The next step.

I Have never really been much of a religious person.  I think I can count on my fingers the number of times I have actually set foot in a church.  But ill admit that there have been times in the last 18 months where I have begged someone or something to intervene and make all these things happening to me go away.  The one that springs to mind the most was the morning after the overnight I had in Singapore before flying back to NZ. I had been very heavily out on the juice the night before ( a celebration of sorts for surviving my first trip away that got out of hand ) and made it to bed with about 3 hours to sleep before getting up for the flight in the morning.  Waking up still drunk with the first licks of a hangover brewing in my head and knowing what that was going to do to me in regards to anxiety was a very very shitty feeling.  For the first time in my life I actually managed to get down on my knees and pray.  I prayed like a devout christian that had been going to church daily for his whole life.  I prayed through teary eyes with shaking hands that whoever was up there would listen and see what an idiot I had been by knowingly getting myself into that state.  To somehow fix me and make sure that I would be able to get home.
I stumbled out of my hotel room and made my way through cloudy eyes to the shuttle.  One of the guys was looking in a much worse state than I felt. turns out he decided to do a cliff hanger impression from the balcony of the 15th floor of the hotel.  The hotel security apparently tried to kick him out at 4 am. which just had the rest of us in hysterics for the rest of the trip to the airport.  This did much to improve my spirits and helped me put the first positive step towards learning that my attitude towards my fears could make them far worse.

I'm by no means convinced that falling on my knees made any real difference that day, or at all.  But I do know that one way or another, I have been very very fortunate with both the vessels I have ended up on and the people I have worked with since I made it back to sea.

Work dried up in Auzzie temporarily, which saw me working for the first time since qualifying back in NZ on a drill ship, the very same drill ship in fact that Lucy Lawless recently made a brief appearance on.  http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/lucy-lawless-and-greenpeace-activists-plead-guilty-4928581 (which incidentally ran aground the other day in Dutch harbor en route to the Arctic circle to drill some holes)
That swing was the thing that really gave me confidence that I would be able to get back to work consistently.

This trip was a full swing, 5 weeks long, and for me was quite a daunting task.  To work on this type of vessel it is required to have a HUET (helicopter under water escape training) certificate.  Which is basically a certificate that says we are trained in how to survive a helicopter crash.  Part of the course involves being put in a makeshift helicopter being submerged upside down and having to escape from it once under water.  A great way to face your anxiety.  If you don't pass the course, you cant have the job!

The Noble Discoverer tied up in New Plymouth

The ship its self ended up being tied up to the wharf for most of the swing. So I was able to get back into the hot engine room and confront a lot of the demons I had left down in the pit.  The atmosphere was structured and I was basically able to learn to deal with being back on a ship, while still being tied to the wharf.  This had Two major benefits, the first being that i had phone reception the whole time and could call home if i got really scared.  The second benefit to this is I was able to realise that I felt the same way being on the ship alongside the wharf as I did when it was in the middle of the ocean.  From this realisation I was able to make good in my head that if I could survive alongside the wharf, then I could survive while I was at sea.
Just to really prove the point to myself, the weather got up and we were forced to leave the port in case we were blown off the wharf and broke something.  So in some not particularly nice conditions we put to sea for a few days to wait out the storm.  It was a great time for me because it just cemented to me that I would be ok.  That I could handle this job and these conditions.

my first trip back to sea

One of the things that concerned me the most about going back to work was the fear that I was not OK after all.  It was heightened by the fact that in order to be back at sea I was supposed to be fit and ready for work in every sense of the word.  While I knew that for me to really be better I needed to go back to work and face the demons that I left out there.  Which in my mind meant that I wasn't really fit to go back.  In reality this meant that I was not able to to tell my company and fellow crew members what was going on or they flat out would not have let me back on the ship, swiftly ending my seagoing career.

My first stint back proved to be both an incredibly good; and bad experience.
I survived a number of firsts during the first trip away.
The first flight in a plane proved to be pretty tough, however using the breathing techniques I had learned, I survived the entire flight without a major crisis.

