They often work together—one after your mind and the other creating chaos in your body. They are a dynamic duo playing a game of tag at all hours of the day without your consent or control. Your body’s automatic response to this invisible game is to fight, flight or freeze, and the game can go from 5 minutes to days in duration. All you want is for someone to yell GAME OVER!
My First Encounter with Panic and Anxiety
I had my first personal encounter with panic and anxiety at the age of 49. I say this was my first personal encounter because up until that point, I had only witnessed it with my kids. Both my wife’s daughters had forms of it, with one more serious than the other.
We had gone to family bowling one night and all was fine and dandy until out of nowhere the youngest started shaking and then crying uncontrollably. I was an eye witness to a panic attack and had absolutely no idea how to help. If I’m being honest, I was actually annoyed and frustrated… “How can she be crying just like that!? We’re having fun here!… she’s ruining our night.” These were my raw internal thoughts and I am terribly ashamed by them today, but that’s what happened.
The Warning Signs I Ignored
I’d like to tell you that my panic and anxiety attack was out of the blue with no warning signs but that’s not the case… my ‘check engine’ light was on long before and I did what most men do: I ignored it and blamed it on a faulty fuse somewhere.
I allowed events to stack up like some board game, waiting to see how high I could build the tower of denial, not even giving it a thought that the tower might fall over. Each event was wrapped, boxed up, mislabeled and stored in the closet that we as men call… actually, we don’t have a name for it! Because to give it a name would mean to acknowledge its existence. We just keep adding boxes there because there’s always room—until there isn’t. Then when it manifests itself into a more-than-we-can-manage pain or medical emergency, we are clueless about where it came from.
A Near-Death Experience
Back in 2008 I was a Sales Trainer for the company that I’m still with today. I would ride with reps to their sales calls and then give them feedback on where they did well and where the opportunity for improvement was. On one occasion we were driving around in Edmonton and the rep was new to Canada and apparently new to driving. He decided that going across four lanes of traffic was a good idea. I still remember the smoke from the tires of the white pickup truck and the black mustang braking, trying to avoid hitting us on my side. Death was a certainty if they didn’t stop in time.
For 12 years since this incident I couldn’t be a passenger in the front seat of a car. If I had no choice, my coping strategy was to look out the side the whole ride. I jokingly told everyone that I had PTSD. As it turned out, do you know what I had untreated for 12 years? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
The Tower of Denial
PTSD was the foundation of my tower of denial. As life went on I kept adding to the tower with feelings of guilt, with stresses from work, with financial worry, with doubts of an uncertain future. At times my mind was on auto-pilot with the same daily routine of life, a repeated loop of Groundhog Day (Bill Murray movie). My body suffered as a result. Slowly the pants were getting tighter, the buttons on the shirts were stretching to their limits and it’s not until you see yourself in a picture that you realize, the tower not only goes up but also out.
The First Panic Attack
My first panic attack occurred while I was driving home almost two years ago. Luckily I was close to home, so I rushed to get back. I remember feeling so cold that I went for a hot shower to warm up but instead I found myself ready to pass out. In the chaos of my thoughts at that moment, I decided that it was more important that I not be found dead naked, so I ran out of the shower and put on a pair of sweatpants and waited for death… and that’s when panic attacks are liars.
Panic Attacks and Anxiety: A Terrifying Duo
PAs make you feel like you’re headed for an imminent heart attack and that your whole body is about to explode. It’s very similar to a movie scene taking place in a nuclear bunker and all the red lights and sirens are going off! It’s a terrifying experience. Born of PAs is anxiety, another formidable foe. It is a thief that steals your confidence, your ability to process rationally, your sense of self, your emotional balance, your want of going out to experience the world—and it stole my manhood for a time too long.
Finding the Superhero Within
Anxiety creates a forest of distraction but thankfully there is a way through, a force greater than PAs and Anxiety put together… a superhero with unimaginable strength… YOU.
You are the superhero that you’ve been waiting for. But there is a catch! The more you build a team around you the greater your powers become. An F1 car that comes in for a pit stop doesn’t just have one person fixing, replacing and topping up, there’s a whole team that gets that car ready again. You need to build your own pit crew. It’s as simple as that. However, the work is not simple, the work is hard and unlike F1, the goal isn’t to finish the race as quickly as possible, the goal is to enjoy the drive.
My Pit Crew
My wife, my family, certain friends, my therapist, my naturopath, my doctor, my men’s support group—and my pit crew chief is my faith.
