mimic panic

M.A. Barrett
Aug 8, 2017 · 8 min read
photo by M.A Barrett ©2017 M.A. Barrett Photography

In Matt Haig’s book, Reasons to Stay Alive, he describes taking up running as a way to combat his anxiety.

Lena Dunham has written about her experiences skiving off depression by getting her ass to the gym.

I’ve delved into my own psyche in the past few months with these stories in mind and realized, fuck, man, that’s what I’ve been doing. In life I’ve mimicked anxiety to limit the anxiety. I didn’t even know I was doing it.

The epiphany happened while I was listening to Matt’s book on my Audible while driving around a bunch of dogs for walks and potty breaks. This is how I spend my days. My “day job” is I own a dog walking company just outside of Boston. I’m the luckiest little writer on earth. I drive around and pick up a pack while listening to my books and then we hike for a bit while I listen to my books, and then I come home, have lunch with my wife, listen to my books and of late, get to writing for hours while she heads off to her shop/studio to create stuff too. It wasn’t always like this.

The epiphany came when Matt started talking about how he runs to quell the physical symptoms of his anxiety. The racing of his heart mimics a panic attack. The physical pain of running mimics what happens to his body when an attack comes on. The hatred of running mimics the hatred of the anxiety, but also tells us it’s something we can and have to get through. I may have made up the last bit as I loathe running and can’t imagine making myself do it every day, but I found Matt’s experience and melded it with mine and that’s what brought me to some truth about myself.

Without going into too much detail about my childhood trauma (if you care to know, I wrote about it here), I am a sexual abuse survivor. I’m not sure if the abuse caused the anxiety in me or if it was passed down to me from my grandmother and mother (both of whom have a laundry list of undiagnosed disorders, but I digress…), or if it’s just the way I was born, with a little seed of depression and anxiety nestled in my belly that didn’t fully bloom or come into my awareness until I was almost 40.

I was talking with my therapist about my epiphany yesterday and in that setting, where I don’t feel the need to yank on the reins of my chaotic brain to stop my thoughts from pouring out, I explained that I’d come to the realization, that I’ve probably always had anxiety/depression, but just didn’t know it because I was too busy staying busy and surviving. In high school and some of college I was an elite athlete. I was a soccer and tennis player, though truth be told, if you give me a ball and something to hit it with, I’m good at just about all whacking sports. I’m not good at basketball. I’m horrendous at that dumb sport.

I was an MVP, Olympic Development, All-State, scholarship athlete, who ate and slept, and breathed sport. I realize now it’s because if I slowed down, if I wasn’t playing a singles match in tennis, and then a doubles, and then running down the street to make the first whistle of my club’s soccer game, I would be panicking. I would be worrying that Becky, the girl in my Earth studies class with the curly hair and pretty eyes, would find out I had a crush on her. I’d be worried that I’d pulled a B instead of an A on my Brit Lit paper on the Eve of St. Agnes, I’d be worried that I was going to flunk algebra all together and that Ms. Pentacost would stand over me, her 6’2” frame with a tire around the middle brushing against my arm, and tell me I was dumb, I was too dumb to live. I’d be worried that I’d walk in the door and my mother would have found out Ms. Pentacost flunked me and she would knock me to the floor, or pull me off the softball team, or ground me for a month. I worried my Pop would die if he didn’t quit smoking. I’d think about all the things my dog, Max, went through when he fell through the ice and died. I’d think about the graffiti littering my locker after I’d been gang raped in my freshman year. Slut. Whore. YOU did this. YOU DID THIS.

So I didn’t think of these things. I slammed a tennis ball at 100 mph at my dinky opponent. I crushed diving headers into the back of the goal. I dove for foul balls over chain link fences. I never stopped because stopping meant worrying. I rolled my ankles eight times in high school and on the eighth roll, I took five ibuprofen, had the trainers wrap me up nice and tight, and I played a three-game tournament at full 45-minute halves and I never felt the pain until the tape came off after I’d won and gotten a scholarship offer. I didn’t feel pain or anxiety. I didn’t have the time.

I lived like this for almost 40 years.

