Health-Related Anxiety and Therapy/Counselling

I suffer from Health-Related Anxiety (HRA). This means that, when under severe stress, I misinterpret the signals my body is sending out, and the symptoms which we all experience at one time or another, and see them as signs of imminent serious illness and ambulance-requiring danger.

For most of 2017, my HRA was under control – and I had very few attacks of this debilitating mental health problem, and those I did have were very easily calmed by my own thought patterns and the help I have received in the past from therapists.

So, it is very easy for me to tell when HRA is dominating my life once more – as it has been over the past six weeks or so, having reached crisis point at the start of 2018.

To put it bluntly, my sense of fear about symptoms and my immediate need to seek help goes into the stratosphere and I can very easily spend much of my life seeking reassurance (which, of course, never truly sticks) for a variety of minor ills.

But, you see, for those of us who have HRA there is nothing minor, or transitory, about the creaks and groans, the aches and pains, the rumblings and tumblings of our own bodies. For me, the great fear behind it all is cancer; for others it might be heart-related or more specific to another serious illness.

For years, I rushed to and from the local surgery until, finally, I was given some Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) with Positive Step in Weston-super-Mare. This helped me to understand the mechanics of anxiety and what it does to the body and the vicious circle that can so easily start as a result.

Why, though, do I get this? Two reasons, I suspect: As previously intimated on here, I was brought up in an atmosphere of constant potential medical emergency – and, equally important, I have never been good at expressing my anger or hurt to people directly: Both turn inwards and become psychosomatic symptoms which, eventually, dark-flower into a full-blown attack of HRA.

Conflict is a huge trigger point for me – because it is something I deal with very badly (and often fail to deal with at all) and the consequent bottling up of rage and grief propels me down to the doctor time and time again as it squats malevolently in tummy or chest, leg or throat and, because I find it so hard to face the truth of my own emotions,very speedily convinces me that I have cancer or am having a heart attack.

I have, in recent months, failed to deal with conflict involving people I know. I have also failed to grieve properly for Jumble, for my marital breakdown and divorce. Certain people’s treatment of me has spawned enormous inner rage – which has lain, unexpressed, in my cells creating the usual pain-related havoc. Seeing my mother has triggered a whirlwind of family woe and unresolved interpersonal stuff.

I do not tell people when they have angered or upset me – because I am trained to think that I am imagining it, am the provoker or have got it wrong.

It all came to a head last Friday when, almost incoherent with panic due to what felt like a huge lump in my throat, I dashed down to see a doctor. Logically, I could see that it was no coincidence that this had started just before the trip to see my mum – and had got worse afterwards – but, with HRA, logic rarely dents the panic.

The kind doctor had a look – and told me it was something called Globus Pharyngis – or, very tellingly, Globus Nervosus. In other words, there was no organic problem, simply a nasty sensation caused by anxiety and the chemicals it floods the body with. My digestive system is extremely sensitive to stress.

I had a bit of a breakthrough during this doctor’s visit, however – and found myself telling the medical professional that I recognised that I am not really coping very well at present, had found counselling very helpful in the past, recognised that this was predominantly a mental health problem and wanted to be put on the list for counselling as soon as possible.

She warned me that this could take three months. I said that was fine. It was taking action – and acknowledging the reality of HRA – that was important. It was knowing that I had, once again, got to that point and doing something about it that mattered. It was being able to distinguish between symptom, fear and cause that could give me the start of control over this.

My anxiety is more generalised than HRA unfortunately – and can be extremely debilitating. During the divorce, it tended to present itself most days – and sometimes last all day. I would spend much of my time lying on, or in, my bed, shaking and sobbing, curled into the pain.

Days like that have been almost non-existent since moving to Glastonbury – which is lovely and so heartening – but there have been a few recently, and that’s not good.

I was talking to one of my sisters recently about something quite different (though related in a way I cannot go into on here) and she said, ‘Actually, that is not okay…’ about the way I had been treated.

This startled me and helped hugely. Although my boundaries are strengthening, they remain very weak and it is all too easy for others to convince me that I am at fault.

But, looking back over the things which have helped trigger this latest bout with HRA, I was able to say (at present, only to myself – but that’s a start!), ‘Actually, the way you individuals have behaved is NOT okay…’

Maybe one day I will be able to say this – not aggressively, just assertively – directly to the individuals concerned. I hope so because such an action would free my throat (both literally and metaphorically) from its blockage, and would, I feel, give me some much-needed control over at least one part of my anxiety.

Health anxiety has been defined as health-related fears and beliefs, based on interpretations, or perhaps more often, misinterpretations, of bodily signs and symptoms as being indicative of serious illness (Asmundson, Taylor, Sevgur, & Cox, 2001, p. 4) Often measured with the Illness Anxiety Scale (IAS), which contains 4 factors. Health Anxiety could be present in both hypochondriasis and an illness phobia. Hypochondriasis = fear of having an illness. Illness phobia = fear of contracting an illness.

A visit to my mother

I am not all right. Not at present. I feel as if I have something stuck in my throat and am extremely anxious. No longer sure whether the choking sensation, and acid reflux, represent a disease in themselves or whether it is recent events in my life that are kick-starting the dread cycle of physical sensations produced by Fight or Flight.

2018 has not started well. I’ll be honest about that. I know all the guff about fresh starts and renewed optimism and always looking on the bright side and the wisdom of the aged woman – but, frankly, I am me, not a performing Crone, and can only write about what is actually true for me. Pointless to reflect upon life from the perspective of what, according to some, should be the mind of a woman of my age.

