moment of panic and association chose to
bring forth. I ripped the mouth guard
out shocking the duo hovering above me with their masked faces and abruptly sat
up breathing rapidly, shaking, and crying.
Between breaths I tried to explain myself and definitely sounded like a
lunatic, but I like to make people feel at ease and work hard to do so. Even in the midst of a panic attack, I
apologized and did my darnedest to justify my behavior. They were both super cool and understanding
and even mentioned that the dental chair can bring up a lot for people (who
knew?!).
The first time I ever was
able to identify a true panic attack, Angus and I were walking the paths around
our neighborhood in midday summer heat.
This was before kids, and we were having some stupid argument when
suddenly I stopped mid-step, felt what seemed like my heart threaten to beat
out of my chest, my head spin with dizzy light-headedness, and my limbs go
tingly and numb. Assuming next I would
pass out, I immediately knelt to the cement and sat down breathing as deeply as
I could under the blazing sun and discomfort of what I thought was heat
exhaustion or some kind of blood pressure shift. It wasn’t until later when these episodes
started happening more often, and mostly during exercise, that I realized I was
having panic attacks and that I had felt them before. I recalled a morning in Baltimore while
driving to work when the same thing happened.
I managed to make it into the front office of the elementary school
where I worked and broke down into sobs thinking I was having some kind of
heart attack. In the ER, after a battery
of inconclusive tests, the doctor suggested anxiety, and I pushed it from my
mind as a possibility. Anxiety couldn’t
cause such an out-of-the-blue physical response, could it? It wasn’t like I was overly upset in either of
these situations. The full body
experience of anxiety was unpredictable, and this started making me more
anxious, which in turn obviously sent my body into a tenuous space where the
unnerving energy existed close to the surface just asking for a trigger to set
it off.
Over the years since that
walk there have been many chunks of time and experiences that have thoroughly
challenged my ability to cope, to ward off the part of me I know has a tendency
to spiral out of control. Death,
injuries, pregnancies, births, postpartum.
Life. Anxiety manifests itself in
different ways in both the positive and negative. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of anxious
dreams, many of which are recurrent in their themes and plots. I am sure many of you can relate. Teaching a class of unruly students who
refuse to listen. Waking up to an
intruder with a gun standing over the bed ready to shoot. Losing my spouse or children to any number of
tragic situations. Being chased through
a maze of a house knowing the entire time I will be caught. It is a hefty list, a weighty one. These dreams deliver me to morning shaken and
plagued with the lingering feeling that things are not all right.
Many of you might judge
the inner experience I share as worthy of prescription medication, but I have
never gone down that route. I will if I
feel like I need to, but for now my coping strategies are sufficient. Most of my life isn’t lived in this space,
but some of it is. When life gets
stressful, I have a tendency to plan.
Plan a trip. Plan a date
night. Plan, plan, plan. But if I really peel down the layers of what
is good for me, what can lift me out of the overwhelming spin, it ends up being
pretty simple: Moving my body over the
earth or water. Committing myself to a weekly
practice of yoga. Traveling to new and
old places. Writing and painting. Cooking.
Spending time with the people I love.
Making time for spirituality.
Talking it out. Being present.
Besides coping mechanisms,
I’ve learned to see the positive in being blessed with a tendency toward
anxiety. Being more introspective and
analyzing of life has improved my creative process. I am a better artist and writer because I get
to process the uncomfortable. I get to
write the hard, and that is something special because it touches a deep part of
my own soul and hopefully the souls of others.
Also, I’ve realized that worrying makes me more attune to other peoples’
feelings. It has provided me with an
intuitive sense of knowing when someone else is in pain. I don’t always know what to do or say to make
him or her feel better, but I like the way genuine empathy feels. It opens me to a deeper understanding of what
it is to be human and the processes we all go through in spaces of love and
loss. Having anxiety has also made me
ask questions, important ones, about life and what it is I truly want. The awareness I have found in times of unease
have often been the most moving. Opening
myself to answering the questions (and different ways of doing so) and being
okay with what I discover is an ongoing process that is moving me closer to
spending larger periods of time as my authentic self, which is pretty freaking
rad.
One of my best friends and
I joke about our anxiety all the time.
We often call each other needing to talk out a spiral or receive
assurance that everything will be okay even though we might have potentially,
inadvertently, maybe, just maybe done
something to hurt someone’s feelings or ruin a chance at a career or scar our
kids for life. It is good to know we are
not alone and to help each other stop from slipping into an irrational place
that will benefit no one. Anxiety can be
a beast, but it doesn’t always have to be.
If we allow it to – if we allow discomfort to flow through us – we can
often discover much more than we ever knew possible.
What have you learned
about your self when you open in this way?
Where do you find inner peace? In
perceived weakness, what goodness have you found?
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