Mind over obsession - the bike ride I almost missed

7-28-13
I live near a river, and by good fortune I also live close to one of those bike paths that used to be a train track.  The path winds down in a gentle slope from my house (which is awesome on the downhill start of my ride, but killer on the uphill end of my ride) down to the river.  The path goes through a beautiful wooded area, then follows the curve of the river.  Ducks and geese graze (DO ducks and geese graze?) along the side of the path.  Hawks circle overhead, and children play and scream and laugh on the playgrounds that I pass.  Teenagers sneak a smoke on the path in little clusters.  

It sounds idyllic, doesn't it?  But when I went riding yesterday, I missed all of it.  I was deep in thought about a personal issue.  I was turned it round and round in my head, chewed it over, replayed scenes in my head that were distressing, and imagined all kinds of troubling potential outcomes to my problem.  In short, I was obsessing.  It's funny how I can be in the thick of obsessing and not even know it.  Why is that?  Because that's just what my brain does.  It always has.  It's my normal.  My default setting.  Comfortable, but not really.  

But I caught it - caught the obsessive loop mid bike ride.  I stood back and realized that I was drowning in a whirlpool of troubling thoughts that spun around me.  I shut my eyes for just a moment. (Just a quick moment since I was speeding along a bike path - I didn't want to fling myself into the river and end my ride with a swim.)  

Now, one thing I am learning is that pulling myself out of that whirlpool is not easy, but it can be done.  (I didn't believe that when I was younger, but I do now.)  It's not enough to shut my eyes and turn my head away from the troubling thoughts (the way a baby turns away from a spoonful of mashed peas - lips pursed, face all scrunched up).  I have to replace those thoughts with other thoughts.  I try to find something positive to obsess about.  As I write this I'm realizing how strange that sounds.  Or, ideally, I try to just be where I am.  

I keep reading bits and pieces about mindfulness - the ability to be fully alive in the moment.  I intend to keep reading up about it - but on this bike ride, I thought I'd give it a try.  It was the perfect summer day in the midwest - 75 and low humidity - a respite from the stinky hot humid days we 'd been having.  I focused on that, and on the sun sparkling on the river, and the winding, wooded path, and cool breeze on my face under the shadows of the trees.  I passed the screaming, laughing children under the watchful eyes of their mothers who chatted together on benches.  I skirted around the huddles of teenagers, and got close enough to smell the cigarette cloud that clung to their clothing and hair.  I passed the grazing geese and ducks and watched their babies peck at the foliage by the river, and wondered if "graze" was the right word for what they were doing.  It felt good - really, really good.  I am lucky that in my world I'm usually pretty safe.  (It's not that way for many in this world, and my heart aches for those people.)  If my head stays with the rest of me, it should follow that I shouldn't be so worried, shouldn't it?

July 6th Panic on a high wire - why I couldn’t watch the Grand Canyon crossing

July 6th, 2013

Panic on a high wire - why I couldn’t watch the Grand Canyon crossing

I had no intention of writing anything about the recent high wire crossing over the Grand Canyon, but my head has latched onto it and cannot let it go.  (Obsessive thinking, anyone?)  Before it was aired, I had little desire to watch it, but I got sucked into the hype.  So that evening, I watched Nik Wallenda take about 100 steps over the canyon, then left the room.  I wonder how many other people who have experienced full blown panic attacks had to walk away.  Sure- I feared for this man’s life, and didn’t want to watch him plunge to the canyon floor in case of a misstep, but the experience of watching him touched a deeper fear that I did not yet understand in that moment.  So instead I watched my daughter watch the TV from the safety of my kitchen.  

If you’ve ever experienced a panic attack, you know that it can feel like you’re walking a wire - just trying to get from this point to that point without falling over.  

It was difficult not to put myself in his shoes.  Mr. Wallenda is obviously a much cooler customer than I am, and is far more in control of his nerves than I have ever been or he never would have pursued this endeavor in the first place.  And the guy was nervous - you just had to listen to the audio to pick that up.  Of course I would never walk out on a high wire over the Grand Canyon - the most obvious reasons being that I’m not a high wire walker, not trained, not strong enough, and I just don’t know how.  Most people don’t.  But add to that the anxiety monster - I would get about 10 steps out and begin to fear having an anxiety attack.  That would be my greatest fear - not the winds and the updrafts (as described in dramatic detail by Jim Cantore), not the wild shaking of the cable under my feet, not the potential of a sudden thunderstorm (also described in dramatic detail by Jim Cantore) - but the fear of fear.  Mr. Wallenda had every reason to be nervous about real potential dangers.  That’s healthy and normal and is what helps us to survive in this world.  But fearing fear.........not healthy.  