My digestive system has been very easily skewed by emotional problems for many years. But it has never been this bad. The  feeling of lumpiness in the throat makes me feel so panic-stricken that I tend to avoid eating – and, when I do consume food, I am so tense that, of course, the problem just gets worse.

I went to see my mother on Wednesday, accompanied (thank Goddess) by my son and his girlfriend. The shock was visceral. For complex reasons, I had not seen her for a while and, although siblings had warned me, no words could prepare me for the reality of a parent in late-stage Alzheimer’s Disease.

The new home is lovely, and the carers seem great. They speak of my mum with fondness, say that sometimes she sings and that she will talk. I imagined a limited conversation and perhaps the chance to hear her beautiful singing voice once again. I had not taken in the word ‘wheelchair’ nor the full implications of being told that she could no longer use a knife and fork.

But I needed to face it – just as I needed to face death through Jumble’s passing just over a month ago. I have dallied in delusion and denial long enough.

The day was beautiful. Cotswold stone shone in wintry sun. We signed in and were told that the residents were having lunch. I opted to see Mum in the Dining Room first.

They told me she was sitting at the back table. I looked. There was no one I recognised as my mother at first glance. It was only when I was told that she was being fed that I realised that the woman, with her back to me, a stiff wing of greyish-white hair plumed back from bald forehead, was my mum. This woman wore a bib and a carer was patiently spooning blended food into her mouth. Baby, she was, or large and silent baby bird.

I approached. I knew, in my heart, that she did not know me – but the blankness of her stare showed something far worse: She did not know herself; she did not know full stop. Her blue eyes were set in the archetypal Alzheimer’s Thousand Yard Stare. This was no longer loss of memory; this was loss of self. I have no idea whether she has any lingering sense of what ‘me’ means, but I somehow doubt it.

We waited, the three of us, in the Lounge and, eventually, Mum was wheeled in, parked and left for us to interact with – or try to. She can talk, in disconnected blocks of largely senseless words – but it is not, in any way I recognise, conversation. Her thoughts tail off. Her face is, for the most part, frozen, though occasional smiles and odd bursts of laughing, break the surface. Her hands, always so active, lie like smooth little gloves in her lap and, although I held her right hand (and generally made physical contact as much as I could), there was no response; her small hand lay in mine as if it were already dead just not yet cold.

When we were little, she used to sing, around the house and, sometimes, to us. The tune I most associate with those early days is Ronald Binge’s ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ – and, reminding Mum of how musical she was, I sang it to her, my voice trembling a bit and my throat choked with tears which would not come out.  She seemed to smile – but I have no idea whether that had anything to do with my choice of song, or whether this movement of facial muscles was as involuntary as all her other bodily actions now.

She reminded me (as I wrote in my journal and, subsequently, for friends on Facebook) of a mechanical doll winding down. She is not dead, but she has gone. That is the reality I was unwilling to face. That is, I suspect, part of my reason for not facing up to the situation and to her.

I talked to her (or should that be ‘at her’?) for an hour, and much of it was interspersed with song because music linked us and I have heard that singing can trigger non-verbal ‘memory’ in some Alzheimer’s patients.

It was heart-breaking. It was horrifying. I felt as if I were performing to a corpse. And yet somewhere beneath that frozen mask, those four pointy teeth, the limbs that have to be coerced to move, the trapped mind, is the womb which bore me and my four siblings; the mind, now honeycombed with air and absence, still carries a silent echo of the bustling, sharp articulate mother, the woman who was a natural speller and musician, who was feisty and difficult and eccentric before her time; somewhere in the hollow caverns of her manikin self lies the boundless imagination and sense of fun and bad temper and war-stopping sneeze.

Music releases emotions in me – and I may well have inherited that from her. Yesterday, still in shock, I found ‘Elizabethan Serenade’ on Youtube – and found myself sobbing immediately as soon as the familiar first notes started. I played it over and over, tears drenching the table and my clothes and face.

The visit triggered griefs stoppered up at the time, reopened wounds I thought stitched up and healed; but it also made me question our current thinking around elderly and very sick people. I am far from sure that this drive to keep everyone alive until advanced old age is in society’s best interest (let alone that of the individual concerned). I am not convinced that my mother still has what I would call quality of life (though I appreciate I may be wrong) – and I am not sure that being reduced to the level of dependent animal is of benefit to her or anyone else.

We cannot fight the inevitability of death. Keeping people alive merely puts it off for a while. Did I feel that my mother’s spirit was fighting to stay in this world? No, I didn’t: I suspect that her familiar spirit has already gone, ahead of the stilled body, and that, were she asked, she would wish for that useless sack of flesh to be released too.

I am not all right, nor is my mother. Sometimes it is actually healthier to look honestly on the dark side than to try and conjure up a flimsy prism to the bright side of life.

Powerlessness and Depression

I have felt a fog of gloom descending upon me since Monday – and am stepping out of its mist and lost feeling to look at the whys and wherefores because, as a lovely friend pointed out last night, it has been triggered by my PTSD flaring up and recognising echoes from past trauma.

What has become abundantly clear is this: A sense of powerlessness has always been the final straw which tips me from profound anxiety into depression. A nasty situation within my birth family, after my father died in 2007, started one such descent, and regular forays into the bleak town of Disempowerment within my fraught marriage also often ended in despair, little white pills and a feeling of heavy dimness, as if all the colour in the world had been sucked out by a vast straw.

