Sick of Being Scared

Posted by fxckfeelings on May 3, 2009

To most, freedom from fear seems like a reasonable goal; after all, ridding yourself of all anxiety would reduce your blood pressure, whiten your teeth, get rid of your gut, etc. Never mind that the possibility of a fear-free existence is sold to us by everyone from alarm companies to boutique medical practices. The problem is that fear, like happiness or anger, is, you guessed it, out of our control. Here are a couple cases where wanting to control fear clouds the real goal at hand; living in the face of ever present danger.
–Dr. Lastname

I didn’t used to be an anxious person, but I haven’t felt right since I got mugged a few months ago (I was jumped, robbed, and beaten pretty bad, and yes, amazingly, they caught the guys). I’m afraid to go out after dark and I wake up with nightmares, which is bad, but somewhat manageable and at least makes sense. What I’m really having trouble with are the less-than-occasional anxiety attacks with dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, the works, and they’re completely incapacitating. It’s not just unhealthy, it’s making my life impossible. I should be able to stop them if I can get to the bottom of this trauma, right? I’ve lost my peace of mind and I want to get it back.

You don’t recover from trauma by recovering your peace of mind because, first, it’s often impossible and, second, it may be undesirable, at least if you define peace of mind as the absence of fear and anxiety. Simply put, life is dangerous. While you might not see your brain’s fearful reaction to your trauma as positive, it’s just adjusting by putting you on permanent alert for the next attack.

In doing so, it’s preserving you and passing on your genes to the next generation, which is more likely to have the same guard-against-attack thermostat. So don’t feel it’s wrong to be post-traumatically anxious; the anxiety may tire you out, but it’s also there to make you hyper-alert to the next threat, whether it comes by day or night.

There are treatments that sometimes help, including talk-therapies, hypnosis, and medications (there’s a medication that often reduces nightmares and others that calm anxiety). As usual, each time someone responds to a treatment, it gets written up or talked about on the internet as if a good response in one case means that it should help everyone. We’re all different from one another, genetically and otherwise, so yes, you should try treatments but no, you shouldn’t count on their working or consider your response a measure of how well you’re doing.

The right way to measure recovery, as always, is by how much you go about your business in spite of the symptoms and not by how bad the symptoms are. Your true friends are the ones who accept the new, jumpy, nervous, fatigued you; and that’s what you need to do: accept the hurt and push yourself to get the most out of life.

You said something dangerous: that your anxiety attacks are making your life impossible. Anxiety makes you feel that life is impossible, but never believe it. Remember, fuck fearful feelings. Anxiety lies.

You may not be able to make it stop, but don’t believe what it tells you. My guess is that you’re putting together a meaningful life now and will continue to do so and that your efforts are all the more meaningful because they’ve become harder. You have courage, and that’s what counts.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that will help you withstand the lies anxiety tells you. “I have anxiety and nightmares in spite of treatment. That’s the way it is. There’s no shame in it. I use treatments, trick, and friends to manage my fears and continue my life. I don’t compare my life to what it was before or to my friends’ lives. I’m proud of what I do with my fear, every day that I have to bear it.”

My 16-year-old daughter is being terrorized at her new high school (my husband got transferred at work, and we had to move). Frankly, I don’t think she’s ever been the most popular girl, but she’d always have a couple of good friends who’d come over after school or meet her at the mall on weekends. Now she just seems to have real enemies, namely this one gang of girls whom she says call her names, spread rumors about her, and actually physically threaten her. We’ve met with the vice principal a couple of times, but nothing’s changed, and now my daughter is the one in trouble because she brought a knife to school to protect herself. Understand, I think that was a really stupid thing to do, but shouldn’t somebody be doing something to help her feel less threatened by these horrible vipers? My goal is to protect my daughter and help her feel more safe.

You can’t make your daughter safe at school, unfortunately, because that’s beyond the power of any parent, and trying too hard to make her safe is likely to put her in greater danger, which is one of those fundamental paradoxes of life. She carried a weapon to make herself feel safe, but, speaking realistically, it put her at greater risk, not just of getting in trouble with the powers that be, but of getting stabbed rather than just bruised.

Instead of putting all of your energy into making her world a less-scary one, you should teach her to tolerate feeling unsafe and doing whatever will actually reduce danger the most.

Maybe in, say, Texas, the deterrent effect of knowing that your opponent is armed (and that you’d likely get the chair) prevents fights from starting. Outside Texas, however, fights start anyway because kids in gangs need to prove themselves by showing they’re not afraid, so deterrence doesn’t work, and weapons do.

What’s safer is to follow whatever procedures are most likely to avoid a fight or limit the damage. For your daughter, these include not being caught alone, keeping her mouth shut, tolerating humiliation, and fighting strategically if she has to fight.

If you see the opportunity and have a little money, get her lessons in self-defense; this will do more to help your kid become confident than get her to fight back, or at least it will teach her how to duck and weave. Ask her to let you know if she thinks a fight is coming, so you can give school staff a chance to prevent it and establish her intent to avoid it. If her tormentor likes an audience or uses aggression to get a certain response, advise her on how to avoid stimulating that response. The biggest fight is fighting fear, and you’re already helping her do that.

You obviously support her and don’t blame her for being unpopular with bullies, so continue to support her efforts to stay safe and out of trouble. Respect her courage and avoid talking about winning or losing, or how the fights shouldn’t be happening, or she’ll come away seeing herself as a loser.

Convey the feeling that you wish it wasn’t happening but that it’s part of life, you’re determined to help in any way you can, and that victory consists of getting an education in spite of the fear.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement to protect you from over-reacting to her pain. “I wish I could spare you the pain and I’ll do what I can, but your goal in going to school is learning and if you can keep on doing that, regardless of how often mean people try to hurt you, then you’re winning. There’s nothing wrong with being the sort of person other people pick on. Some of the nicest, most interesting people in the world had that quality when they were younger. Don’t worry about changing. Just take pride in learning and not letting the actions of assholes stop you from being who you are and doing what you’re going to do.”