Anatomy of an Anxiety Attack

Ben:

Mean people suck.

Yup.

They suck…

BAD.

We’ve had a less-than-stellar week. A neighbor who shall remain nameless tore yours truly a new one. It was decidedly unpleasant. Considering I already struggle from anxiety, being roused from bed on a Sunday morning to be shouted at by a scary person on my front lawn was enough to set me into an anxious tailspin – one which I’m just now coming out of. The good news is I AM coming out of it. With this fresh in my mind, allow me to share my thoughts on pulling out of emotional nosedives.

**Before I start in on this, please remember that some anxiety issues, perhaps even many, require the aid of a professional to work through. Never tell someone you know who has anxiety to “get over it.” (That would be like telling someone with diabetes or MS to will themselves healed, that their infirmity can be overcome by simply thinking about it hard enough. It’s absurd, it’s unproductive, so don’t do it.) Also, please keep in mind I am NOT a medical, psychological, sociological, or even dental professional. I’m some guy at a keyboard typing whatever pops up in his head, so take it for what it is – more internet clutter. With the disclaimer out of the way, off we go!

For me, anxiety can be tripped when something unexpected happens. The event can be short-lived and may not even cause any physical harm, but its surprising nature is jarring to the emotions. I freeze. I want to run (I favor flight over fight) but I can’t if I’m already home. I’m being yelled at, at my home. A sickening wave of terror grips me. It's overwhelming.

If I can’t run, I try to appease, to please, to capitulate. I’ll say anything to get the person to stop attacking me with their words. I’m sensitive, and loud, angry words pierce me like daggers. It’s worse if the person yelling at me has reason to do so. In this case, I was responsible in part for a dog getting loose and causing an incident (no harm was done, but that wasn’t the point). Since I was in the wrong, the words that condemned me rang truer than all the words of affirmation I’d ever heard.

I couldn’t run, I couldn’t soothe the anger by agreeing, so with all my self-preservation tools used up, I fell apart. I was a kid again hearing my father’s disapproving words ringing in my ears. Defeated, I slunk back through my front door, a total mess.

The rest of the day was spent resting. I suppose that's the first bit of advice I can give you (well, the first is, get some help so you can better weather situations like that): Get some rest. When you’re experiencing emotional sunburn, seek out healthy things that will comfort you, whether it’s a show on Netflix, a go-to book you can get lost in, or even a location like a park or a small shop, go to that place and give yourself a chance to cool down. Also, even though it’s hard, please remember to take care of your physical self, too. The one can definitely affect the other.

The following day was still rough, so I took a moment to write a letter. It helped me put the event in perspective. After reflection, I found that my verbal attacker had overreacted. Yes, my dog had indeed managed to get loose, but when I thought about it I remembered that he got loose in spite of safeguards I put in place. It’s not like I didn’t try. So, where the events seemed horribly skewed against me, once I paused and took a moment to think carefully about them, I began to realize I didn’t really deserve all that condemnation the neighbor had piled upon me.

Later that day, I dropped the letter off for my neighbor to read. I didn’t do it so I might get an apology or provide them with some revelation. I did it so they would know my truth, and that I would know they knew it. They blasted me with their truth, so now they could quietly receive mine. (Mine’s better because a handful of written words trumps a thousand shouted ones).

Now, a couple days removed, I write to you about it. It’s cathartic, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my co-author, who was there with me every step of the way, listening, encouraging, and affirming. I guess the last thing I would suggest in this post would be to get an Esther… but you can’t have mine.

Esther:

Luckily for Ben, I’m a professional. Not professional like a doctor, but professional like an athlete. I’ve had panic attacks since early childhood, and, hey, practice is how professionals are made, right?

Here’s how my panic attacks typically start and continue:

• An overwhelmingly bad thing happens to me. • A later situation reminds me of that bad thing and I panic. • A future situation reminds me of the situation where I panicked, and I panic again. This is the “fear of fear” stage.

The sunny side of the “fear of fear” stage is that it happens during harmless situations, so I can direct all my energy toward riding it out. I do that by grounding myself: counting all the red items in the room, or smelling something calming, or thinking of something funny. Simple math, in particular, is a favorite go-to of mine (maybe because it was never my strength, so it takes the most work). While multitasking might be popular in corporate America, it’s not a real thing; so, while you focus your attention on grounding yourself, you don’t have that attention to feed the panic. And after you ride out a panic attack, the next one is easier.

