My journey through pain - 27. Chapter 27 - The pressure in my chest

There’s this pressure in my chest. This sensation of not being able to completely relax. It’s the anxiety I think. It is tolerable for a while, but when minutes become hours and hours become days and days become weeks and weeks become months, it gets a little hard to just keep going. It feels like I will be okay if I can only rest for a while, recharge batteries, let my mind recover so that I can face more hours, more days. The problem is that I can’t rest. It is not physical rest I need, but mental rest. The kind you get when you are fully immersed in a movie for a couple of hours and then, as soon as you start seeing the end credits, you sort of remember your life again, you recall the errands left in the day or whatever. It’s kind of the same sensation that you might get after first waking up.

I can’t remember the last time I had that sensation.

It seems like I live in a constant state of tension which will not let me go. I know it is me maintaining it and I am trying very hard to learn how to relax, but I still don’t know how to do it reliably. It is exhausting. I am constantly afraid, and I need to keep reminding myself that I am no longer in danger, that I am safe, that the bad things that threatened me at one point happened months ago and that I am in a different place now, literally and figuratively. This fear can be overcome if I really try, even if it takes a lot of energy to do so. However, I am also constantly afraid of being afraid, and I don’t know what to do about that. I really don’t. I have had some days when I haven’t felt as bad as I feel right now, but in the back of my mind there is always this horrible fear that the bad times will come back, and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy because the fear itself brings the bad things back.

It is so scary. I feel cornered, trapped. Like there is nowhere I can turn where the fear won’t get me. Does anxiety have an end? Does it ever really go away?

Many days have passed since my last entry here. I have been trying to get better. Each day is a battle. Some of them I even win. Other times, like today, it just feels like too much. Like all I can look forward to is fight after fight, scraping by for one more day. It’s scary. I can fight, just like I have done since all of this began, but one thought is always there: will this be the day I run out of energy? Will this be the day I’m not able to fight anymore?

I have spoken with my therapist at great length about my anxiety. I have tried, previously, to get rid of it by getting rid of the things that trigger it in the first place. I thought maybe then it would go away, but it hasn’t. It just finds something new to latch onto, like a vine that keeps climbing a wall even if you remove what you think are all possible points of support. Therefore, now, instead of obsessively trying to remove everything that might trigger the anxious feelings and the pressure in my chest, I am trying to learn how to live with it. I am trying to learn how to put it in its proper place. I’m told that, when the anxiety comes, I should just look at it curiously, accept that it’s there, and gently show it the way out. I’ve been working real hard on doing that. It’s hard, though. It requires a measure of mental clarity and calm that is not easy to come by when you’re feeling anxious and nervous and you feel like you’re in danger. It requires me to take a step back, relax, and think logically, which is diametrically opposite from what anxiety makes me want to do, which is to shrink back on myself fearfully, tense, ready to be hurt still more.

I’ve tried so many ways to try and deal with this. So many ways of approaching it, so many ways of thinking about it. The constant mental effort required to remember all of the strategies is not insignificant, however. Sometimes, like today, I can’t seem to remember any of them. I know I should distract myself but I don’t feel like doing anything but shutting myself inside my room and not going out. I won’t do that, because the prospect of not doing anything is even more terrifying somehow and the prospect of doing what needs to be done. This tosses my mind back into the whirlpool of circular anxious thoughts that refuse to go away.

I don’t like it when I feel like this. Part of my mind tells me that it will pass, that I won’t always feel this bad because I haven’t previously. Even though right now I feel as though the pain the anxiety brings will never go away, I know for a fact that it will because it has happened before. It’s just tough to really remember that while in the midst of an episode like this. All I can think of is that I want it to end, that I want the hurt to stop. I obsess about whatever triggered it, which in this case I suppose it was a couple of bad dreams that reminded me of things that I have been trying to forget. Is there no end in sight? When will this stop? I’m trying so hard to be patient like everyone tells me to be. They say I’m making progress and I kind of know I am, but right now it feels like I am not making any progress at all, like I’m back at square one. It’s a horrible sensation.

One of the things that I still haven’t learned how to cope with is what to do with myself during my free time. I suspect this is part of the reason why feel like this today. Yesterday I had a lot of free time and I didn’t know what to do. I started panicking. I have my emergency list of activities to do to try and cope with this sensation, but yesterday I was tired and all of the activities in the list are productive things, stuff like working out or doing housework or taking care of errands and so on. I realized, with growing unease which bordered on panic, that I don’t know how to just relax and, say, watch TV for an hour. It feels like I can’t. And that terrifies me because it means I am always in a state of high alert and that I can’t really relax during the day because I’m scared of the thoughts that might come with the relaxation itself.

I’ve been working a lot of overtime at my job because of this. I’d rather be busy than not. Nevertheless, I also know I can’t keep it up indefinitely because it’s starting to affect the way I feel, my energy levels, and in the end I know it will only trigger even more anxiety. What do I do, though? It might sound ridiculous, but the thought of simply plopping down on the couch to watch a movie is unbearable to me. Not only will I feel restless throughout the entire two hours, but any emotional content in whatever I am watching is sure to be deeply disturbing to me. What else do I do? I can’t focus when I try to read, even though I used to love reading.

I honestly don’t know what to do when I feel like this except keep going, hoping blindly that the pain will one day stop or at least come less frequently and hurt a little bit less. I know I’m making progress – I always try to remind myself of that. It had been a long while since I experienced a crisis like this, for example. In fact, I think that the routines I have set in place are helping me, and everyone tells me I’m doing better. I’m writing more, too – I haven’t stopped working on the story I am publishing every Monday here. Surely this is progress. I’m also sleeping better overall, even if sometimes I get bad dreams.

It’s hard to have perspective while in the middle of an episode. But it will pass, this much I know, and I need to remind myself of the fact until I believe it, until I internalize it. It will pass. It has passed before so I know it will again. I just need to be a little bit patient. I just need to believe in my own strength.

Anxiety can’t hurt me unless I let it. Anxiety has no power of its own other than the one I choose to give it. I can’t prevent it from coming, but I can change the way I act when it’s here.

There’s one thing I did which helped me. Yesterday evening, when things got bad emotionally speaking, I decided to sit down and give thanks. It’s so easy to focus on the things you don’t have when you feel bad, and so easy to take what you do have for granted. Therefore, yesterday I took some time and simply started listing the good things in my life and giving thanks for all my blessings. I discovered that there are a lot of things I should be thankful for. I realized that the anxiety, even though it looms large over my mind, is without substance, like a scary apparition that wants to trick me into believing it can hurt me when all it can do this moan and rattle in the background hoping to distract me enough, or scare me enough, that I will end up hurting myself. I gave thanks for all the people in my life, in particular. I gave thanks because, even if it hurts, I’m here, in this world, and each day I receive is a priceless gift.

Doing this helped me calm down enough to be able to sleep. I did have troubling dreams later on during the night, and I don’t feel so great today, but I’m going to try and give thanks for everything I have, I’m going to try to focus on the good things in my life rather than obsessing about the bad ones. I’m going to try and take the negative emotions with gentleness and kindness instead of with fear and rejection, and maybe then I can show them the way out. I don’t know if it will work, or when, but I will try. The one thing I haven’t been scared of doing throughout this entire journey is trying things to maybe help my heart heal.

I must keep going. There’s an entire day ahead of me.

Wish me luck.