Going to war

I have always considered myself a writer.  Since my teens I have enjoyed being able to express myself by putting pen to paper although I was never able to do with any regularity.  Something about committing to sitting down and writing about the same subject week in and week out seemed daunting.

It wasn't until I hit a brick wall with my anxiety that I decided it would be time for me to start putting pen to paper.  Mainly because I was getting tired of having all these things happening to me while I was at sea, the recurring thought was FUCK, I'M GOING TO DIE.

This is a perfectly reasonable response the first time your heart is bouncing around your rib cage like a brick in a clothes dryer.  But after the third or fourth time it happens and you don't die you start to get scared on a whole different level. Scared that your not going to die.... Yet.  Its a bit like playing Russian roulette by yourself.  Every pull of the trigger brings you one click closer to the chamber with the bullet.   It is going to get you eventually.  Because the doctors have told you its "unlikely" that anything is wrong,  not that nothing is wrong.  So there is always that little pestering niggling voice in your head when your heart starts banging away and you feel hot and tingly that maybe, just maybe this is it.  This is the one with the bullet in it.. "click" goes the hammer, and nothing happens. the time when something really is wrong and what do ya know?  FUCK, I'M GOING TO DIE. comes screaming back out of the recesses of your mind.

What defenses do you have when this happens ? Try and convince yourself otherwise!
You say to yourself.  Self, i'm not going to die. and self replies, YES YOU ARE, YOU'RE GOING TO DIE.  Being the tough person you are, you believe yourself because you don't have any further ammunition to prove otherwise.  You accept the argument that you are going to die.  Thus the logical thing to do is to half shit your pants and start to lose the plot

With all this talk of defenses, ammunition and attacks.  It feels like war.
In a sense it is.

So, Lets go to war then.

First we need to find a weapon and some ammo.

I started keeping a journal while at sea, when my anxiety was worst.
I made daily entries, and forced myself to do it even if it was a tough long day and I was wrecked.  I committed to it.
these are the main things I focused on
1) Writing what had happened during the day
2) How I was feeling both good and bad
3) Writing something positive that i had done that day
4) Telling myself that I was really proud of myself for getting through it, no matter if it was a success or a failure

Secondly we need intel so we can thwart the enemy at every turn

Reflecting on my journal, I started to see that I wasn't having nearly as many shit days as I had initially believed.
The first week was pretty much the same as it was when I wasn't writing the journal, I was still feeling pretty crap and like I was all panicky and jumpy.  But gradually, day by day the journal got thicker and more powerful and carried some strong arguments that I could use when the old self started trying to tell me that I was going to die.

Finally we take the fight to em,  full frontal attack and defeat the enemy

Old self would say shit, I feel bad, my heart is racing and I'm hot. I feel like I'm going to die.
Then new self would run back to the cabin and read the blog.  Then new self would say "Old self, you are hot because you are working in a hot area, we did this yesterday and we are not dead.  Maybe we are not going to die"

And so it went, back and forth. At first frequently, but as the old self found that he was getting beaten, he stopped arguing so much and eventually gave up on a lot of fronts.
For me, this was the breakthrough I had been searching for.  It gave me the backup to have the confidence to push on when i got scared or anxious.

With this technique I came forward in leaps and bounds, it was the single biggest step towards living a positive healthy life I have made.  Having that bank of positive outcomes there on hand whenever things went south, the ability to reflect and see that I was actually doing well, and that maybe I was being a little too critical of myself and expecting to run a marathon when all I really needed to do was put one foot in front of the other.

below are some of the more persuasive entries that I wrote to myself on that first trip away, which was a 3 week crossing over the Indian ocean, from Cape town, South Africa to Perth Australia.

8/11/11
I had a really good day today, at one point I looked at myself and thought, this is how I used to be.  Working hard and getting things done. I think the last few days of not sleeping very well and working hard have caught up with me though.  I was just congratulating myself on a good day and thinking about emailing my psychologist and telling her how well I was doing when I started feeling funny, the strange thing is that it wasn’t the normal anxiousness that I usually get, it was tired and dizzy.  Which I guess is normal considering that I was working hard all morning and the last 3 too.  I had to stop what I was doing and go and have a drink and a rest for ten mins, then I went back to what I was doing and finished the job, I wasn’t proud of myself for walking away but I really wasn’t feeling well.  However I was proud of myself for going back and finishing the job.  I know that im not always going to have a great day and sometimes im not even going to have a good day, but ill cope, ill get through and ill show this anxiety whos boss.. despite still feeling a bit anxious, im really proud of the way I managed today.


