Solitary Confinement

This is much more than mere frustration. Here I stand, walled in by something far more difficult to negotiate than a mere impasse. Even though I feel inside me the freedom of casting off the shackles of misinformation and falsehood that once kept me caged, I cannot get past these walls. I'm as free as a bird.. in a bigger cage. Some room to fly, food and water available, but my wings keep clipping those damn walls. Have I merely exchanged one cage for another?

I never doubt how much better it is to be out of the prison I used to be stuck in. Awareness is everything. I went from asleep to waking to fully 'woke' in the space of a couple of decades. Now there is an overwhelming sense of urgency underpinning my every conscious thought. I'm trying to have patience but it's so hard to know when waiting is right, and when to push buttons and pull levers, because if I push and pull at the wrong time I upset the apple cart and it's back to square one. The seething vexation can be seen in white knuckles and gritted teeth..

I hear the word 'overthinking' a lot these days and right now it really annoys me. I'm led to think, how dare anyone say I'm overthinking? How very unthoughtful. There's no virtue and nothing to be gained by thinking any less. I think therefore I am, and I'm trying real hard to put the best and most positive thoughts into action. You know what, fuck you if you think that I think too much. You think too little. You place too little value on thought, then judge that because I don't follow suit that I'm somehow doing myself a disservice. How unimaginative. Those walls I speak of are one thing, but at least I didn't build them myself.

I'm sorry. I got a bit cross. Please forgive me. It's these walls, you see. I didn't build them, but they seem so big and tall and impenetrable. I've tried flying up to see if they can be escaped that way, when on the highest of highs. Wouldn't you just know it, there's chicken wire made out of platinum over the top. From a distance it looks like you can be free, but as you get closer you realise you're just peering through the little gaps in between the wire mesh. There's no way to break through, and it's soul-destroying to glimpse the wonders beyond the walls and know you are that close but cannot actually get out. I tend not to want to fly up there so much any more. It's depressing.

The walls are made from the toughest material that you could hope to try to break through; enslavement to money through debt, disenfranchisement, lack of opportunities, unresolved trauma, bad memories, disappointment and basic human entropy. Even as that sentence flows from my brain I am struck by how selfish it sounds, and how self-absorbed I am to be saying it. For a moment it seems like I'm just on a big downer, but the thing is, the walls are there regardless of how positive I'm feeling, thinking and acting. They're an ever-present, unmoving feature. They are inescapable.

These damn walls. Feels like I'm chipping away with a blunt chisel that could break at any moment. Every time I stretch my wings and think about flying for a bit I'm a little more aware that my bones aren't so elastic any more, my feathers a little more tatty, and it is taking that much more effort to fly. I'm really tired. I shouldn't be so tired. I'm not old yet. It's these walls you see, they're sapping my will to go on, ever so gradually. I still believe in escaping, oh how I believe. I have just enough space to breathe for now but there will come a day when I will have bounced off the walls one too many times. The fear is rising.

It all comes down to one thing, one thought which holds me together when I'm slumped on the ground licking my wounds. It is such a short word, a simple thought perhaps, yet infinitely powerful. It is made of dreams and wishes, dragged out of the sum total of a few decades of ups and downs and highs and lows. Sometimes it feels like the last string on the fraying rope of my sanity, sometimes it fills every conscious thought with waves of ecstasy before settling back down, but it is always present. It sustains me in spite of myself. It is why I can never, ever give up. It is why I'm still alive, it is how I will finally escape these retched walls. It is salvation..

It is hope.

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.

Don't Panic

Imagine for a moment the most terrifying instance of panic you've ever experienced in your life..

Whatever caused you to go into panic mode, I expect you could describe to me a feeling like a dreadful suffocating helplessness, of being completely overwhelmed by a crippling sense of dread and anguish. I would further postulate that the psychological/emotional aspects of this panic were nothing in comparison to the physical sensations - sweating hot, adrenalin pumping, stomach retching, fists clenched, head pounding, ears ringing, trembling, shaking, unable to catch your breath as the rising crescendo of absolute terror gripped every fibre of your being. Perhaps you even experienced a state of hyper-reality, where everything around you seemed to go into slow motion, or conversely everything sped up. The world got very weird, very quickly. Maybe a few of you have even experienced hallucinations - saw or heard unreal things, experienced odd tastes or felt warped things touching your body, in your moment of pure panic?