So I have to marvel at what the man accomplished.  Sure - it was an amazing physical feat, and I’m so glad he lived to kiss the ground on the other side.  The mental task is almost beyond my comprehension.  Even if I knew how to walk a wire, I would have walked about 10 steps out, and the internal dialogue would have started.  “What if I panic?  What if I panic?  Am I panicking now?  Oh my God am I getting dizzy?  I think I am.  What if I get dizzier?  What if I black out?  I’m gonna die.  Oh look...there’s an eagle!!”  Ok - I wouldn’t have noticed the eagle.  I would have been too busy looking inward, trying to figure out if I was getting dizzier or possibly blacking out, and about to plunge to my death. Or even worse - embarrass myself!  On national TV.  

Actually, I never would have been able to take that first step. Those of us with panic disorder tend to work ourselves up into a frenzy well before the feared event. We simply imagine it, and the stories start. (They are stories because they aren't real - our brains create all of these possible horrible scenarios that have not yet happened, and will likely never happen. More on that later!) And when the stories start, we are robbed of the wonderful present, even if we're in the safest place in the world.

6/17/13

The black hole of Obsessive thinking

It’s exhausting - thinking about something over and over again - and over again.  And my obsessive thoughts have never been pleasant thoughts.  (It seems wholly unfair - why couldn’t I think obsessively about a good hair day, or how pretty the green leaves look against the blue sky?)  My obsessive thoughts do not inspire joy.  They are usually dark and full of what ifs.  What if I get carjacked?  What if develop a life threatening illness and have to stop working and lose my job and my house?  And these thoughts whirl in my head around and around like the wheel in the hamster cage.  

The worst of it happened right after I had my first child.  Most of us have heard of post-partum depression, but I was blindsided by post-partum anxiety.  Not long after my sweet little son was born, I started having dreadful thoughts about all of the terrible things that could happen to this vulnerable little life.  I was powerless in the grip of these thoughts.  It felt like there was a TV in my head that was turned 24 hours a day to the anxiety channel, featuring shows that illustrated all that could happen to a helpless infant.  And it wasn’t a small 9 inch black and white tv - it was a big honking 80 inch flat screen in HD.  

My brain didn’t have a choice - it had to be tuned to the anxiety channel.  For brief periods of time I could switch it over to a different channel - the comedy channel when I saw something humorous and could muster up a brief laugh; the cooking channel when I needed to conjure up a nice bland dinner that wouldn’t cause the baby to drink spicy breast milk.  I had to stay away from any news sources whatsoever.  It seems that talk shows were riddled with stories of potential hazards to babies and toddlers.  I recall one day when I turned on a famous talk show that featured tragic stories of babies that were killed by common household objects.  I turned to a different talk show that  featured stories about children who had been kidnapped and never recovered.  Those night time feedings were the worst times for me.  I had a video at the ready to pop in the moment I woke to my son’s cries of hunger.  A funny video - thank YOU Steve Martin!

The sadness for me in looking back on this time is that the anxiety- those damn obsessive thoughts - robbed me of soaking in those precious moments with my baby.  I did my best because - wow - I loved that baby more than anyone told me I would. But  it’s difficult to be in the moment when you’re locked in an endless loop of useless thoughts.  Inconveniently, my brain was set up with picture and picture. As much as I would try to focus on that baby, or something sweet and funny he had done, there was that anxiety channel running it's endless loop on the same screen.  

It was torturous - so much so that I recall with great sadness the one afternoon I sprawled out on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, and I felt locked in to my own head. I thought there was only one way out, and that was to quiet my brain forever. I considered the thought, but looked over at my sleeping baby in his cradle near the bed, and knew that I could never abandon him. So I pushed the thought to the back of my brain - in the file designated 'for further consideration if desperately needed" 

and I pushed on.  