In my anxiety there is no fear of the unknown. Even when facing an unknown situation, my fear is that the known will happen again. This hypervigilance is how I’ve survived this long, but now that my life has calmed down it’s hard to turn it off. If Ben will forgive me for speaking for him, I think this is the same problem he’s now facing.

You wouldn’t think two anxiety-prone people would make a good relationship, but it actually works. When one of us starts spiraling away from reason, the other is there to recognize it and help pull us through. Even when the other one is also caught in their own vortex of fear, at least we’re going through it together and no one’s standing around saying, “Get over it.”

Seriously, who are these people who say “get over it”? Does that phrase work for any situation? If someone told you to get over it and you benefited from that advice, please let me know.

When to Fight and When to Flee

Ben:

When I was in the Air Force I played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).

For those unfamiliar with D&D, you and a group of friends share an adventure in a fantasy setting much like Lord of the Rings or King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. One person in the group opts to be the dungeon master (DM). The DM’s role is to create the world the rest of the players adventure in by choosing the people, places, monsters, events, and treasure the group will encounter, and then weaves it all into a storyline that unfolds as the game is played. Good DMs are imaginative, resourceful, intelligent, know how motivate the players, and keep things moving along. Our DM, Chuck, was all of the above and then some.

Players choose their character race and class, and make up a bit of back story. A player can be Brodus, a human warrior coming down from the north to make a name for himself, or Dannar, a mysterious Elvish wizard seeking a mythical spellbook lost ages ago. The choices are endless.

Players usually fall into two categories. The first group wants to roll dice, hack monsters to bits, and collect the treasure so they can hack even stronger monsters to bits by rolling even more dice and collecting even better treasure and so on. The second group is all about roleplaying. They speak in bad British accents, refer to their cup of Mountain Dew as ‘ale,’ and do everything short of donning tights and puffy shirts and swinging from the light fixtures to immerse themselves in their roles. Our party of adventurers was made up of people from both camps and they rarely saw eye to eye.

On one particularly contentious evening, Chuck had had enough of our bickering. While our group was travelling, Chuck placed a group of a hundred monsters along our way. Our monster-hackers wanted to charge in and our role-players wanted to give rousing speeches; so we did both, and our party was wiped out. When both groups demanded Chuck tell us what we should have done, he looked at us as he was putting the game away, shrugged, and stated simply, “Run away.”

The reason I shared this lengthy anecdote with you is to encourage you to take a look at all the battles or potential battles you’re facing and think about whether you or not you should fight them.

A few years before I married Esther, I was in a very unhealthy long-term relationship that took quite a toll on me. I was on the receiving end of some really negative behaviors and should have left that particular battlefield long before it ended. However, I never did. I endured all the unhappiness and uncertainty because I thought I was doing the right thing.

I want to emphasize something to you, dear readers. If the other person in your life, whether business partner, friend, family member, or romantic interest, is mistreating you in some way and refuses to do the right thing, then the right thing for you IS retreat. No dishonor, no shame, no failure can be hoisted upon you. You are a PERSON and by virtue of your existence have every right to be safe, dealt with honorably, and treated with fidelity.

Not all difficulties should be run away from, however. If the difficult, uncomfortable situation you’re in is helping you heal, giving you valuable life experience and knowledge, or in some other way helping you grow, by all means, endure!

Consult people you trust and listen to their counsel. People outside your situation can see better than you and will help you decide whether to charge into that field of monsters or take the secret path behind them.

Some things are never worth the price and some things always are.

And now, I don my puffy shirt and am off to swing from tavern chandeliers.

WHERE’S MY ALE?

Esther:

That’s the second time this month we’ve had to replace the ceiling fan.

Yes, some things should be fled.

I stayed for over a year with an abuser (and exposed my kids to him) when he should never have gotten a second date. For almost four years, I allowed a bullying coworker and a toxic workplace to chip away at my mental and physical health.

And some things should be fought for.

The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do with my life was write, but didn’t pursue it until recently because I believed people when they said it wasn’t a real career. Three years ago I was weary of bad relationships but didn’t know how to find and keep a good one.

My boundaries were turned around for most of my life. I was always letting bad things through my door and locking it against the good. Maybe you can relate.

Knowing when to fight and when to flee is not one of those life skills I learned at an early age. Even now it sits on my tongue like a foreign language, but I’m learning it. I no longer subject myself to disrespect from others. I have a peaceful, fulfilling marriage with my favorite person.