And yet, and yet, I finally saw, three years ago, that I am not a depressive personality – ironically! – but that anxiety and control by others wilted my spirit to such an extent that I plunged from light into darkness, a latter-day Lucifer rebelling against the power of Patriarchy gone wrong and, unable to climb out of the pit alone, languishing in lost and lonely Limbo.

One of my four siblings came to stay for a couple of days. In itself, this was lovely – but, perhaps inevitably, our talk turned to the events which kicked off in Summer 2007 and have never been resolved, let alone allowed for any kind of healing.

A sense of powerlessness, spawned by quite different demons of the memory and encouraged by the cackling imps of traumatic events, hit me after ‘Macbeth’ – and caused great sadness, nervous tension, fear and a steep darkening of my mood.

An exacerbating factor is this: I have (I think inevitably) caught the respiratory virus which has been doing the rounds of Shadow of the Tor – and feeling physically unwell, weepy and chesty certainly does not help. This, in turn, has triggered some of my childhood terror of not being able to breathe (I had very bad asthma as a child and was hospitalised twice).

But, something has changed in the past year. I can now see that the beautiful colours – which still illuminate our world – do not disappear, and that gaining comfort, inspiration and light from them actively helps. Setting my rainbow-reflecting crystals at strategic positions in the house beams lovely lozenges of sharp colour all over walls and soft furnishings, and on grey days like today, that memory of loveliness can be reproduced in my mind very easily.

But, above all, I am NOT powerless as I once was. Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes the old feelings of utter fear and hopelessness do return. Sometimes the unfairness of the family situation does catch me a mean blow and the many instances of power-draining from my ex do return to haunt my nights and jettison some of my day’s freight of joy.

Yesterday, as I sank into the pool of misery, four different friends called to help and soothe and cheer. That would never have happened a year ago; such a thing would not have been allowed. These four women brought gifts, both physical and of the spirit. They appeared at a moment when I most needed their presence, and for that I cannot thank them enough.

But there is more, a peculiar strand which typifies my life here in Glastonbury. One of these women I knew before coming here, albeit only slightly – and that continuity, that link with the Western Mystery Tradition, that part of female fellowship, is strengthening and hugely reassuring.

The other is very strange, but pretty amazing. This friend went to a particular boarding school in Ascot – the same school attended by the girls in our local doctors’ family (apostrophe deliberately placed: both parents were GPs) and, far more weirdly, the daughters of friends of the family who actually lived in Ascot and whom we visited regularly when I was a child and teenager. My new friend was a pal of the older daughter and had also visited this house – and I now wonder if she was one of the friends I occasionally met when we visited. Her name rings a clear bell from those days. How peculiar!

The third visitor has opened the door to an aspect of Ceremonial Magic for me – which is great.

I will, I suspect, continue to go through the narrow tube of feeling silenced and bereft of control, power, hope – but the recognition that this is an echo certainly helps, as does this undeniable fact: I am not obliged to give toxic people and situations house-room! I am not a victim – and, if I suspect that I am being bullied, got at, or side-lined, I have every right to demand an explanation and to flush the person concerned down the metaphorical toilet!

I am neither weak nor powerless, and my life-long habit of inflating bullies to almost godlike status needs to end. They are nothing of the kind.  Their huge egos, need to dominate and narrow world view usually hides deep uncertainty and insecurity – and the only way they can keep filling the gap of vast emptiness is to feed on the fear, the self-doubt, the private wounds of others.

Yes, glum greyness has cloaked me this week – but I have the power to untie the strings, remove that cape of encroaching darkness and clothe myself in brightness.

Pest: Feeling Powerless and Anxious – a clear link…

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/pest/

Panic attacks are, in many ways, like pests – mosquitioes, for example: you can hear the distinctive whining noise, but you cannot see them and you never know when, or where, they are going to bite…

I want to write about something which is both deeply personal and, I suspect, universal – and that is the close link between feeling powerless and the churning, intensely physical sensations of a panic attack.

First, let me examine the physiology of this symbiotic, if damaging, relationship – and, for this, I will venture into home territory and describe what it feels like. Briefly, sudden shocks or triggering of the amygdala’s fight or slight system can slow the digestive system down or stop it altogether. The muscles tighten ready for running away. Our bodies, that is to say, ready themselves for facing a woolly mammoth or sabre-toothed tiger. It is as instinctive as that – and we cannot prevent the adrenaline surge.

The positive side of the above is that, should we actually need to, we can fight or flee. The negative, however, can very easily outweigh the positive – because the amygdala’s switch does not discriminate between incoming tiger and the powerless distress caused by contretemps with fellow human.

Digestion stopped suddenly results in, amongst other things, the painful griping of indigestion as fermentation takes hold. The muscular defence system causes intense, sudden and often frightening attacks of pain all over the body. The chemical attack upon the bloodstream gives rise to dizziness, sweating, ringing in the ears, lack of balance and an almost unbearable feeling of fear and imminent doom. Because some of these physical symptoms mimic those of heart attack, it is very easy to become convinced  one’s abrupt end is just seconds away.

So, a situation has developed (which I won’t go into because it is private and not really germane to this post per se) that has left me feeling powerless, very stressed and upset – and, because this is how my anxiety works, has triggered the amygdala to do its gruesome worst.

Yesterday, I had just written what, for me, was a difficult and confronting post – one, in retrospect, I would have been wiser not writing because it pushed my stress and fear levels to a critical level –  when, with no warning, the familiar and terrifying chest/gullet pain kicked in. I could not breathe without pain – and, no matter how often this happens, there is a sense of utter mind-blowing terror that no logic can dispel.