I bet most all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have had at least a moment where something happened - some event, be it an accident, receiving terrible news, a sudden shock - which triggered the cascade of emotions and physical sensations in the body that we call panic. Blind panic. No reasoning kicked in to steady our thinking, no logic or sound advice helped us feel better, we just got hit full in the face and instantly fell apart. Anxiety took over control of our senses, our thinking, our emotions, even perhaps our basic bodily functions. For a moment, we just lost it, and in that moment nothing and nobody could make us feel better..

Human beings have an innate ability to respond to stressful situations, or stressors as they are better known. Science calls this the 'fight or flight response'. It is also known as hyperarousal, or the acute stress response, and is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. Essentially, the response prepares the body to either fight or flee the threat. It is an ancient part of us that has served humankind well in the past, especially when we lived in caves and had to sustain ourselves through the perils of attack from all sides by wildlife and other humans. It is coded into our DNA, and an unavoidable physical function of our body.

Psychology, in combination with biology and to some extent also social science, teaches us that our acute stress response can often lead us into trouble. Modern life has enabled humans to escape, and be insulated from, most of the threats to survival on a daily basis that the fight or flight response was useful for. There are just hardly ever instances in life these days where it is appropriate, useful or healthy to either run away or fight a particular 'perceived threat' - and these perceived threats can often be the result of faulty perception in the first place.

So, 'general anxiety', a feeling of unease and worry, can lead to panic - a sudden sensation of fear, which is so strong as to dominate or prevent reason and logical thinking, replacing it with overwhelming feelings of angst and frantic agitation consistent with an animalistic fight-or-flight reaction. Anxiety can be referred to as a normal part of life, but only if it has a quantifiable source, if the cause of a person's angst can be traced using logic and reason. If there are no causes, no logical reasons for the state of anxiety, and this state persists for days, weeks or months at a time, one can reasonably conclude that a person may well be suffering from a general anxiety disorder.

All this fine scientific talk, logic and reason is great. It all makes sense, and it helps us understand the basics of what is going on when somebody we know, perhaps someone we love, is suffering with anxiety issues. The problem is that when anxiety becomes panic, when the level of discomfort gets to be too much for someone to cope with, all reason and logic becomes irrelevant. That person is unable to deal with anything and everything, instantaneously. They cannot think straight, relate properly to others or cope effectively with life, and as the panic rises it is all they can do to simply function, to prevent themselves from being a danger to themselves or others, and to get through the terrible irrational fear that they are about to die. They walk a tightrope stretched over a row of jagged knives every moment of every day, and everyone around them is forced to walk on eggshells, and take extreme care not to bump into them for fear that their fragile glass bubbles will shatter and leave them bare.

The worst part of life for someone with an anxiety disorder is that they don't want it to affect others around them, which is compounded and made doubly difficult by the fact that once in the turmoil of an episode they are unable to explain what is happening, unable to avoid snapping and getting angry with others, and unable to control their emotions. So when they get through any given clash, argument, fight or moment of madness they then have to deal with terrible feelings of guilt and a lingering sense of remorse that they affected others with 'their shit'. This completes the cycle, of worry - anxiety - panic - anxiety - worry, a very vicious circle indeed. Long term, this cycle can lead to so much loss; of self-esteem, of status in life, of friends and family, of reputation, of drive and energy, of positivity, of peace of mind, ultimately of ability to live life and remain sane.

So, if I have any advice for dealing with someone's anxiety problem, it is this:

I don't want to patronise you, or preach to the converted. I guess I'm saying that, as a sufferer of an anxiety disorder, I can help you understand, I can help you to empathise. So try this - the next time you have to deal with somebody you know, somebody you might care about, somebody you love even, who has issues with anxiety and is going through a tough time, remember your worst ever moment of blind panic in life. Imagine every second of your day was wracked with anxiety, with no reason for it and no cause, and that at any given moment that panic could rise and you could explode as the feelings inside come flying out. Now double it. Then double it again. That is what is going on for them, pretty much all of the time. And it never really goes away.

It is a lot to ask, for you to make allowances for and give the benefit of the doubt to someone, especially when you least feel like it. It is an even bigger ask to try to show someone what psychologists call 'unconditional positive regard' - to suspend judgement about them, to be patient when they struggle with negativity, to overlook their behaviour because you know they can't help it and to be ever mindful that they might not show you any appreciation for all of this. In the end though, you will have helped them overcome something truly awful - the feeling that they are losing control. And really, you just never know when you too might need someone who understands..

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”
― Anaïs Nin

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.