Climbing out of my old life was possible. And hard. And worth it. And the more I learned from people who were healthier than me, the more I started to feel it in my gut when something was worth working at and when it wasn’t.

And, for my catchy one-liner ending, I’m borrowing Ben’s statement because I can’t sum it up any better than that.

Some things are never worth the price and some things always are.

We Had a Proper Honeymoon and It Almost Killed Us (or, How Not to Get Kidnapped in Alabama)

Ben:

We’re back!

(If you consider returning to a blog with only 11 entries in it after a 2-year hiatus something announcement worthy.)

When we began our brief yet ambitious project to blog together as a couple we hadn’t anticipated that college, kids, job changes, career startups, talent honing, missing West Highland White Terriers, and near-death experiences would be so annoyingly time consuming. Now that the whitewater rapids of our shared life experiences have finally spewed us into less white, less watery, and less rapid-y channels, we've turned our attention back to this tiny plant in the corner of the internet to water it with some more of our words.

Our first blog post touched on our honeymoon, which was fitting because it coincided with our getting married. Given our lean financial state at the time, we thought it best to kick the kids out of the house and enjoy what could only be described as a week-long sleepover with one’s best friend. (Our first blog goes into it a little more.) After a couple years of un-fun and hard work, we found we had a surplus of time, money, and stress, and we leaped at the chance to do a proper honeymoon.

In the late spring/early summer of 2016, Esther and I vacationed in the unassuming coastal town of Panama City Beach, Florida. It's steeped in charm and wonderful people, and we had an amazing time. Sadly, we had to drive through Alabama to get there and no one should have endure that, but it was a small price to pay considering. (Apologies to Alabamans, but seriously, you people need to grow proper trees, build a few new houses and for the love of all that is holy, dump all that rusted crap on your front lawns! I mean it! The entire state is badly overdue for a scrap metal drive.)

We had a proper honeymoon complete with intimate restaurants, beautiful vistas, and an ocean which has the magical ability to pull your worries out to sea. However, if you’re not careful, it will pull you out to sea too. We learned the hard way that calm sea surfaces don’t necessarily equate to calm sea depths. One minute we were bobbing merrily along on our body boards, and the next we were bobbing terrifyingly far from shore with no idea how we’d gotten there. Well, calls to the fire department, the police department, and the coast guard and an hour or so later, we were finally plucked from the ocean by, of all things, a Sea-Doo rental owner/operator from two miles up the coast.

Buffeted by our harrowing near death experiences, we returned home to be brought back down to earth by unimpressed kids and dogs who were infinitely more concerned about what was for dinner than how we survived driving through Alabama and back.

And now, I’ll hand it off to my lovely and talented wife, Esther.

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Esther:

Ben isn’t kidding when he says our honeymoon almost killed us. If you’re trying to think of ways to grow closer as a couple, I recommend sharing the risk of death. It works for army buddies all the time, think what it can do for you!

When it was just the two of us trapped in a life-threatening situation for what felt like hours, only what was important stayed afloat. Everything else sank quickly away. All that mattered was that Ben stay alive, and (to an oddly secondary degree) that I stay alive, too. But that we be together, no matter what happened. And together we finally made it through those back roads of Alabama and the fear of death by backwoods serial killer.

We can joke about it now but it really was the most afraid and helpless I’ve ever been. We hadn’t been married two full years, and now the man of my dreams had been swept out so far from me I couldn’t see him. At one point I thought he’d drowned. Not able to swim myself, I was kept on the water’s surface by a thin slab of foam.

When a wave knocked me off of it and I went under, I realized a number of things: (1) it would be too comically tragic for our marriage to end this way, dying on our honeymoon, (2) drowning wouldn’t be as terrible a death as I’d always imagined, and (3) … oh. The body board was strapped to my wrist. Pulling myself back onto the board was easily managed.

From the outside, it would probably seem silly that we went body surfing in the Gulf of Mexico on a red flag day, especially since one of us can’t swim, but it’s in keeping with the way Ben and I tumble through life. We’re equal parts preparation and madcappery, and it’s as comfortable as an oversized sweater, as thrilling as a sale on cheese.

But seriously, do not listen to your GPS if it tries to route you through the back roads of Alabama. You stay on the widest roads you can find and you keep driving until you hit the state line.