As you lay awake in your bed of nails and broken glass, endless thoughts penetrate your brain like buckshot through paper targets. Your head pounds, your muscles ache, and your stomach churns. You’re overcome by tense worry. Tunnel vision strikes you as your fearful brain is assured of your looming death. Sweat permeates your bedsheets and your body begins a fervent and involuntary tremble.
“What if I’m not good enough?”
“What if I can’t meet the standards set upon me by my peers?”
“What if this is as good as my life gets?”
It may not be clear to you yet, but you’re hastily forging a path into a future that has yet to be written. You are a sufferer of anxiety. Which means, your brain has become conditioned to telegraph just about every upcoming situation that is thrown your way. You jump to conclusions and prophesize negative outcomes because you’re afraid of failure. Your brain’s survival mechanisms feel the need to protect you from the unknowns of the future. So, instead of seeing success and accomplishment, it prepares you for the worst. Your persistent worry becomes a superstition. When you over-worry and it doesn’t come true, you convince yourself that it was because you worried so much. Conversely, when the thing you worry about does come true, you have an “I told you so,” moment, further reinforcing your fear response and cementing your proclivity towards worrying.
One perpetrator for your worry-induced anxiety attacks could be traced to an area of your brain called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS. The RAS is a set of interconnected nuclei located throughout the brainstem. It’s like the conveyor belt in your processing plant for stimuli. It filters thousands of sensory stimuli, deciding whether to react to or ignore them. When cortisol levels in your brain are doled out at a moderate level, your focus and concentration are optimal. Messages sent to the RAS are filtered evenly and in a timely manner. This is when you’re “in the zone.” When the RAS is overactive and receiving too much cortisol, stress and anxiety begin to build. Your conveyor belt is running too fast and shit is flying everywhere. This results in abnormal and exaggerated response to stimuli (ie. Panic in otherwise innocuous situations.) For those of you who suffer from social anxiety, a good explanation for this is something called the cocktail party effect.
Our brains are wired to filter out extraneous auditory stimuli while concentrating on more important stimuli, like having a conversation with a friend at a party. In this case, your brain blocks out the sounds of your surroundings, music, dishes clanging, other conversations, and pinpoints the voice of the person you’re listening to. People with social anxiety are often unable to filter the extraneous sounds, causing an auditory overload. All sounds become jumbled and the anxiety sufferer is overwhelmed and unable to concentrate. As cortisol levels rise, you feel more threatened and less in control of the situation. As fear and discomfort consume you, you become more likely to avoid social situations as your brain sees your absence from these functions as a means to survival. Or in many cases, the need to drink to feel comfortable at social encounters becomes a sought-after treatment.
My life with anxiety has been confusing. Until I was 30, I thought anxiety was just another word for worry. And in my mind, worry didn’t have much strength. Looking back, I know I had anxiety in my earlier years, but I think I survived it out of pure ignorance. The word itself had no meaning to me. How can you be destined for an eternity in Hell if you're completely oblivious to the concept of Satan? And of course, as soon as I was capable of acquiring alcohol, that demon was unknowingly silenced for years. Currently, my worst bouts of anxiety are about a 5 or 6 out of 10. At its peak, I was at 7 or 8 on a daily basis. Thankfully, I’ve only reached what I would describe as level 10, a handful of times. Take a look back to early January, 2018, and you’ll see me, alone, sober, uneducated in the mechanics of anxiety, while sitting on a small plane in Bangkok, Thailand.
As the day of my flight from Bangkok to Phuket arrived, I walked through security with ease, climbed up the stairs on to the plane and settled into my window seat. The remainder of the passengers boarded and beside me sat a cute, little Thai girl, maybe three or four, accompanied by her mother. I watched as she laughed and played games while we waited for the plane to taxi down the runway.
After about forty minutes we hadn’t even budged; a completely innocuous situation. No alarms going off, no crews inspecting the aircraft, no fires or terrorists. Everything was standard and perfectly normal. So why am I sweating so much? It must just be the shitty air conditioning, I mean, it is Thailand. I guess the sweating is probably normal but why am I struggling to breathe suddenly?
OH…FUCK!
The sweating intensifies, I’m gasping for air. My heart begins to pound through my chest, reverberating through my internal organs and pummeling my rib cage like a SWAT team on the door of a crack house. I now realize that I’m at the mercy of a panic attack, helpless and vulnerable. I feel dizzy and sick to my stomach and I gasp again. I’m disoriented, and I don’t know what to do. My brain takes over and shouts at me,
“This isn’t good, man. Something’s really wrong. I think you’re dying.”
My chest tightens up like a choke chain on a mistreated pit bull. Again, my brain pipes up,
“Get off the plane! You’re gonna die!”
I’m losing my composure and my stomach clenches. I don’t know whether I’m going to cry, puke, pass out or shit myself. My brain says,
“This is it. You’re gonna die alone in Thailand.”
Every muscle in my body is tense, as I fight to stay above water.
“You’re not breathing, man. You’re losin it.” Says my brain.
I frantically put my headphones on to distract my mind from the invisible and unexplainable threat that my brain has presented me with. I repeatedly rub my hands and feet together like an addict waiting for a fix.
“GET OFF THE PLANE! GET OFF THE PLANE!”
