by: Author Unknown,
I sat on the closed toilet seat with my head in my hands, feeling my sanity mocking me from a distance. Five minutes earlier, I had excused myself from a meeting, pretending that I needed to go to the toilet. The truth was that five minutes earlier, just before giving a presentation; I had experienced a panic attack so severe that anyone looking could see the presentation notes shaking in my hands.
This wasn't my first, or even my second panic attack. It wasn't even the most intense attack of my life - that one happened in a car winding through the Italian Alps six years earlier and it scared the shit out of me. The attack in the offices of my work client was significant for another reason. It was the first time that I had literally run away from what I thought was the source of my panic.
Another woman who worked with me had to give the presentation in my place that day. I eventually came out of the toilet, but would rather have stayed in there. The woman who gave the presentation drove me back to our offices afterwards. The man sitting next to her and in front of me had also been at the presentation. We all worked for the same advertising agency and I managed a team of people at the agency including the man in the car. He could barely look at me on the way home. I had mumbled something about being sick and the woman had been very sympathetic. I did feel sick on the ride home. Sick to the core of me with feelings of fear, inadequacy and desperation. I felt like my very identity was being pulled to pieces. And I was the one doing it.
Like many stories about this kind of thing, I didn't know where to go for help. So I just stayed put. But I started to have a daily battle with panic that escalated if I was required to do anything stressful - particularly if I was required to speak in front of a group of people. Finally, about one month later, I eventually had to seek help. I had taken two days off work to try and sort out what was happening to me, but ended up crying a lot, lying on my bed, rigid with anxiety.
Oh, and I was drinking.
Miraculously during those two days, I also made my way to exactly the type of help I needed. It was a phone call to a psychologist recommended to me by another kind stranger on the end of a phone. The psychologist asked me a few questions, told me to buy a book called "Drinking: A Love Story" and literally began to save my life. That was when the hard work began.
I have always had a sense of humour. A good one, I hope. I have three sisters who can make me cry with laughter and the sound of any one of them laughing is the best sound in the world. I managed to make my psychologist laugh during our first session together, but it was about the only funny thing that happened that day. She served me up the facts in a naked, frightening way. You have a dependency on alcohol, she said. That is your problem, nothing else. Get rid of the alcohol and you'll be able to get your life back on track. What about the anxiety and panic? I asked. Oh, don't worry about that, she said giving me a few little tips on relaxation and demystifying the physical process that creates anxiety.
So off I went. Back into the big wide world with all its accompanying anxiety and other nasty emotions. But I didn't have my friend, the bottle, and so every situation from getting up in the morning to trying to sit still at a restaurant table with friends was coloured by my grief.
Like any experience, it is difficult to try and explain the reality of alcohol dependency and the process of withdrawal to anyone who has not experienced it. From my experience and my reading, I have come to understand my dependency as a giant avoidance tactic. Any time I felt anything remotely unpleasant, I would drink. Drinking served to block out unpleasant emotions for a very long time, but like the pressure cooker that my Mum used to boil her corned beef, the pressure eventually blew the lid off. So as well as dealing with the daily grief of missing my great friend, I had to - and still do - deal with all the ugly stuff that had been simmering away in the pressure cooker for years. Stuff like intense anger and sadness.
If my psychologist were reading this, she would probably say that I was exaggerating the severity of my problem. Learning to moderate everything in my life - including my thinking - was her best advice to me and has been the key to overcoming my dependency. But, even if I have a tendency to over dramatize the events that led me to face up to dependency, there are still the main facts, i.e., Fact One: I drank at least a bottle of wine every day for nearly ten years. Fact Two: I would stay all night at nightclubs by myself, drinking until seven o'clock in the morning at least two nights almost every week for the last two years of drinking. Fact Three: I felt completely desperate by the time I sought help.
I think that I had around ten sessions with my psychologist. Not only was she someone that I strongly respect for her professional ability, she is also someone I genuinely liked to visit because she was good fun. It may sound strange to refer to therapy as fun, but some of the time it was. The ten sessions were spread out over twelve months and I always looked forward to each session. But.the sessions only lasted one hour and I found that I needed some extra help during the rest of the time. So I started to look for other sources to help with the process of getting my life back on track and.I found them.
It is probably worth mentioning here that I didn't choose drug therapy as an option. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, my psychologist was completely against it and secondly so was I. My feeling was that I had just faced up to one major chemical dependency so why take on another? My psychologist helped to encourage my already well developed prejudice against antidepressants and tranquilizers with some horror stories about effects. I have since changed my mind a little on this through exposure to other people's stories about how drug therapy changed their lives in the most positive ways. Exposure to other people with similar problems was a major revelation to me.