When I was too old for competitive sports and, let’s be honest, when I picked up smoking to add to my allure as a writer in my early twenties, I no longer had that outlet to mimic the physical symptoms of anxiety. I had poverty. I had survival. I had working at two restaurants while staving off demerits at the film conservatory I’d been invited to attend. I had long alcohol and weed soaked nights of philosophical debates about Donnie-fucking-Darko and the use of the color red in the film, American Beauty. I didn’t have time, or energy, or food to have anxiety. I was anxiety in human form.

Survival mimicked the symptoms. When I left college to pursue producing and writing films; seventeen-hour days, seven days a week, with two-hours of sleep, living off craft services, and being responsible for crews of 50–100 people mimicked anxiety. Screaming, cokehead, sociopathic bosses mimicked the monkey of anxiety on my back. Nearly falling in the Bearing Sea in the middle of the night because I had to go drink tequila with a crab boat captain on his giant vessel, to convince him to trust me enough to sign our contract for a reality show, filled me to the brim with sloshing anxiety-like life. I didn’t have the time or capacity to think let alone be worried that I worry.

Then the financial crash happened in 2008/2009 and I had nothing. I had less than nothing. I was sitting at the bottom of a 10,000-gallon barrel with nothing but me, my cat, a mountain of debt, no job and none on the horizon, a broken down Dodge Neon, and not even enough money to get the fuck out of Hollywood and back home to New England where I belonged.

I was homeless the first time for three days — in between the time I’d been kicked out of my girlfriend’s apartment and the time I was allowed, begrudgingly, to sleep on my ex-girlfriend’s couch, whom I’d cheated on with current girlfriend. She charged me $500 for one week. That $500 was all I had left in cash form because I was overdrawn at the bank. Say that shit ten times fast.

It broke me, literally broke my soul. After my ex had taken my money and kicked me off the couch three days earlier than planned, I was homeless again, sleeping in the Neon with my cat Doodle up on Mulholland Drive, contemplating a good leap off the side of the hill overlooking Hollywood, where I’d be swallowed whole by the land in a place I loathed more than any I’ve ever lived. Doodle would be eaten by mountain lions and my Pop would be so disappointed in me. These two reasons stopped me from tumbling down that hill.

I got a gig that got me out a year later.

I came home to New Hampshire and tried to learn to speak the language. It was difficult, but with meditation and lots of breathing I started to become human again. I met a girl. I fell in love. The love turned into a life and it was quiet and beautiful and kind and good and nurturing and abundant. I did everything in my power to take care of the debt. I left all things film related behind and started writing books while working at a restaurant. I was just busy enough to keep the anxiety at bay.

And then I started dog walking. I started living these glorious days of just a few hours of “work” and then nothing or anything. Really, anything I wanted to do, I could do. For the first time in my life I had the time and space to do with whatever the fuck I wanted. So I did nothing and it crushed me.

A dental surgery that I was finally able to afford, put me on a heavy dose of antibiotics and it was like catnip for my anxiety. That was two years ago. I’ve not been me, fully for two years. But then I got a therapist and I read Matt’s book and I helped my wife build a shop to create her art and at home I built a room of my own and a woodworking shop that helps me chip and sand away pieces of a thing while I chip and sand away the pieces of my own anxiety. Sometimes I even run. Loathe it as I do.

The best part of all of this though is not some instant cure for anxiety. It’s the reckoning. It understanding what your body/brain connection needs and making that happen for yourself and no one else. It’s just for you. So I’m making friends with my anxiety. I am understanding that it’s been there my entire life. We had a rocky start where I ignored it and kept in the dark for almost 40 years, until it grew so big it overshadowed me. It is literally a growing part of my body and soul that needs to be nurtured with really good grass-fed, organic, clean fuel. As long as I stay busy — the good kind of busy, the kind of busy that feeds my soul — me and my anxiety — let’s call him Bruce — well, Bruce and I will get along just fine as long as we respect each other’s boundaries.

Okay, Bruce, you big boob. Let’s do this.

Also, thank you, thank you, thank you, Matt Haig. You helped me see the light in my own darkness. ❤

M.A. Barrett

M.A. Barrett is a writer, photographer, videographer, + editor. Her new novel, Viral, was published in December, 2016. ENFP. Gryffindor. Coffee. All the coffee.

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