“GET. OFF. THE. FUCKING. PLANE!”
Too late. I see the door and try to force myself past the embarrassment of making a scene while running for the exit, but the plane starts to move and now there’s no escape. I grit my teeth and stuff my head into my hands. I’m fucking boiling over. My head has been infiltrated and poisoned by disastrous thoughts and I have no fucking idea why. It’s like napalm dropped on a Vietnamese jungle. I try my hardest to not show the intense fear that’s exploding in my body, so I don’t frighten the small girl seated beside me. I feel like my whole body has been duct taped into a painfully packed ball of fear and confusion. I’m running out of strength and I’m running out of options.
“You’re stuck now, the plane is taking off, you’re fucked!” my brain says laughingly.
I feebly push back and ask myself what I’m supposed to do. I choke back the taste of bile and vomit, as I feel unpredictable. Somehow, I must defeat this.
“Concentrate, Bryce,” whispers an almost inaudible voice from the back of my mind.
I search my phone for the calmest music that I have on my playlist. I listen to the words and pay close attention to every instrument as I focus intently on a small scratch on the plane window. I assure myself over and over that this is my space. This tiny, insignificant scratch is where I am, just keep staring. Right now, my anxiety is crashing around like a caged lion being poked with a sharp stick. It jumps and stretches a paw through the bars desperately trying to grasp me. I take my first deep breath. This is when I know that I’ve gained some ground. Still, the beast desperately fights. Thoughts of not being able to breathe explode in my mind like a flash grenade. A hundred scenarios of how this is going to end jolt through my brain, all of them fear-inducing and negative. I continue to push back with deep breaths and a clear mind. Slowly the beast withdraws into the dark, sludgy recesses of my brain.
I’m about a half hour into the flight and finally, I’m able to contain my anxiety, my jaw unclenches, my shoulders drop, and my feet no longer fidget, the battle is over. Like the receding waves of a tsunami, my panic attack fades but leaves a noticeable path of destruction. The aftereffects leave me with an uncontrollable shiver, my body is spent. The plane finally lands, I exit the airport and get in a cab. With eyes wide open, only two thoughts playback through my head.
“What the fuck was that??”
And,
“I don’t ever want to experience that again!”
I sat in the backseat of the taxi, still shivering, and in complete silence, with no indication whatsoever of what just happened to me. The anxiety that I was used to was nowhere near what I had just been through. All my other encounters with anxiety were like a fucking tickle fight compared to this perpetual nightmare. I was legitimately scared for my health. Part of me wanted to analyze what had occurred but the fear of bringing it back, stopped me short. Not only did I just experience the worst panic attack I’ve ever had but now the fear of anxiety is giving me more anxiety. This fucking monster is creating its own energy. I’m mentally lost, I’m alone, halfway across the world and I have no support system. Fuck this trip, man…
After an hour cab ride, I arrived at my hotel, checked in and went to my room. I should be excited. My hotel was near the beach, it was warm, and the scenery was beautiful, but I couldn’t care less. I pushed my room door open, threw my shit on the floor, closed the curtains, collapsed on my bed and covered myself with the blankets. My muscles ached, and the shivering still hadn’t ceased. I felt drained and weak, sick and broken. All I wanted to do was sleep but my mind raced and tried to make sense of what just happened. I wanted to go home.
After I slept for about 10 hours, I attempted to analyze the psychological horror I had barely endured the day before. I still couldn’t make sense of it. It wasn’t the flight; I fly in smaller aircraft on a weekly basis for my job, and in way worse weather conditions. It wasn’t a fear of travelling; I had been comfortably making my way through Thailand for days. I certainly don’t think it was the cute, little Thai girl; that’s pretty irrational even for someone with debilitating anxiety, and I don’t think I fall into that category. So, what was the source of my fear in this situation?
It took years for me to understand what happened that day in Bangkok. I was able to conclude that my entire trip to Thailand was an impulsive attempt to escape the shitty reality that I had created back home. The trip was never about rest and relaxation, no matter how much I lied to myself. I was neglecting relationships, my health and denying the fact that I needed to make drastic changes. I foolishly thought that a two-week trip to Southeast Asia would solve all my problems. I was just afraid to confront the destructive path that I had been bulldozing before I left. Essentially, I was afraid of myself and what I had become. I ran, but the wolves chased me down and clamped their life-stealing jaws across my jugular.
The lessons deeply embedded in that panic attack were not quickly learned. As my fear of that moment lessened, I was able to dissect every aspect of my anxious episode. And although I would never wish that sort of fear on anybody, it was a blessing in disguise. It taught me empathy. There were people in my life who suffered from anxiety and I had no idea what it was really like for them until that day. It also taught me that running from my problems wasn’t gonna work anymore. From that day forward, I was agreeing to face the fears that cause my anxiety. I would be stepping into my opponent’s home arena, squaring off, and fully expecting to take a fury of punches before a knockout opportunity presented itself to me.
Pain, suffering, and failure. These are three things that are most avoided by humans. By remaining in our comfort zones, we predestine ourselves to a life unlived. We give in to mediocrity and unfulfillment because we fear. We pass up opportunity because we fear. We unnecessarily shape our lives to be dull and empty because we fear. Do your future self a favor. Find your fears, smile at them, touch gloves, and start swinging.