The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most

What Happens When That Place Is Inside Yourself?

I’ve been pretty open about my anxiety issues with people for quite a few years now. It became a situation where it was easier to just tell people about the fact that I may not be able to engage on a meaningful level at times due to the fact that I’m using the majority of my will to just keep myself from breaking down in tears from the panic that is overwhelming me. And, for the most part, my friends, family, and, somewhat surprisingly, employers have all been very understanding about my particular mental health issues. This is good because it makes it much easier for me to spend my days around people when they know that there are time when I just need to have my headphones on and to lose myself in my work/music/podcasts/writing/any other coping mechanism.

But it doesn’t make it easier when I’m alone with no distractions.

The fact that my own mind is often my worst enemy has been a fact that I’ve had to deal with since I was a teenager. I had my first full-blown panic attack when I was 14 years old. My mom, who also suffered from panic disorders, found me huddled in the dark of the laundry closet sitting on the washing machine in tears. She took one look at me and just said “I’m sorry.” See, she knew the hell that panic disorder can actually play with a person. She had given in to it as she dealt with her other issues, such as a terminal heart condition, alcoholism, and, due in large part to her anxiety issues, an addiction to prescription tranquilizers. By the time I had my first panic attack, my mother was borderline agoraphobic, only leaving the house with myself or one of her friends as her constant companion.

It would take me many years before I developed even remotely decent coping mechanisms for my anxiety issues. In the time that took, I, instead, found some very not decent ones. I began distracting myself with more and more self-destructive behavior so that, by the time I was 22, I had not spent a day without using an illegal drug in quite some time. As coping mechanisms for anxiety go, there are very few that remove the anxiety as wholly as abusing opioids. However, it turns out that opioid abuse is quite a bit more harmful to your well-being, both mental and physical, than the anxiety that you are running from to begin with. So, when I decided that I would quit using drugs, it also meant that I had to develop new coping mechanisms for my anxiety.

I want to be clear about something. While I no longer use illegal drugs, I am not against the idea of using prescription medications as directed. I’m not one of those guys who got clean and decided that he’d never put another drug of any sort in his body. I take antibiotics. I take Tylenol. I, admittedly, try not to take anything that is narcotic for pain, as that is a danger for me. Also, they often put the fact that those are “as needed” on the bottle. I am a stickler for following the directions of medication exactly, as is important to many people in recovery, but the fact is that, as an addict, if you tell me to take something that gives me that old feeling “as needed”, my mind interprets that to be something very different than what the pharmacist probably does.

But I digress.

I only mention the fact that I’m willing to use prescribed medications to say that I have tried the traditional medical treatments for anxiety and panic. I’ve taken antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and the like. Unfortunately, I seem to belong to a small group of people that get the worst side effects from those sorts of drugs. Night terrors. Suicidal thoughts. Everything that you see on the label and think “well, that won’t happen to me” is basically my mind’s reaction to anything that is supposed to make it behave like a “normal” mind.

So, I had to develop alternate, non-medical coping methods. These involve a great many things. First, if I feel anxiety building, I try for distraction. This can be conversation with a friend, watching a movie, playing a video game, writing, or listening to music. As an avid reader, I wish I could say that reading a book is able to help me in this situation. However, it seems that I need something that provides input to several senses at the same time to distract me from my anxiety during the building phase. I need sound, vision, and, if possible, tactile sensations to provide the distraction. And, in most cases, I can calm myself down and keep the monsters in my head at bay if I catch it in time.

However, if I don’t catch the anxiety building, or notice it when I know that we’ve reached a point of no return, that means that I’m going to have to deal with a panic attack. And, I won’t make any bones about it, that is the place that I have come to fear the most. It is a pit of despair that, luckily, I’ve been able to avoid better and better as I’ve gotten older and more adept at picking up on the early signs of my anxiety building. But there are days when I can’t avoid the attack. No matter what I do the anxiety just keeps building or I just don’t notice it in time. I mean, to be fair, if you take out the years where I numbed myself to feeling anything at all, I’ve only had a little over 15 years of practice at coping with this level of anxiety. In that sense, I’m still only old enough to get my learner’s permit in avoiding panic attacks.

When a panic attack overwhelms me, I’m not a useful member of society. It is not unusual for me to breakdown in tears, though that has become rarer as I’ve aged. In most instances, I get very quiet. In fact, if you were not paying close attention to me, you probably would have no idea that I was having a crisis. I turn up my music in my headphones if I’m at work, staring straight ahead at my computer, attempting to make the hours go faster so that I can retreat to the safety of my home. If I’m at home, I curl up into a ball on the couch or bed and retreat into bingeing a show or song. If it has progressed to one of my second tier attacks, I just lay there staring at nothing. I can’t imagine that it is easy on my loving partner.

As I’ve said, true full blown panic attacks have become rarer as I’ve gotten older. I may have one every 3 months or so, and it will usually last a few hours with my anxiety staying at a heightened level (over my already always heightened level) for a few days afterwards. What I refer to as my second-tier attacks are even rarer, as I haven’t had one of those in probably 3 years at this point. I consider this a vote of confidence in my coping techniques more than any change in my actual disorders.

All of this is why the place that I have come to fear the most is not a place that I can ever flee. It is my own mind. It is the mind that treats me as a hostage on occasion. It is the mind that means that my “normal” level of anxiety is probably what most people consider to be a mild panic. I know that it is not “normal” but I also know that it is the price I pay for being who I am. The only time I’ve ever truly been without anxiety was when I was using drugs and I’m not willing to pay the price that comes from that sort of escapism ever again. So, I spend every day confronting the place that I have come to fear the most because the other option is to give up. And, frankly, that’s only an option in the abstract. It ain’t happening.

This essay was inspired by “The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most” by Dashboard Confessional. It is track 9 on The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most.