I have spent most of my life trying to impress other people and in the last twelve months of drinking, other people's judgement was what I feared more than anything. I felt very exposed and anxious, trying to work out where I stood in the scheme of things. Was I more anxious and desperate than everyone else in the group or less? Would I be able to speak in front of everyone or not? Would I burst into tears if I did start to speak about painful things? Would I be able to make jokes - which was my natural inclination in any solemn environment - or would this be considered inappropriate?
Ultimately, all my questions were answered, but not in any linear way. My expectation that the process of dealing with psychological issues (the ones that intrude heavily on life) is a linear one has now been thrown out the window. Often you feel as if you are just circling hopelessly around and around she said, but in actual fact you are circling slowly upwards. I think that she is right, or least, that this is a very helpful visual model. Speaking of visualising.
The support group helped me visualise myself as a social creature with something unique to contribute - even if it was initially only to the group. The group format helped me to practice my social and other interpersonal skills so that I could use these out in the big wide world. For example, I began the process of overcoming the fear of public speaking through the group - even if I did have to bribe everyone with chocolate before speaking! Anyone associated with the group will understand what a critical role it plays in the development of coping mechanisms for anxiety and depression (the group that is, not chocolate!). But it is also, fundamentally, a place to make friends and connect to people. And if I am there, a place for the telling of really bad jokes.
This has been quite a painful thing to write, but I am glad to be able to do it and to finish on a positive note. If I cannot say that I have recovered, it is only because I see my progress as a continuously evolving process and because there is no such thing as perfect thinking. However, I no longer look at magazine photos of people I do not know and wish that I were them. I do not go to bed drunk with wine every night. I gave up a packet a day smoking habit twelve months ago. I never avoid painful situations or feelings no matter how much my body and mind is urging me to. And if panic or anxiety creeps into my life - which it regularly does because I am a human being - here is how I handle it.
1. Slow my breathing down. Hyperventilation is what causes most of the physical effects of anxiety and panic attacks and is nothing to worry about no matter how severe the effects are.
2. Actually practice bringing on the effects of hyperventilation, e.g., turn quickly in circles to make yourself dizzy or breathe deeply and quickly for one minute to get the effects of hyperventilation; press fingers to the side of throat to make it difficult to swallow. Practicing these takes the fear out of the symptoms.
3. Challenge my negative thinking.
This wasn't my first, or even my second panic attack. It wasn't even the most intense attack of my life - that one happened in a car winding through the Italian Alps six years earlier and it scared the shit out of me. The attack in the offices of my work client was significant for another reason. It was the first time that I had literally run away from what I thought was the source of my panic.
Another woman who worked with me had to give the presentation in my place that day. I eventually came out of the toilet, but would rather have stayed in there. The woman who gave the presentation drove me back to our offices afterwards. The man sitting next to her and in front of me had also been at the presentation. We all worked for the same advertising agency and I managed a team of people at the agency including the man in the car. He could barely look at me on the way home. I had mumbled something about being sick and the woman had been very sympathetic. I did feel sick on the ride home. Sick to the core of me with feelings of fear, inadequacy and desperation. I felt like my very identity was being pulled to pieces. And I was the one doing it.
Like many stories about this kind of thing, I didn't know where to go for help. So I just stayed put. But I started to have a daily battle with panic that escalated if I was required to do anything stressful - particularly if I was required to speak in front of a group of people. Finally, about one month later, I eventually had to seek help. I had taken two days off work to try and sort out what was happening to me, but ended up crying a lot, lying on my bed, rigid with anxiety.
Oh, and I was drinking.
Miraculously during those two days, I also made my way to exactly the type of help I needed. It was a phone call to a psychologist recommended to me by another kind stranger on the end of a phone. The psychologist asked me a few questions, told me to buy a book called "Drinking: A Love Story" and literally began to save my life. That was when the hard work began.
I have always had a sense of humour. A good one, I hope. I have three sisters who can make me cry with laughter and the sound of any one of them laughing is the best sound in the world. I managed to make my psychologist laugh during our first session together, but it was about the only funny thing that happened that day. She served me up the facts in a naked, frightening way. You have a dependency on alcohol, she said. That is your problem, nothing else. Get rid of the alcohol and you'll be able to get your life back on track. What about the anxiety and panic? I asked. Oh, don't worry about that, she said giving me a few little tips on relaxation and demystifying the physical process that creates anxiety.