I tried to break the cycle by moving out into the garden and walking gently round it. I tried to calm my painful breathing down, to think calming thoughts, to distract my terrified mind.

To no avail. Sweating intensely. shaking all over, hyperventilating, I stood, frozen, at the garden’s end, convinced that I was about to collapse. I felt powerless to make it better (just as, with the above emotional situation, I cannot seem to get through).

Trembling, head whooshing, vision going in and out of focus, I walked back into the house, upstairs and lay down on my bed. My body began to jerk, of its own accord, and, dry-mouthed, I tried to draw the tattered remnants of mind control together to combat this attack by my own system.

Fortunately, I had earlier, in an unrelated move, switched on the colour-changing lights in my bedroom – and they proved invaluable. Focusing on them was soothing. Counting them, describing the colours and shapes gradually took my mind away from the worst of the pain and panic. Gradually the stiffness in my limbs began to ease, and the intense trembling slowed to an occasional twitch. Gradually my spasming gullet relaxed and the pain eased away. Gradually my eyes closed and trust that I would survive the afternoon returned.

But this has now happened four times since mid-June – and I sense, well, I know, that I need to look at what is causing this, which specific areas of powerlessness, fear and oppression are opening the bottle of nasty chemicals and flooding my body. This is an ongoing process because, having identified the problem, I then need to do something about it – and, when that comes to dealing with kinks in personal relationships, the confrontation and fear of it all can easily trigger a panic attack (and often does).

Broadly, the huge fear is the repercussions (anger, desertion) of setting clear boundaries for myself and of not allowing others to drain my energy. Assertion, in my still-fragile mind, has become twinned with desertion – and, for all that I know this is not true for every case, my body still reacts as if it were, if that makes sense.

Every single panic attack of the severity described above has come as a result of my trying to stand up for myself, or my facing inequality in a relationship and trying to do something about it; just saying, ‘No!’ can bring on profound anxiety and pain. Being around over-bearing people triggers the panic as often as not because I have yet to be confident in my ability to fend off their dominance, to refuse to ‘buy’ whatever it is they are ‘selling’.

I share this because it helps to analyse it in this much depth – takes away some of its overwhelming physical power over me – and also because I am absolutely sure that I am far from alone, and, therefore, my words might bring relief  to another.

I wish I could end with a higher self reassurance or a neat quote of resolution – but I cannot, not this time.

What I will say is this, however: My feeling of powerlessness and inability to face, feel and resolve the emotional pain has been translated into the immediacy and petrifying anguish of physical symptoms: somatic nightmare.

Auditions, Clowns, Looks and me…

I have always found auditions, interviews and any other process which involves competing for a part, or job, profoundly terrifying, distressing and confronting. My assumption, for many a decade, has always been – at a very deep level – that I will be the last one to be picked for a team (as it were), and only chosen when nothing better presents itself.

For many many years, I coped with this massive insecurity and low sense of self-worth by refusing to engage with the audition in its widest sense: I gave up very quickly on traditional publishers for this reason; I was convinced I was not good enough to act, sing, dance, play my instruments in public and kept away from stages, drama groups and the like.

We all get setbacks when it comes to being chosen for things – and often this sense of being inferior links directly to early experiences, which then become hardwired in the brain, and emotional centre.

When I was four, I started having ballet lessons. How good was I? Probably not as bad as I thought. Who told me I wasn’t very good, though, or was it an assumption I picked up from thin air?

We had a little dancing display put on by the school – and it involved lots of short dances with children being put into groups. All the little girls danced in something – and I know I was hoping for something pretty and girly and graceful and, well, feminine. Instead, I was chosen for the Clown Dance, which involved a bright orange clown suit which covered me from neck to toe and looked much more boyish and garishly silly, than I, secretly, wanted.

I can still recall the sting of this and the feeling of huge jealousy of my younger sister who got to dance in short yellow skirt, matching ribbons in her hair and black waistcoat. She looked like a proper little ballerina; I looked like a bumbling clown.

Fast forward four decades – and Wrington Drama Club (which I had joined) was casting for ‘Harvey’. Initially, I wasn’t going to bother auditioning, so sure was I which people would be chosen for the main parts – but my friend had decided to go for it, and we always supported and  encouraged one another on these scary moments!

I read for two parts: Veta-Louise Simmons and Ruth Kelly. Several people said my reading was excellent, and that I would be brilliant in either role. But – and I am going to be blunt here – two things stood against me: My size and, with the latter role, my age. You see – and it hurts me to say this, but it is the truth – whilst discrimination against performers on the basis of colour and gender orientation is, quite rightly, frowned upon, prejudice against those who are above-average in weight and age is alive and well worldwide.

I had the full range of acting skills – but I didn’t look the part.

In the pub, post show, a female member of the group told me that I had acted the part of Ruth Kelly extremely well, and a tiny surge of hope rose in me.

‘I might even get the part, you never know!’ I jested.

This woman looked at me.

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘Ruth Kelly is supposed to be young, trim and pretty…’

I don’t think she meant to be hurtful; she was, quite simply, stating an obvious fact – but, when I got home that night, I cried and cried.

Ironically, I did get to play Veta-Louise Simmons in the end – for two of the four nights – after the original actress chosen developed voice problems. I loved it – but was terribly aware of the physical contrast between me and the other Veta-Louise (who was slim and extremely pretty) and felt like an ungainly clown, a whale, in comparison.

I know I was very good in the role – but I didn’t look the way the world wanted her to look.

