A IS FOR ANXIETY

There's a pivotal scene in episode one, season one of HBO's 'The Sopranos' (1999) where mob boss, Tony Soprano, is cooking up some sausages on a barbecue grill when his smiling face is suddenly frozen in horror as he collapses on the ground from what we (the audience) assume to be a heart attack. Later, it turns out (after undergoing medical tests to rule out any physical issues) that what he actually suffered from was a panic attack caused by underlying and unchecked anxiety. As a consequence of this diagnosis, Tony then proceeds to spend the next six seasons of the show attempting to get to the bottom of whatever it was that caused that cataclysmic moment of vulnerability.

Anxiety is truly a devil. I know this because (like Tony S) for many years during my mid to late 20s I suffered from crippling anxiety and extreme panic attacks. Even to this day I steadfastly resist the temptation to declare I've conquered those panic demons as I can well imagine them lurking patiently like hooded assassins, waiting for a display of my hubristic complacency so they can return to assassinate my confidence when I least expect it. They can be bastards like that.

I still have mild PTSD recalling those endless nights spent with my mind on fire and a body that seemed to be following suit in some demonic solidarity as I believed invisible forces had staged a coup inside my brain and were trying to accelerate my self-destruction towards an early grave. It wasn't pleasant, to say the least. Sometimes I imagined I was like a war veteran from an Oliver Stone movie, except one who had never been to war, just the one inside my own head. What was this punishment being meted out to me without any clear reason? Sometimes I've conjectured to others that having an elaborate imagination can be simultaneously a blessing and a curse. A blessing when it comes to having lots of ideas and interesting thoughts but a curse when it turns on you and goes all William Blake.

Tuning out of your anxiety frequency can be hard when you're perpetually caught in the eye of the storm as if it's often like you're stuck on one channel - Panic FM with no alternative station to switch to. The mind becomes singularly dedicated to this one way of thinking and as a consequence cannot see any other perspective than the one you're locked into which is typically fraught with feelings of catastrophe, impending doom and perpetual fear. If you can't see the proverbial wood for the trees it's because you can't even see the trees. Mentally, you feel buried ten feet under the soil where the deep roots wrap around your mind like a tendrilled strait jacket.

What was it that broke this nightmare spell for me? A combination of distraction, kindness (to myself) and a re-framing of what I believed anxiety represented in my life - less a dead end and more a spiritual path. My sleepless nights of crying into my well worn copy of Claire Weeke's 'Self Help For Your Nerves' (1962) were replaced with a year doing basic counselling with a small charity organisation. Yes, there were times when I found the endless repetition of going over the identified triggers for my condition frustrating but ultimately the routine of going over things endlessly became empowering. Slowly, I began to notice a shift from the myopia of my anxious, neurotic thinking, finding it expanded from 4:3 (standard screen) to 16:9 (widescreen) as I became more aware of others around me once again and so both trees and ultimately the 'wood' emerged as visible to me.

In addition to the basic counselling (where I saw myself as a more provincial and less criminal Tony Soprano), I have had additional help and support from a registered hypnotherapist and all round expert in matters related to anxiety, depression and OCD (PB) who managed to descramble and reframe the anxiety part of my brain and mute it into near silence.

Of course, none of this is to say that an underlying anxiety doesn't still stalk me from time to time like a peripheral spectre but once I was able to shift my 'locked in' way of thinking, dictated solely by my anxiety for many years, I tricked my mind into seeing that I had choices about how to think about what that condition or 'pathology' could mean to me personally and symbolically.

For what it's worth, I have come to see my anxiety as part of a spiritual path where I hope that my own subjective experience of suffering enables me to be more helpful and empathetic to others who suffer similarly. My empathy certainly became massively heightened (like a sixth sense) after I came through my anxiety tunnel after many years. I suppose I have to think of it this way otherwise I might feel bitter regret that I wasted so much time being mauled by such awful mind terrors with nothing to show for it. In the end, I believe if you make friends with your anxiety and embrace it as part of your spiritual path then you can gain a great deal of control over your life once again and be of great use to others.

Though of course, deep down, like Tony Soprano I'm still a selfish bastard.

Some habits are harder to fix than others, I guess. ^^