Spending the first real time alone and away from my chief supporter and wife proved to be hard.

Being back onboard on the other hand was another challenge altogether.  It was like being thrown from the frying pan; straight into the fire.  All of a sudden I was back onboard, working long days and going back into the heat that I was working in when I had my first attack.   

An unexpected side effect from this was that I began to doubt that it was actually anxiety and started to believe that it was possible that it was my heart.  A seed had been planted in my mind when the doctors couldn’t replicate the problem when i got home.  So from a medical point of view, it was only “unlikely” that something was wrong. 

In my world there was no such thing as “unlikely”.  I deal with engines and mechanical things.  When I started in my profession we were taught be inquisitive.  Why? Why does it sound like that? Why is it leaking oil? What makes this work, or not work?

In my line of work there is ALWAYS an answer. 

Hence that tiny seed of doubt began to fester. 

The first thing that I really noticed about being back in the engine room was the heat; and what the heat did to me.  After a few mins of being in the engine room my hands would get clammy and all tingly and my skin would go pale.

At the time I didn’t realise that what I was feeling was normal.  So I started freaking out that something was wrong.    I had suspected the heat would give me some grief so had been spending time trying to get used to the heat in saunas at the local swimming pool.  It really helped with getting used to my heart rate increasing as the temperature went up.
The difference was that I could walk out of the sauna if I couldn't handle it.  The engine room was slightly harder.  If I left because it was too much, I would still have to go back down there pretty quickly and finish off what I was doing before anyone realised something was wrong.

Somewhere in the back of my mind the little seed that had been planted started growing.  So there I am, trying to deal with the fact that I was back at sea, absolutely freaking out that maybe it wasn’t anxiety after all and that I was going to have the exact same thing happen again.  This blabbering mess on the inside, trying to put this brave face on so that none of the rest of the crew knew what was going on with me.  Going through this horrible cycle of getting all these weird signals from my body that made me feel very uncomfortable, which would start the anxiety cranking, which in turn would get the fear that it wasn’t the anxiety going, which would get my heart racing.  It was a vicious cycle.

The only way I knew how to deal with it was to go back into the breathing patterns I had learned and try to calm myself down enough to convince myself that it was just anxiety.  And I knew how to deal with anxiety.  It was something I could control.

The other unexpected problem I ran into was that of support.  I had absolutely no idea over the last few months how much I had come to rely on other people, particularly my wife.  We were constantly talking about how I was feeling and what I needed to do to feel better and so on and so forth.  Then, all of a sudden I had no support, none except for my own will.  So when I got anxious or felt that something was going wrong I was really struggling to find a way to break the cycle.
I began by writing down a series of positive things to repeat to myself if I got anxious and put them on the wall of my cabin.

I set myself a daily routine to keep my mind occupied and tried the best I could to stick to it.

When I got really really anxious and I felt like I was going to lose it completely I went to the gym and ran as fast and for as long as I could. 

All of these things worked really effectively to control or to counter act the anxious feelings I was having on pretty much a daily basis. 

I found that my anxiety would get much worse when things changed that I didn't expect, like when the company decided that my ship is going to Singapore.  Thinking about the implications of me being that far away from land such as not being in range of a chopper or medivac if things went wrong really didnt do me any favours. 

I think the hardest part of that entire trip was when we were departing Auzzie and making our way north.  As we fired up the engines and started picking up anchor I could feel the fear building up bit by bit, until my face was flushed and my hands were shaking.   But I survived, and survived the whole passage.

I survived a night in Singapore, the 8 hour flight back to Perth, and the 6 hour flight to Auckland from there.  

It didnt kill me.  Yes it was hard and I disliked much of it.  But I also learned a lot about myself and how much mental toughness it takes to get back on the horse when horrible things like this manifest themselves.

I had hoped to publish this blog months ago but have been back at college studying for my next seagoing qualification... the show goes on!