As many of you will be aware, I joined a lovely local (and very new) drama group here back in March. Shadow of the Tor it is called, and it is an inclusive, ebullient, creative team. I love rehearsals (though insecurity does seep in from time to time) and find my fellow thespians a delight to be around.

But auditioning has, as it always does, reared its scary head once more – and I am having to face deep fears and that childlike sense of clown-related inadequacy. Initially, I wanted to just play safe and audition only for minor, non-speaking roles, but was encouraged by another member of the team to try out for a bigger role in one of the performances currently under the spotlight.

It is to be a small film. Gulp. I nearly didn’t audition because, to be frank, we all know that the camera adds pounds to the body and lines onto the face – and, at nearly sixty with a full figure anyway, all my flaws would be spotlit immediately.

Could I, I wondered, compromise, and audition with a bag over my head (with holes for eyes and mouth so I could be heard and could see!)? It really was very tempting! On the day of the audition, I was terrified, so nervous I was actually shaking. Several times, I nearly said, ‘Look I’ve changed my mind…’

The old old terrors surged, with the biggie in the middle – that of not looking right for any part unless it’s comedic and taking piss out of self type stuff – elbowing its way into things once again.

And then I remembered something so healing and important: Last year, the Silent Eye team deliberately gave me a beautiful role – and it was so lovely, so unusual, to see myself in the role of something other than comic villain or hilariously-hideous hench-woman that I actually cried, amidst whoops, when I ran, with the others following me, out of the centre and onto the fields to watch the Fox Dancers.

I can see, with pitiless clarity, that my mindset for most of my life has been, ‘Don’t risk this audition. You know you won’t be chosen; that you don’t look right for the part…’

But such thinking can become a vicious circle, can’t it? As it has for me. If I don’t audition for things, goes my warped thinking, then I can’t be hurt by the (to me) almost-inevitable disappointment and rejection. If I set my sights low and only go for small parts, I’m more likely to get somewhere.

Is this why I have opted to self-publish?

Probably.

Is this why, faced with my decision to throw ‘Heneghan‘ to the lions of the traditional publishing world, I have come to a full stop on the editing front and am too scared to continue?

Yes.

I did audition. It was very scary, though both members of the filming team were extremely kind and reassuring, put me at my ease as best they could. Last night, in rehearsal, I volunteered to read for roles in another performance-to-be, even though a part of me was saying, ‘Keep quiet! Don’t raise your head above the parapet…’

I love being on stage – but am always racked by the fear that I won’t be good enough; that I look stupid and fat and ungainly and ugly.

I do not know whether I’ll get a part in any of the plays or not. But, in a very real sense, it does not matter: By auditioning despite my fears, I have faced demons and battled their evil talon-sharp grip upon my self-confidence.

So perhaps little orange clown Bambi (as I was nick-named then) will finally realise that it was a compliment, and not an insult, to be chosen; that she was, in her way, every bit as sweet and pretty as the more traditional small dancers…

Me, second to back clown, aged seven – December 1965.

 

The Physical nature of Panic Attacks

This happened last night, during the wonderful Bardic Finals. I did not include it in my earlier account: The post was meant to be supportive and celebratory, and I did not feel that my momentary lapse into anxiety merited a mention.

As many of you will be aware, I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. The latter can be extremely frightening and debilitating.

Panic is not the same as slight worry, or fretting. It is very physical, extremely scary and, because the symptoms often ape those of more serious ailments, not always easy to diagnose.

I am very easily panicked by threats of violence, and loud shouted anger, particularly when such ‘explosions’ come from men. Male fury I find extremely intimidating – and have a long history of palpable physical responses, usually centred on my tummy or gullet, to its expression.

There was some barracking amongst the audience last night. I am not convinced it was in any way harmful or intrinsically scary – but, without my consciously realising this, my muscles tightened in classic Fight or Flight mode.

Then, a guy got up, and hurling imprecations at the performance then happening, staggered out. The response in my body was immediate and severe. I did not have time to think, ‘Oh, this is a threat…’ (whether it actually was or not, my system responded as if it were); I went straight into a panic attack: Intense pain, terror that it would get worse, fear of being trapped, over-breathing – the whole nine yards.

I will confess now that what I wanted most was to run away and hide. But I made myself calm the breathing down, tried to calm the reaction of pain (always severe in me), pressed my left hand to my ribs (which were hurting the most) and blinked back tears.

From past experience, I am pretty confident that NONE of this showed on the surface; I rarely cry out at such times – and most people are unaware that I am mid panic-attack unless I tell them.

My shoulders, I realised afterwards, had instinctively hunched up around my ears, to protect me from harm I guess – and this, of course, is why I very often get nasty muscle spasms in chest and ribs and back.

I am vulnerable to attack, be it verbal or physical. There is no denying this truth. The fact that this ‘attack’ was not in any way directed at me made no difference; it was the threat of extreme male rage that set me off.

But I decided when I moved here that I was not willing to abstain from all social interactions (the way I had for so long in my previous abode) just in case I might come across scary men. My feeling is that I need to face such things, such people, and learn that I can survive panic, that I am capable of coming out the other side.

It is bloody hard at times, though, and my Flight setting still comes to the fore all too easily.

Qualms: An inevitable part of blogging?

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/qualm/

I have experienced many a qualm as a blog-writer. It is, I think, inevitable when one is writing controversial articles, the way I tend to. It is also an intrinsic part of who I am: I worry about my own conduct, even when there is no need.