So off I went. Back into the big wide world with all its accompanying anxiety and other nasty emotions. But I didn't have my friend, the bottle, and so every situation from getting up in the morning to trying to sit still at a restaurant table with friends was coloured by my grief.
Like any experience, it is difficult to try and explain the reality of alcohol dependency and the process of withdrawal to anyone who has not experienced it. From my experience and my reading, I have come to understand my dependency as a giant avoidance tactic. Any time I felt anything remotely unpleasant, I would drink. Drinking served to block out unpleasant emotions for a very long time, but like the pressure cooker that my Mum used to boil her corned beef, the pressure eventually blew the lid off. So as well as dealing with the daily grief of missing my great friend, I had to - and still do - deal with all the ugly stuff that had been simmering away in the pressure cooker for years. Stuff like intense anger and sadness.
If my psychologist were reading this, she would probably say that I was exaggerating the severity of my problem. Learning to moderate everything in my life - including my thinking - was her best advice to me and has been the key to overcoming my dependency. But, even if I have a tendency to over dramatize the events that led me to face up to dependency, there are still the main facts, i.e., Fact One: I drank at least a bottle of wine every day for nearly ten years. Fact Two: I would stay all night at nightclubs by myself, drinking until seven o'clock in the morning at least two nights almost every week for the last two years of drinking. Fact Three: I felt completely desperate by the time I sought help.
I think that I had around ten sessions with my psychologist. Not only was she someone that I strongly respect for her professional ability, she is also someone I genuinely liked to visit because she was good fun. It may sound strange to refer to therapy as fun, but some of the time it was. The ten sessions were spread out over twelve months and I always looked forward to each session. But.the sessions only lasted one hour and I found that I needed some extra help during the rest of the time. So I started to look for other sources to help with the process of getting my life back on track and.I found them.
It is probably worth mentioning here that I didn't choose drug therapy as an option. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, my psychologist was completely against it and secondly so was I. My feeling was that I had just faced up to one major chemical dependency so why take on another? My psychologist helped to encourage my already well developed prejudice against antidepressants and tranquilizers with some horror stories about effects. I have since changed my mind a little on this through exposure to other people's stories about how drug therapy changed their lives in the most positive ways. Exposure to other people with similar problems was a major revelation to me.
I have spent most of my life trying to impress other people and in the last twelve months of drinking, other people's judgement was what I feared more than anything. I felt very exposed and anxious, trying to work out where I stood in the scheme of things. Was I more anxious and desperate than everyone else in the group or less? Would I be able to speak in front of everyone or not? Would I burst into tears if I did start to speak about painful things? Would I be able to make jokes - which was my natural inclination in any solemn environment - or would this be considered inappropriate?
Ultimately, all my questions were answered, but not in any linear way. My expectation that the process of dealing with psychological issues (the ones that intrude heavily on life) is a linear one has now been thrown out the window. Often you feel as if you are just circling hopelessly around and around she said, but in actual fact you are circling slowly upwards. I think that she is right, or least, that this is a very helpful visual model. Speaking of visualising.
The support group helped me visualise myself as a social creature with something unique to contribute - even if it was initially only to the group. The group format helped me to practice my social and other interpersonal skills so that I could use these out in the big wide world. For example, I began the process of overcoming the fear of public speaking through the group - even if I did have to bribe everyone with chocolate before speaking! Anyone associated with the group will understand what a critical role it plays in the development of coping mechanisms for anxiety and depression (the group that is, not chocolate!). But it is also, fundamentally, a place to make friends and connect to people. And if I am there, a place for the telling of really bad jokes.
This has been quite a painful thing to write, but I am glad to be able to do it and to finish on a positive note. If I cannot say that I have recovered, it is only because I see my progress as a continuously evolving process and because there is no such thing as perfect thinking. However, I no longer look at magazine photos of people I do not know and wish that I were them. I do not go to bed drunk with wine every night. I gave up a packet a day smoking habit twelve months ago. I never avoid painful situations or feelings no matter how much my body and mind is urging me to. And if panic or anxiety creeps into my life - which it regularly does because I am a human being - here is how I handle it.
1. Slow my breathing down. Hyperventilation is what causes most of the physical effects of anxiety and panic attacks and is nothing to worry about no matter how severe the effects are.
2. Actually practice bringing on the effects of hyperventilation, e.g., turn quickly in circles to make yourself dizzy or breathe deeply and quickly for one minute to get the effects of hyperventilation; press fingers to the side of throat to make it difficult to swallow. Practicing these takes the fear out of the symptoms.
3. Challenge my negative thinking.
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