The fear - a journey out of anxiety

By Bev Aisbett
I'm pounding along the footpath, somewhere in the suburban streets of Sydney. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm going; it doesn't matter. I will walk for hours if need be.  
 
I must look the way I feel - frenzied, a bit wild, out-of-control. With each step, I chant a kind of mantra: "I'm all right, it'll be OK, I'm all right", but I am hardly convinced. I feel far from all right. I am panting, not from exertion, but from fear. Sheer terror is propelling me along this street, and the next one and the next. This fear is breathtaking, all pervasive, yet there is no one following me, and there is no escape, for I am running from a feeling.  
 
The calm, banal aspects of suburban life around me are somehow charged with a new, sinister edge. The colours of this golden morning seem somehow unbearably shrill; there is no warmth in them, no comfort. My heart is rioting in my chest, beating so hard, I feel as if it will crash through my rib cage at any moment. "I'm all right, it'll be OK", over and over, until at last, after more than an hour, it is over. I sag into the doorway of an abandoned shop and weep with relief.  
 
That was October, 1991, nine long years ago. On what was to be a pleasant trip to Sydney, I had detoured down another path instead. I had begun my journey into crippling anxiety. What I was experiencing in that suburban street was a panic attack, in all its awesome ferocity.  
 
The word 'panic' is bandied about with casual abandon in our society. We use the word to describe a fretfulness over a work deadline or being late for an appointment or if the main course for a dinner party is ruined. But there is little comparison between these experiences and the paralysing terror of a panic attack.  
 
The most frightening aspect of the first panic attack is that it appears to come out of the blue. The sufferer is left stunned in its wake. They are left with only two certainties: that their life has been forever changed and that they never, ever want to feel that fear again.  
 
Within this thinking lies the beginnings of what, too often, becomes a long and painful pattern - anxiety disorder. "If I did not see this coming", reasons the sufferer, "then it can strike again at any time" and so they remain alert, watchful, more and more anxious. They will begin avoiding situations or places that they associate with the first attack, and slowly this fear of fear gains momentum, the avoidance becomes expanded to an ever-widening set of places and circumstances and the thinking becomes more and more catastrophic. Every situation begins to have a "What if?" fear attached to it.  
 
By the time I returned from Sydney, three days later, fear had certainly gained a firm hold and it was not going to let go without a struggle.  
 
And what a struggle! My day would begin in the wee hours, when I was wrenched from a meagre four hour's sleep by fear, heralding the next 20 hours of torture that lay ahead. My heart rate sat between 100 and 120 most of the time, and, if, through sheer exhaustion, I tried to rest, the palpitations would virtually lift me off the bed. I felt haunted, possessed. My thoughts were a wall of white noise; thoughts of hopelessness, despair, desperation, all jostling for position. The smallest task required a Herculean effort as I tried to fight my way through this internal din to extract one clear decision, one moment of focus that would enable me to act. And worst of all, like many before me and many whom I now teach, I could not imagine how it could ever be any different from here on. Having seen fear, surely there was no way that I could now "unsee" it. I was at war with my own mind, and it with me, I was trapped in a fate worse than death wall-to-wall terror for the rest of my life.  
 
Writing this now, it is as difficult for me to imagine the sheer intensity of what I was experiencing, as it is to try to describe it to someone who has never known anxiety. It is like trying to imagine great physical pain when it has passed - hard to remember, and of course, there is no great desire to. To see it etched into the faces before me in my class is reminder enough.  
 
So how did I get here from there? How did I move from that utter hopelessness to a place where I am actually grateful for what I have gained from living that experience? It seems to be a long gap, but that is part of the illusion.  
 
First, some inner wisdom told me (along with a need to eat) that I had to keep working, had to keep going. Aside from the practicalities, I sensed, on some deeper level, that if I gave up on that, I would be giving up on life. Since my work was as a newly established cartoonist and illustrator, trying to be funny when I felt anything but, was challenging to say the least. But this work not only saved my sanity by forcing me out into the world each day, but my cartoons actually became my greatest personal ally in working through this problem. I began to draw the cartoons to serve as visual reassurances (having exhausted human resources), devices to take the sting out of the fear, and as tools to break down my understanding of my thinking into bite-size pieces. And, of course, I drew my fear, my 'it' and in so doing, brought him down to size.  
 
Little did I know it at the time, but while I was scribbling these little images on the page, I was at the same time carving out my future, my life purpose. For eventually, these images became a book, and then another and then another and then I would became a counsellor, and a teacher, all as a result of a meeting with fear.  
 
The journey out of anxiety is a big one. It does not happen overnight, nor is there a quick fix, for this is not just about how one 'does' anxiety, but how one lives life in general. There is much to address, own and change.  
 
The greatest change must centre around thinking, and thinking about anxiety in particular. There is a tendency for the sufferer to catastrophise, to think in very rigid, black and white terms and to place enormous (and over inflated) value on the approval of others. Their inner dialogue tends to be rigid and non-permissive: littered with should, must, have to, etc, in keeping with a generally perfectionist nature. There is a tendency to be hard on oneself and to set unrealistically high standards for self and others. There is little self-nurture or rest built into their daily lives and coping strategies that tend to undermine rather than support.  
 
The person needs to learn how to 'let go', for control is also a key factor. Since sufferers feel unsafe, they try to control their world by cutting out any nasty surprises. Ironically (of course!) it is this very control that leads to the feeling of being totally out of control. 'Letting go' of outcomes, expectations, deadlines, the past, even of fear itself, is a tricky process for someone who feels unsafe, but it is crucial. In fact, the journey out of anxiety can be likened to prising someone's fingers from the cliff-face one by one, until they feel safe enough to free-fall, and trusting that there will be arms to catch them at the bottom.  
 
Finally, the sufferer needs to learn how to create a new relationship with the fear. Partly, this involves a level of acceptance, but mainly, this is about turning to confront the fear and seeing one's own face there. For it is no more than one's own power turned inside out. Harnessed, it becomes a formidable force for change. The journey out of anxiety then ceases to be an ordeal and becomes an adventure: a great odyssey into self.  
 
Bev Aisbett is the author of "Living with IT - a survivor's guide to Panic Attacks", "Living IT Up - the advanced survivor's guide to Anxiety-free living", and "Letting IT Go - Attaining awareness out of Adversity".