A great deal depends upon the subject matter. I have written previously about my tendency to delete certain blog posts. In all cases, they were ones I had chilling qualms about, and did not feel safe sharing with the general public.

The ones I felt the most qualms about were those relating to very personal aspects of my life: My father’s death, nude modelling, the sexual assault – and, of course, the divorce and my reasons for activating it. In fact, I am going to share something very telling: I started this post six hours ago and, when I got to this paragraph, got so anxious (Qualms Multiplied, you might say) that I had a proper panic attack and had to leave the laptop alone for the rest of the afternoon and early evening.

Why do such things cause me qualms, even panic, though? I have not lied about any of the above – though I am aware that there are people out in the world, albeit a small minority, who believe that much of what I write is made up, filtered through a damaged mind or delusional.

But it isn’t. I wish in many ways that it were. It would be far easier to have fictionalised my own life in order to satisfy some Drama Queen need to be centre of attention. But to do this would cause me more qualms than I could cope with, frankly!

But setting my strong physical reaction aside for one moment, I think qualms are the stirrings of our conscience – and are, however difficult to face up to, a sign of our humanity and ability to think outside our own needs. They are also a warning sign. One of many, I hasten to add. They can give us that little prickle which foreshadows danger. They are part of the continuum which moves through bad vibrations and into the whole realm of psychic appearances. Those who don’t ever experience qualms themselves may, actually, be missing out on an important human tool.

For some people, however – and I am one of them – there is a very thin, almost invisible, line between our own internal qualms and the controlling techniques used by others. In other words, we are never sure whether the unease comes from our own good sense or layers of mind games used skillfully upon us for a very long time.

Most of my qualmed-out posts have been about the same thing. Says it all really. Those qualms have been so powerful a deterrent that the truth, in these very specific cases, has been fictionalised, with the surviving posts spread thin amongst the huge variety of different topics I cover.

I very nearly deleted this one. It is not my best by any manner of means. But it holds, within its somewhat rough shell, a pearl of truth.

This is scaring me. But I write it anyway.

Health-Related Anxiety: Swelling on Hand

Suffering from Health-Related Anxiety, as I do, can be a real handicap. It means that every symptom, every lump, bump, swelling and ache can be blown out of proportion – and assumptions of serious illness settle upon me with depressing speed.

With me, the feared outcome has always been cancer, I think partly because a friend of mine at primary school developed osteosarcoma  in her early teens and had her right leg amputated on her fourteenth birthday; partly because female cancers are fairly common in my family; but mainly because my mother also suffered from this insidious anxiety and was, thus, unable to give comfort and reassurance.

I have noticed, however, that my fear level ebbs and flows according to the levels of stress in my life: To put it bluntly, I am more likely to over-react to a minor illness when general anxiety is high – and, during the dreadful year of divorce and house-selling, seemed to be in the doctor’s surgery every week.

This latest attack of HRA has coincided with my decision to start supply teaching – and, more specifically, the problems I have experienced in the classroom and the fact that I have had no jobs this week.

Before Christmas, before moving, I was doing a great deal of unaccustomed physical work – cleaning the house, lifting heavy stuff, packing – and, although I do not now recall what happened, at one point I injured the top of my left hand (banged it really hard, I think) and, for a while, it carried a huge bruise, a bruise which covered much of the surface of the skin.

To add insult to injury, the day I moved in here, I stupidly tried to pull the plastic runner, which had been protecting the carpet between front door and kitchen, out from under a tall, heavy IKEA bookcase. The latter fell on top of me. Fortunately, I was not wounded other than bruises, but I may well have received some of the weight on my left hand. Shocked post accident, such minutiae did not register. I had a friend with me at the time, which was very lucky, and he was able to part case from human!

Since then, I have been aware of a soft swelling covering the bottom half of my left hand. Back in mid-January, I went to the local Health Centre, which I am now a member of, and had my hand seen by a doctor. She confessed herself stymied by this soft lump, had no idea what it was (which, of course, made me fear I was incubating an alien or worse) and, a few days later, I found myself in the local hospital having an x-ray to see if there was a tiny fracture or similar.

Nothing showed up skeletally – so my doctor then arranged for me to be seen by the orthopaedic bods, and I have an appointment in three weeks’ time.

The area aches sometimes, but I have osteoarthritis in my left thumb (I suspect) so it might be connected to that. I also use my left hand extensively on here.

Anyway, the point is this: Prior to last week, I was quite calm about this swelling: Accepted that, if it were something serious, the medical system would not have given me an appointment over a month, as it was then, away, and felt that, although slightly less than aesthetically pleasing, this soft bump was not actually impeding me in any way.

Then came a series of traumatic failures (the way I see it) in a succession of classrooms. To be fair, 50% of my teaching experience has been successful. But I am the sort of person to hold failure more closely to my heart, and to let it bother me perhaps more than it should. This week, as stated previously, I have had no contact informing me about supply jobs – and, although logically I know this probably means that local teachers are hale and hearty and absences few, there is a part of me scared that I am being punished for not being good enough, for failing to control all classes, for getting angry and stressed and needing, on two occasions, another teacher to take over.

Over the past three days, my anxiety about my left hand has gone into overdrive once more. I know this is silly. I know it is illogical. I know that it links to the sudden change in my life and the reintroduction of teaching. But this habit of worry is so deeply-ingrained in my soul that I find it very difficult to rationalise. The fact that I appear, at present, to be a bit of a medical mystery doesn’t help.

