So, I had to go to this meeting last night, but I couldn’t get to the elevators. The building was set up kind of like a “C” with offices all along the curve and a huge glass wall up the gap and to get to the elevators, you had to walk out to them on a little walkway, because they ran up the middle of the open part of the “c”, which was open up and down a number of floors.
Even telling you about that makes me feel stupid because there are two levels of things I don’t do. Things I’m afraid of because I’m a giant baby (like riding on the four-wheeler or whatever) and things I just can’t do, like go to the elevators in that building.
And they’re very different feelings. One is I’m just afraid, like you would be at a scary movie or on a roller coaster, but I can physically do it. The other has all that body rebellion tied into it.
I consider things in the first category to be charming quirks and they don’t bother me because I know that, if I just stopped being a baby, I could do them just fine.
But the things in the second category really upset me, not just because they happen, but because, more than anything, I want to believe that, if I just stopped being a baby, I could do them just fine.
In other words, as usual, I really want to be normal and this just reminds me that I’m not.
But I hadn’t really made that connection for myself–that there’s a level to the ridiculousness of this whole thing that is about me feeling bad that this means I’m some kind of freak who can’t just buck up and get with the system–and so I’m starting to wonder if that’s not making these incidents worse for me.
And so, that’s what I’m going to work on–just accepting that this shit happens and that it is a charming quirk (or somewhat debilitating phobia, whichever), and to just be upset at that level–that the panic is setting in and that I either have to find some work-around or just not do the thing in question–and then let it go, instead of the incessant scab-picking I tend to do instead.
I have never been a “cutter,” myself, but I think I’m starting to understand part of the impulse. Here’s this thing I can’t control that freaks me out, so, instead, I focus on the familiar nonsense of how this makes me a freak no one could possibly love, and instead of being the freaky fear that just wigs me out, I’ve channelled it into a familiar kind of pain that, though pain, is something I know well and can function with.
That’s the detour I do have some control over and that’s what I need to work on stopping.
It’s funny. I don’t have any problem telling people that they’re going to have to slow down if they want to walk with me and explaining about all my breathing issues, but god damn if I can learn to accept this mental quirk on the same level.
I still do think that, if they made a Valium inhaler, so I wouldn’t have to take it all the time, but could just take it when I felt a panic attack coming on, I’d be set.
Filed under: Stories About Me
i’ve always had a fear of heights. moderately bad, even including the fear of bridges and getting too close to railings and such. there’s highway bridges i just cannot drive across, for instance; i’ve been across the Mackinac, but i’ll never be more than a passenger on that trip. working on my own roof is doable, but i have to concentrate on just being there and don’t have much mind left for doing the work; getting on and off the top of the ladder onto (or back off of) the roof is a job in itself. (no, i don’t have any remarkably tall roof, either.)
once i had to work on a… trellis, the word might be, in an industrial park. picture a bunch of telephone poles, set quite close together with a “platform” of four-by-fours connecting them and extending out a meter or so each side, holding a pair of big plastic pipes off the ground at about telephone-pole height. and not much to walk on up there, because it wasn’t a walkway, it was all just to support those pipes.
that’s when i found out my knees can lock, involuntarily, and just. not. move. not until i convinced my hindbrain that i was moving back DOWN again, i wasn’t really gonna step out on that after all, i was just kidding myself…
my fingers and hands, needless to say, weren’t under conscious control then, either. not really; they’d cooperate in going down, but not in going forward.
point is, i really don’t think i was being a baby or anything. i was trying to control an involuntary reaction that my conscious self had no say in; the “me” that might’ve been being a baby was out of that loop that refused to move. it’s the same loop that has to be carefully and deliberately… tamped down, i think i’ll call it, if i’m to get off the top of the ladder to work on my roof. i can do that much, but it takes effort.
funnily enough, none of this cuts in when i’m in an airplane. i love small propeller planes, wish i could afford to take up flying. weird, in a sense, that.
There’s a third option, you know. Get rid of the phobia. I’ve been told that phobias are the kind of thing cognitive therapy is fantastic at dealing with in only a handful of sessions or less.
I do sympathize. I have a phobia about walking on metal gratings or steps. But I don’t suffer from it; I just walk around them or take another set of stairs. It sounds like the elevator thing is making you suffer, though, so maybe you ought to think about doing what you can to stop that.
NM, you know, I have a think about metal gratings or steps, too (again, it has to do with the openness). But I have found that, since I just allow myself to not feel weird about stepping around the grates, that, occasionally, when I have to walk over one, it’s much less bad.
Nomen, yes, exactly, that feeling of your body and mind being at odds with each other. I find that feeling a very frightening component of the whole experience.
[...] I still do think that, if they made a Valium inhaler, so I wouldn’t have to take it all the time, but could just take it when I felt a panic attack coming on, I’d be set. [Thinking Out Loud - Tiny Cat Pants - 01-25-08] [...]
I don’t really have a fear of heights, it’s more a fear of falling – this is due to my reoccuring dreams where I fall – but I never fall off of anything or hit bottom, so to speak – I always wake up prior to the impact. But I know of what you speak – luckily, I don’t get on tall structures that often.
Regarding the control issue you speak of, I have those issues in walking into crowded rooms of people. I never want to be the one that walks in first – also, in restaurants, I have to face the crowd. I don’t like having my back to the crowd. I am totally uneasy when put in this situation. Everybody has quirks – and anyone who tells you that they don’t is a liar. it’s part of what makes us human. I embrace mine, but I’m an artist and that’s part of what people expect of me…
I have a friend that is afraid of cotton. He has pills to take for it, but can’t seem to get past opening the bottle…
I know i fear heights. i can do stairwells just fine. 100 stories? No problem, as long as i can’t peer over an edge. Even in the movies, if they pan out over the edge of a building, I’m queasy.
Whats totally weird is that if they simply shoot from a height, I’m fine. It must have something to do with a reference point or something.
Anyway, why not just embrace it as a quirk? People with disabilities of all kinds make logistical considerations all the time, so i think you could. Or, like NM said, you could try to work through it.
Sounds like the kind of building that might have a rather dreary enclosed set of stairs that might help you out. Of course maybe not, some buildings are just dumb that way.
B, you do a good job of raising awareness and inspiring sympathy about these kinds of phobias. I remember our hike along the sea shore in Newport, Rhode Island where you grabbed on to me while we were crossing those rocks. And at MLA in San Diego where you squeezed all the juice out of my hand as we went down the glassed-in elevator. I must admit, it’s a weird thing watching from the outside when you don’t have that phobia yourself. But, watching you, it’s clear that it is very, very real.
When I used to get panic attacks, I couldn’t go under or over a bridge. In buildings, and sometimes out of them, I used to get this overwhelming sensation that the floor was about to give way beneath me.
My Dr interviewed me for 5 minutes, then prescribed antidepressants. Not to get all Tom Cruise on you, but my Dr was a jackass. He didn’t bother treating me – he gave me a pill and told me to go home.
Don’t get me wrong – the pills worked. I could at least function.
But one day, I just stopped taking them. Please don’t try this at home, I am one strange puppy. But, with a combination of exercise, and finding a better sense of peace through my religion, the panic attacks went away.
I think the key lies in convicing yourself that even if the absolute worst happens, everything’s still going to be all right. It’s the only way I ever could have gotten on a plane.