My Anxiety brings all the adrenaline to the yard.
My Anxiety brings all the adrenaline to the yard.
| 16.06.2018
Yes, the title has the word Anxiety in it. Yes, this post is probably going to be about mental health. Yes, this is happening. Now let’s all scream into space for a minute, and then continue on with life.
The first time I ever had a proper Anxiety attack (not one of those petty social-anxiety episodes which has been pretty much a constant state for me throughout the past 12 years of my life.
No. A proper “holy-fuck I might actually legitimately die” attacks, happened at the start of a 5-6 week long holiday, which included a lot of flying, adventuring, car rides, walking, restaurants…essentially all the things that your anxiety feeds off to make your life hell. If my anxiety were a personified character, he’d be one happy smirking fuck.
I went to bed, peacefully nestled in between the Icelandic mountains in a cosy wooden b&b, sharing a room with my family - you couldn’t set up a safer environment - and yet my body thought this was the prime time to illustrate all the bells and whistles it could pull out to show what would happen in case of an emergency.
My heart was doing it’s best to get to a state of vibration as opposed to its usual mellow beat, my muscles were cramping, my chest tightening and all the blood in my body was replaced with sparkling water (tingling…lots and lots of tingling.) I thought I was going to have a heart attack, be sick, faint or explode. I must have sat on the bathroom floor attempting to google my symptoms for about half an hour with not much luck as touch screens don't react to well to sweat drenched fingers.
In a desperate whim, I shook my dad awake; shivering and sweating I yelped “help me”. Of course, there isn’t much you can do, I didn’t even know what was going on. He comforted me and got me back to bed, where I remained, motionless, while my whole body was screaming and yelling, my heart beating so hard that you could imagine it was a wholly separate entity jamming out to some hardcore techno music in a hip Berlin club.
I lay there as my body slowly transitioned into shock - every muscle in my body contracting to release the semi-overdose of adrenaline that was rushing through it.
Confused, terrified, and most importantly not wanting to make a fuss or disturb anyone - I went through the motions of experiencing and recovering from my first ever full-on anxiety attack. My brain and body were working together. Adrenaline being flushed out, while I slowly calmed myself down over the next 2-3 hours. Convincing myself that my heartbeat wasn’t in my chest, but rather in my arm, which seemed much less panic-inducing, forcing myself to breath ‘normally’ - all the while having no clue that this was ‘simply’ a panic/anxiety attack.
This form of panic became a constant throughout the entire holiday. I blamed the way I was feeling on a potential stubborn stomach bug, and brushed it off as a 'silly body thing'. I hardly ate anything; the hunger was causing even worse anxiety (I have since learned that hunger triggers bad anxiety) and the feeling of food in my stomach wasn't much better. The plane rides were torture, car rides were too long, sleeping was terrifying and eating at a restaurant near impossible. Overall I’d give myself a solid 1 out of 5-star rating as a travel companion.
I pushed through and forced myself to join in on activities despite my heart rocking out at a million beats a second, or the shortness of breath. It was debilitating. Mostly because I didn’t know what was going on.
What I thought would be ‘just’ a holiday ‘illness’ went on to take months. I found it hard to go to college, I couldn’t really sit at the dinner table, or on a train. I often would get bad anxiety in cars, in confined spaces, even on my own, when I was ‘resting’, my body would be boogying to the rock and roll jam that is anxiety. It. Just. Did. Not. Stop.
Worst of all is that I had no clue. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing was anxiety. Retrospectively I’m sure it would have been a lot different if someone had told me. But then again, how could they have possibly known. I brushed it off, as a nasty stomach bug that just went on and on and on.
It eased off slightly, allowing me to power through it, as it slowly became a familiar norm. However the intensity of it grew slowly but surely. Months and months passed, until at some point, even the feeling of being in my own body was too claustrophobic. I can’t fully explain it, but the feeling of being confined to my own skin and blood made me want to implode - here I was, faced with this un-fixable conundrum, stuck within my own body.
At this point I was lucky enough to go to a spiritual retreat school for a week or two, mainly to see family and friends. The mindful and yet simultaneously mindless tasks, of washing 200 salad leaves individually; braiding 100 plus onions; weeding flower beds; chopping vegetables; washing millions of dishes. All whilst surrounded by open, genuine nature and kind-hearted and loving people fixed me right up - everything that was wrong, hectic and mad in my brain relaxed. Nothing quite like accidently mindful meditation as a bit of a cure-all.
The aha-moment came much much later. I started to learn more about anxiety through the internet. Talking about mental illness began to take a rise, and I remember reading an article title that mentioned all the symptoms that I experienced during the months of the unknown anxiety.
It was more than a lightbulb moment, it was a firework display spelling out “Thank fuck” in the sky.
I had already been diagnosed with social anxiety when I was just a wee thing - constant bullying tends to have that effect on you - but for some reason, I just never made the connection between the two anxieties. There wasn’t one second during my whole ‘heart and body ambush’ period where I thought it might actually be a mental illness.
Since then I’ve learned the ins and outs of anxiety attacks, panic attacks, etc. I’ve re-taught myself how to travel, I can survive sitting in the cinema, or at a dinner table. I still get it, sometimes worse than others, but now it has a name. When, for some reason, I turn into a tingling sweaty mess, however uncomfortable it may feel, I know what’s going on, and I can deal with it.
I got more heavily into meditation, realised that exercising helped release any extra adrenaline, and that eating well and having a full stomach actually combated a lot of my anxiety.
Of course, I would be amiss to not talk about the 'obvious' help as well - I lived in Holland and was an art student at the time…obviously, I was going to start realising the life-changing benefits of walking in clogs…duh! Oh wait no, that’s what mad Dutch farmers do to…self torture? (I have no clue why anybody would do that to their feet.)
CBD oil and herbs were an excellent way to magically calm your brain (And THC was just an added bonus really…) Weed was like the powerhouse team of soothing softness that would alleviate any and all anxiety to a certain extent.
All though I don’t think I’ll ever live entirely anxiety free, I’m learning how to cope with it - experimenting with self prescribed exposure therapy, but also learning what sets these bad boys off has been an enormous help.
Anxiety is - from what I can tell - a very individualistic thing, everybody deals with it in their own way, everyone experiences it in their own way. As with most mental health issues, it’s down to who you are, what combination of ingredients has made you into the special sauce version of 'you' you are today. I dealt with it very introspectively, another may broadcast it to the whole world. Everyone has a different tango to dance with their brain, so whichever way you choose to dance is probably the right way. But fuck knows, what do I know.