But, in my new incarnation, my attitude is very much about facing up to long-held fears – which is part of the reason I signed on with an agency and started teaching once more in the first place – and this health-related one is probably the most invidious, and possibly the oldest, one I have got. I do not want to be run by this fear. I do not want the tyranny of dark imagination to inform my every twinge, every lump. Yes, of course we need to be sensibly aware and get things which are of concern checked out by a medical expert. But the level of distress which physical symptoms cause me, and others like me, is far from sensible awareness and right into the heart of intermittent emotional nightmare.

Maybe I am facing too many fears at once! The fear of cooking. The fear of physical DIY tasks. The fear of hosting dinner parties. The fear of other people. The fears for my health (and that of those I hold dear). The fear of losing control. The fear of pain and collapse. The fear of death. Or should that be the fear of life?!

I have always known instinctively – and long before I knew the actual definition – that I had strong OCD traits in my character – and, in my new life, I am allowing the less destructive manifestations of this to flow freely – because they soothe me, keep the anxiety to a low level and are actually capable of producing great beauty. The two I am working creatively with are my neat freak side and my almost-spectrum need for organised colour around me.  Ironically, these two together, working for me and devoid of guilt’s invidious whisper, are creating a lovely home environment and fabulous energy. I am, metaphorically, painting my anxiety’s free and gentle lullaby all over the walls, the furniture, the garden, picking tones which relax and objects which are in harmony with my inner vision. I am making a space which is the antidote to anxiety, if you like – and it works!

Since I moved, on December 20th, my anxiety has been a fraction of what it was in my previous abode – and even after a really horrible day, I find that shutting myself inside my safe and lovely home gives me peace and healing.

The HRA has been dormant for the most part – and I have engaged in many outdoor, physically taxing, tasks, thinking to myself, ‘Whatever this swelling is, it’s pointless keeping my left hand away from work and exercise!’

This recent flare-up is not surprising. In fact, given my highly somatic nature, it would have been amazing if I hadn’t experienced a renewed bout of anxiety. But, with any luck, the orthopods will recognise what ails my south paw and will be able to advise me with regard to treatment (if any) and/or remedial exercises.

There! Now, how’s that for an inadvertently creepy photo? Looks as if I have chopped off someone else’s hand and am displaying it in bloodless glory!

Return to the classroom: Overwhelming

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/overwhelming/

There is something so horribly physical – actually painful, often acutely so – about post-traumatic muscular kick-back. It is a form of anxiety with which I am all too familiar – and it is, to me, utterly overwhelming and very difficult to handle in any kind of mindful, let alone insouciant, way.

Let me explain: The whole process of resuming my teaching career, albeit on a part-time basis, has been overwhelming, both emotionally and physically. I became incredibly tense beforehand, on both occasions, and was very nervous, and barely slept, the nights before going into previously-unknown schools. The disruption to my routine (in so far as I have had one) has been a huge shock, and I have known, at some level, that my muscles and nerves would, inevitably, have their say eventually; they always do.

Both teaching days, I was up by six in the morning. It all felt so weird, as if I were a different person, an Alienora I thought I had left behind. Climbing into formal clothing felt strange. There was a stiffness about it, a lack of freedom, a tension – and the old pull between understanding that I need to look professional and wanting to simply be my usual self.

Adrenaline surges were vast throughout both days – but, while Tuesday was good, Thursday was the kind of nightmare all teachers, no matter how experienced and talented and able, face from time to time and dread with every fibre of their beings. I had occasion to comment in a recent post about the effects climatic conditions have upon teenagers – and Thursday was rainy with a high wind, absolutely the worst kind of weather in which to meet unknown children and attempt to teach an unfamiliar subject.

I shall say no more in terms of detail, concentrating instead upon my own response. I felt completely overwhelmed, terrified, so tense that I could have been carved from wood and bubbling up with oceans of tears. Failure seemed to be staring me in the face. My new start, I feared, would finish prematurely.

When I got into the car, to drive home, I had to stop after a few minutes because the tears started and would not stop. My teaching blouse was sodden within seconds. But, back driving again, I realised that this sorrow had touched a spring far more profound than the immediate incident; I knew that I had been feeling overwhelmed for a very long time, and for a variety of reasons – and that the loss of control in the lesson actually triggered, and echoed, a far wider spectrum than that produced by a less-than-successful teaching experience.

We teachers fear losing control of our classes. It is, perhaps, the most fundamental fear in teaching. For all our bluster, and education, we are one against many – and our bluffing teeters on the edge of profound vulnerability all the time. We are open to abuse, even assault. Being adult, having degrees, trying to engage with the children – none of this guarantees our success or our safety. It it, consequently, very easy to feel very small and easily broken when things get tough: To feel totally overwhelmed by the strain of having to keep the wild animals in their cage. As it were.

Fear of abuse lies at the heart of it, I am certain. And this is very painful territory for me, for many of us. Being overwhelmed by stronger, more ruthless adversaries has been a constant theme in my life in recent years – and the fear of certain personality types is an ongoing battle. It is easy, when threatened, for me to slide into a state of paralysis, to see myself as weak, useless, ineffectual, doomed to fail: To become, in a nutshell, overwhelmed by past programming and unhelpful habits.

Today, the pain has been bad again, as my muscles – so cramped through fear yesterday – spasm and whinge and moan. This morning, walking Jumble, I had the closest thing to a full-blown panic attack I’ve experienced since moving to Glastonbury – and, yes, I was tempted to give up my teaching plans, to give in to the fear.