And then one day the volume was softer, and the 80 inch high def had turned into a 9 inch with the rotary dial.  It became easier to switch channels.  And slowly my brain became quiet.  Rest became easier.  I started to realize that dangers lurked around my precious baby, but he had a protective family, a watchful mother, and family and friends who valued his little life and supported his growth.  

I believe it was about the time I started sleeping through the night and weaning him on to the bottle.

I had to think long and hard about whether I could put myself through this again - about whether there would be a second child in our family. I armed myself with information about post-partum depression and anxiety. I ignored the doctor's insistence that what I had experienced was "normal". I wonder how often women are given a pat on the back and sent away with the words, "don't worry so much....you're quite normal", even when they go home and sprawl on their beds and consider suicide as an antedote to all his "normalcy".

I did work up the courage for a second baby, and I'm so glad I did. The second post partum experience was not nearly the darkness of the first one.

To this day, the obsessive thoughts will rev up during periods of my life. Now I'm able to step back and say..."hmmm.....who turned the anxiety channel back on, and why?" It's a barometer of my overall level of stress - a signal that I need to address or change something in my life. And it's no longer a trap.

6-8-13

Wow - time got away from me.  I wrote that first entry because I have a lot to say about anxiety, and wanted to finally get it out.  So what happened?  I got busy at work.  And anxious.  And sleepless.  

I know a lot of people who deal with anxiety - just everyday people who hold jobs and go to school and run to the grocery store.  Most of my fellow worriers seem to deal with sleeplessness in some way.  Some of them toss and turn trying to fall asleep.  Others manage to get in a solid three to four hours, then wake up in the wee hours with no one to talk to and really bad tv, and then the worry wheels start to turn.  

When I was a kid I was afraid of the dark.  I needed to have the door open just enough so that the hallway light shone full on my face.  I would lie in bed watching the shadows on the walls.  I would try not to look at the Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist dummy seated on a chair across from my bed because I was sure his creepy little mouth would start moving on his own.   Worries from the day would transfer into worries about tomorrow.  It seemed that I had no choice but to worry - it was my default setting.  So as soon as I learned to read, I turned to books at night to occupy my mind until I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and it was only a short leap from awake and worry to sleep and nightmares.  Yay!

I used to grab a stack of slim paperbacks just before bed, and stash them under my pillow.  I read by that light in the hallway until my parents came up to bed, when I would shove the books under my covers and throw myself over them.  I was good at feigning sleep - work up a little drool on the pillow, slow my breathing.... no problem.  When their bedroom door closed, I pulled out the books once more.  I knew those books backward and forward.  Once I fell asleep, I slept until morning, which seems like a luxury now.  But more about that later!

First Blurt - 3/30

I’ve never been a blurter.  Blurters are direct - they express their thoughts as soon as they pop into their heads without stopping to run their thoughts through a filter of reflection.  Not that I believe blurting is bad - sometimes things just need to be said without the worry of consequences.  You might say I am the opposite of a blurter.  I think long and hard about what I want to say - sometimes too long.  A person can miss opportune moments when they think too long.  Much of that is my introverted personality.  We introverts don’t think out loud - we retreat to a quiet corner to ponder, and only come out when we’re good and ready.  But I’m also a worrier.  More than a worrier, really.  I have struggled my whole life with anxiety.  Even as a child I knew I was a worrier - that it was somehow as much a part of who I was  as my green eyes and pointy nose.

I had my first full blown panic attack when I was seventeen.  I’ve had countless attacks since that day.  I suffered quietly for years.  For periods of time they lessened, then for periods of time they got worse.  A few years ago my world started to get smaller and smaller as I ran out of places to go where I could feel comfortable.  Through it all I functioned.  I got married, held a job, had children, shopped, travelled, pursued my hobbies - but this anxiety monster was always with me.  It crowded my brain, zapped my energy, made me afraid, made me stay home, and made me hate the way I felt.  A few years ago I got help.  It took me way too long, and I regret the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years that I suffered quietly.  To this day, there are only a select few in my life who know that I have an anxiety disorder, but I’m tired of being silent about something that affects, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 40 million American adults in a given year.  So it turns out that I have a lot of company.  I’m not getting any younger, so I’m thinking that it’s time to blurt.