I can’t help you cure your anxiety. But I can offer you a seat on my runaway train.
How do you cope with anxiety? I don’t mean the fleeting pangs that feel like nervousness in the run up to something big happening. I’m talking about the crushing waves of panic and nausea that can spiral out of control before you’ve even had time to think. It can happen at times you’d expect, sure. The big presentation at work you’ve got looming, the due date at the end of a pregnancy. What is often the hardest thing to explain though, is the crippling anxiety that strikes for what seems to be no good reason at all — at least to the casual observer.
My heart is racing. My hands and legs are shaking. I feel spaced out, like I’m hearing other people speak from a different room even though they’re a few feet away. I feel my heartbeat behind my eyes, in my ears, at the back of my throat, making me feel as though breathing has become difficult. I feel sick; not that ‘oh, throw up and done’ feeling, or ‘my tummy is a little gurgly’, but a nausea that feels as though someone is squeezing my stomach from the bottom up extremely slowly, burning my insides. I’m trying to remember breathing patterns, while keeping an eye on the nearest door, desperately wanting to bolt through it in some feeble attempt to discover safety.
And then, it subsides. Like a spinning washing machine slowly grinds to a halt, my panic attack retreats and I’m left feeling the unpleasant adrenaline hangover. Only then do I have the chance to properly assess what happened and realise that I was looking at the box of antibiotics poking out of my bag.
Let me explain. I went to the doctor a few days ago with a couple of extremely painful and inflamed lumps in my underarm. I was swiftly diagnosed with folliculitis and given a hefty dose of antibiotics to combat the infection. I’m less than halfway through the course, so I wondered to myself how long it would be before I can return to a fitness schedule that I had been hoping to start this week. It kept getting postponed, this fitness thing. Most recently I injured my ankle which stopped me going running and now this infection. All it took was my mind to offer up the fleeting suggestion that perhaps I’d need another week or two to recuperate.
Well, then that was that.
Every single thought that flooded my brain thereafter could be prefixed with just two words.
What if:
- The weather gets colder really quickly and bugs start flying around
- My immune system is beat up, so I get ill again really quickly
- ABs mess with your system, it feels futile trying to get healthy
- My husband gets fed up with me always being unwell
- I’m ill and my son gets ill
- One or both of us throws up (old phobia reaering its head)
- I have to take time off work when I have so much to do
- I lose my job because I have so many sick days
- I get ill again because I’m stressed and can’t find work
- Our son has to stop going to nursery because we can’t afford it
- Nobody will hire me because I’m a mess
I appreciate that to an awful lot of people, the above is quite the runaway train. I know it is. By the second bullet point, there’s a voice in my head screaming ‘STOP!’ armed with the knowledge that my heart rate rises with each what if station I whizz through. But it’s as though the momentum of the panic cannot be interfered with and my rational self is left trying to catch up, gasping for breath. By the time she’s caught up with the runaway train, it’s almost out of steam. I’m left feeling fatigued; like no amount of sleep will ever take the exhaustion away and this is how it will be forever more. I look at other people who locked their trains away long ago; they are enjoying the beautiful landscape as they absorb life around them. I feel alone, stuck in my rapid-fire endless loop of anxiety.
On a bad day, this cycle can happen up to five times, with one or two of these episodes stretching out over more than an hour. On a good day, I’ll be able to find some measure of super strength and hit the brakes before the what ifs find their stride. Those days are the ones that I feel as though I have some control over my thoughts.
I know that anxiety is all in the mind. I know that things don’t happen TO me, I simply react to things that are happening. I understand that worrying about controlling things that cannot be controlled is a one-way ticket to misery and discomfort and yet I still can’t seem to find a process that slows the runaway train permanently.
They say that the only certain thing in life is death and taxes. Everything else then, can be influenced, changed, and adapted. That’s a lot of things that can be reshaped if there’s just two exceptions.
And that’s how I cope with my anxiety. I choose to believe that one day I will find a way to consign that train to the past and instead take that long walk through the scenery that I’ve been daydreaming about all my life.
