I Lived Them All

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As if all muscles were immersed in acid. Like the moment when you step into the void on a staircase in the dark, like a fall into the depths, only inside. Like tiredness that soaks the air. Like “Run!”, but you don’t know where to go, there’s nothing you could or want to run to, and besides, you’re too weak for that. Like a deep moan between the hectic breaths, like a need to sit down now that doesn’t stop, even if you’ve been sitting down for a long time.

And everything becomes infinitely more important and is charged by these senseless heartbeats, the pumping of blood, and the rushing, the feverish muscles. Everything is dangerous and yet nothing at the same time, everything is deceptive, and therefore no feeling is true anymore. The whole body is soaked with shimmering and tingling and fizzling and tingling and you have to be so careful that your mind doesn’t overflow with it. Because if you are afraid, you can no longer distinguish whether it is the mind or the body. And once every thought is filled to bursting with this feeling, which is actually not one’s own, there is nothing else at all. And you are rarely so full of life and at the same time so at the end of your strength as is only possible when you are afraid.

I wrote that down a long time ago when I was trying to put into words how I felt.

I suffered from severe anxiety and panic attacks for a couple of years, and later on, I was diagnosed with PTSD. I went to bed in the evening with fear and in the morning, when I opened my eyes for the first time the fear came right back. Fear and pain were sometimes so closely interwoven that sometimes I couldn’t tell which was stronger at the time.

I’ve heard that a lot of chronic illnesses are associated with anxiety and depression. I have been spared depression so far, but I am very familiar with my fears. I’m not surprised that someone with constant pain also develops mental illnesses.

I very soon got lost in a bad cycle. If the anxiety was there, I physically felt a potpourri of symptoms. When the anxiety was over, I was afraid that the anxiety might come back. And even while the anxiety continued, I was also afraid of the state of anxiety, which consequently continued to escalate. The physical conditions I described at the beginning usually lasted for days – with only very short breaks, for no apparent reason to me. No matter what I did, they were there.

How did I get there? We had lost everything we had through no fault of our own. We were forced to be brave when we felt small and little. We moved to a place we didn’t know. The life we once had was gone, and so was the money. We went from a healthy middle class to the edge of homelessness.

That will do it! Any kind of trauma can do that to a person.

Fears! Made up scenarios in our head.

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My first step was to promise myself that I would never give up anything because of anxiety

One day I read about the extraordinary case of a woman who, when she got Alzheimer’s, had forgotten about her mental health problems and became a carefree person. Not thinking about being afraid anymore, I thought that was it. So I got into the habit of saying “Stop” as soon as the slightest thought of fear or about fear came. When I was alone, I did it out loud. I may have struggled a lot physically, but that didn’t mean I was willing to think about it around the clock. “How will it be tomorrow? How will I be, will I be able to eat, will I be scared forever, will I be in pain forever, how will I have to live, it’s so bad.”

All this circled in my head and I learned not to let it happen anymore. At first, I said and thought “Stop” almost continuously.

If I didn’t actively do anything, my thoughts immediately wandered to fear. Sometimes I said nothing but “Stop” for minutes. I was so annoyed with myself that I kept thinking about it. I caught the thoughts of how perfidious they tried to take detours and outwit me. I saw another woman on the street, laughing happily and lightheartedly with friends, and I became quite melancholic.

In addition, I did not allow myself any doubts about this method. It would work, I kept telling myself that. It went on like this for months and it demanded a lot from me. I experienced my first success when I woke up one morning and was not afraid. I noticed it immediately because her absence was just as clear as her presence. I just lay there and enjoyed the moment. It took two minutes, then came the throbbing in the stomach, the pressure in the solar plexus. I smiled. It was 120 seconds and I was without fear. I would also do more, it worked. The foot was in the door.

From this point on, the fear could no longer harm me. I had learned to slowly suppress it and finally forget it. At some point, I wasn’t afraid for hours. Then first days. Finally, I started to write in my journal not when I didn’t have anxiety, but when I had them. The intervals became longer. The fear no longer scared me.

What’s the worst that can happen? I die! So, I might as well live before I die.

Today, I very rarely have full-blown anxiety and maybe two panic attacks a year. I don’t mind anymore. It’s like a cold, disturbing but I accept it because it has no meaning and no relevance to my life. I look at the panic attack like a short circuit and can calmly endure it. What sounds like an irreconcilable contradiction became possible.

This path may not be the right one for everyone – pain centers recommend having anxiety treated by a specialist and with medication. Very few people actually succeed in “forgetting” fear, doctors say, but for me, it was the key to understanding that fear always feeds on itself and keeps itself alive.

I realized that for me, the excessive attention I paid to fear as a matter of course was fatal, not so much the fear itself. During the anxiety it was as if I had been driven out of myself – I struggled to regain my place.

So what if we lose it all? So what if life doesn’t go as planned.

I fear nothing but fear itself!

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Daily writing prompt

What fears have you overcome and how?

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