But, looking at it logically, I have a 50% success rate thus far – and I can hardly make a valid judgement of anything after only two days. I am, as I have intimated on here many times, easily overwhelmed and very prone to a strong, usually unpleasant, somatic response. My body screams when my mouth cannot.

To me, one thing is very clear: It is time I faced this fear of being overwhelmed, of losing control, of being attacked and abused, laughed at and ridiculed. It is time I realised that the bad moods, nastiness and malice of others directed at me do not mean that I am necessarily at fault – or that I am a feeble, pathetic human being.

We all feel overwhelmed at some time in our lives – and often expend great energy trying to pretend that this is not so; trying to put on a brave, or hard, face; hoping to convince others, if not ourselves, that we have rhino-thick hides and are tough as the proverbial old boots.

So, this time, I am facing it: Yes, I felt, briefly, not just overwhelmed but, actually, obliterated. It hurt, horribly. It was a blow to my self-esteem, my confidence, my security. But, glancing back over the past year or so, such blows have been frequent – and often far more truly devastating than Thursday’s moment of misery. Of course, my body has no sense of relative values when it comes to threat: It clenches the muscles into excruciating knots, and pours out the gallons of adrenaline, regardless..

I will not flee, however. I will not run away from this fear of being overwhelmed by a stronger, attacking other human being. I will not back away from my terror of losing control in the classroom of my life. I will not give in, even thought the orcs of pain pull viciously at me and waves of anxiety climb and climb.

Better by far, I say, to be capable of being overwhelmed by life than to live in a constant state of unfeeling satedness, underwhelmed by everything.

FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real

I suffer from chronic fear – so, finding this acronym today has been an incredible ‘Eureka!’ moment for me. It rings so many bells, you see, and explains why I tend to run away from confronting situations so easily – even (and this is the crucial part) if there is, actually, nothing threatening about them.

I react instantaneously to false evidence. It triggers traumatic memories of past reality, I suppose, for this is what usually starts the downward spiral. Often, there is an inconsistency which I can sense, even at the highest ledge of panic – and sometimes that comes down to this very simple thought and question: ‘Person A has never deliberately hurt, or frightened, me before, so why should he or she start now?’ In other words, through the dizziness of a panic attack, a part of me can see that the evidence I am making ever more real is totally out of character for the person I, momentarily, am terrified, or suspicious, of.

Sadly, the notion of truth versus falsehood, of dodgy versus reliable evidence is not accessible to the brain in a state of high anxiety. The Amygdala cannot distinguish between true external threat (sabre-toothed tiger, speeding car, for example) and the compelling, if false, evidence of emotional danger. It readies the body for flight (in my case) before the mind has had a proper look in, let alone a cool, slow analytical examination of the facts.

Having said that, however, this new (to me) acronym is immensely valuable because it gives me a weapon to use, a shield to hold up against the swords of terror and instant flight. It gives me a potential breathing space, a moment in which I can breathe deeply and ask myself, ‘Is this a genuine threat – or is it simply my False Evidence Appearing Real raising its destructive head once more?’

To put it more simply: ‘Is what I am frightened of seeing actually there? Never mind the echoes from the past. Stay in the present and examine objective reality – as if on a screen.’

I run away often. It is not always a physical escape. I am also prone to disappearing into my own head, becoming all-but invisible, when scared. What I am very bad at, however, is assessing the real level of danger and responding appropriately. Like a hedgehog, I curl myself into a tight ball, spikes sticking out, whether there’s a car/predator coming my way or not.

Let me give you a specific example. For nearly thirty years, I have felt the overwhelming urge to run away (and have sometimes done so)  when approached by an unknown man on a narrow street/path. Pathological, it had become, to the extent that I would cross the road, or go another way, if I saw a bloke coming towards me.

Its origins are simple enough: A lone male approached me, knocked me to the pavement and sexually assaulted me many years ago. I had allowed FEAR to restrict my movements. But, today, I unpicked it: It is clearly false evidence, since no other man coming my way has punched me to the ground – but it appears very real because the body remembers that kind of physical trauma. It is, however, senseless to cross the road, or run away, on the unlikely assumption that every man walking towards me is a potential attacker.

There are many other examples I could give you of times when the evidence has seemed utterly real (because I have seen it through the glass of the past very darkly and have not thought to question its reality in the present) – and I have gone into escape mode for no good reason.

I am not going to beat myself up about this, or call myself nasty names. It is sad, not bad. I understand why I behave in this way – and, as I said earlier, it is very helpful to have some kind of verbal strategy I can adopt in order to talk myself down from the roof of panic.

It won’t be easy because, like all habits, this one has become deep-wired in my cranial circuitry. But it is definitely worth persevering with: Each time I successfully overcome the need to run away, I am, in effect, laying a different electrical system in my brain and firing my reactions up in a more useful, and less stress-inducing, way.

The anxiety is ancient. But so, in many respects, am I – and I have never believed that chronology should influence my ability to learn, change and grow. Age has nothing to do with it. Anxiety has run my life since I was too small to talk coherently -and has, in some cases, been deliberately planted and encouraged to grow.

I rarely question my fears. I think it would be useful to do so. This I will do in the journal tomorrow. But, for the meantime, I will end this post with a quote from Google Images which expresses many of them brilliantly. It shows that what we think we fear is, more often than not, a cover for something else, something far simpler and more primal.

You never know, I might find that the big, hard-hitting fears (the ones which propel me out of rooms, pubs and parties) are less gigantic and scary than I had thought once faced with a pinch of REAL salt and a twist of adult logic.