17/11/11
I actually had some success today which was pretty good.  After 4 days of fucking around with the purifier I finally managed to get the damn thing running, mostly it was a fuck up because I had never done one of these ones before.  After a few messy angry bits I managed to get the thing back together, the last two days have really taken it out of me and I feel a bit exhausted, but I have been having trouble sleeping... once I get to sleep I feel a million bucks, but I haven’t been able to get to sleep for ages.  This makes me run down and feel anxious a bit, having said that the last two days I have been doing pretty well, most of the time I actually felt like I was doing great, like the old days.  That's at least 3 days where I have felt how I used to feel which is something I thought would never happen again... Im pretty proud of myself for that!! Also today I had one of the worse panic attacks that iv had since I got here.  It was mainly coz I got really hot and a bit dehydrated which I guess was pretty close to what it was like before...
I cooled off and had a few drinks of water and after about 5 or 10 mins I started feeling much better, and whats cooler is that I went back to work and spent another 5 hours down there, finished off the purifier and all in all was pretty damn proud of myself!! Once again im pretty bloody happy with how im doing.  Its not always great but I feel like the good is outweighing the bad right now !

22/11/11

Today and yesterday were surprisingly hard work.  I am finding the mornings much harder than the rest of the day and its because I'm by myself for much of it.  I had horrible chest pains yesterday and it really really threw me... I got all panicky.  Which I actually delt with really really well.   It just really scared the shit out of me not knowing what was going on.  Then today at the end of the watch I got all anxious while I was working in the purifier room.  It just made me feel like I'm writing a self fulfilling prophecy at the moment where I'm going to start feeling worse and worse as they days go on.  I am trying my best to get myself positive and changing the way I do things, I'm going to try and chip away at a blog for the next few days and hopefully that will make life much better.  I'm still really proud of myself for getting through a pretty tough few days.  We are under the two weeks mark now which is a MASSIVE achievement!  I just have to remember to look back and think about the amazing things that I have achieved this year and even this trip.  I have worked hard like I used to.  Yeah I might not be back to where I was a few years ago but I'm getting better and better every day, even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time.  My whole outlook has changed so much in the last few months for the better.

26/03/2012
Been having trouble getting much sleep lately.  But I managed to get a bit more last night and have been feeling better. I was feeling a bit low earlier today, when I realised I had been sitting around achieving nothing and doing nothing today.  But I recognised that.  And did something about it.  And achieved something today and it made me feel better.  I have also started getting back into my routine of going up on the bridge or out on deck one day and then going back to the gym and the cabin the next day.  It does two things, gets me out of the cabin and helps the time pass faster.  Im doing pretty well at the moment.  Time is passing quick and I have a few projects to do at work which will be good. 

moving my blog!!!

The time has come for me to move onwards and upwards !
this blog has been moved to :
www.transientserenity.com
please follow and share
cheers
brendan :D

Overlap

Its Pretty incredible to think that i started writing this blog over 18 months ago.
I have reached a pretty special point in my story, special because when I started writing this blog I wrote it thinking I was better (not perfect, but certainly much better than i had been) and this blog I'm writing now is written about how I was when began writing Transient Serenity.  I'm so much much better now than I was back then

I can hardly believe its been that long.
So much has changed.
I have grown and learned to accept my anxiety for what it is.  Maybe not 100% but to a point where i am happy with whats been going on and how i am dealing with it.

When I started writing this blog I had two main goals
1)  To document what was happening so i could reflect back on how i am doing today
2)  Help someone else going through the same thing see that they are not alone and there is a way through
The idea of the blog came to me when i was halfway across the Indian ocean, doing a very long swing back at sea (my first real one since I acknowledged the anxiety as a problem) I penned a letter to my close friends and family explaining what had happened to me and how I was dealing with it.  Where I had been and what I had done.  Thanking them for their support.  The reaction to the letter proved to be the catalyst for transient serenity.

That trip was for me one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  Hard because i really felt like i was better but I was scared that I would find out that I wasn't.

I think one of the most powerful tools i have learned is reflection.  By writing this blog 18 months post datum I have been able to objectively look at what I was doing well, and what I was doing wrong or could be done better.

I still reflect on it today.  Am re-reading parts of it now and thinking about how it felt at the time, and how I feel now looking back

Since I started writing this blog I have been to see a Councillor  and a psychologist.  I found both helpful, but the psychologist really came into her own in terms of developing myself to be that person I needed to be to not suffer anxiety on a large scale day to day.  She challenged me to challenge things that were happening to me.  To not accept a failure or an inability to complete a task as a negative thing but as a step to recovery.

Allowing myself that freedom to recover, accepting that I'm not OK and that I wont ever get back to being the person I was before this all started is a very powerful tool for healing myself. It gave me the ability to look at things I was doing and bit by bit start to build up confidence in myself and allow me to cherish the times that were good, and even the times that were bad.  Because I could then look at the bad times as something to achieve.  " OK I didn't do well with this, I'm going to keep at it until I do"  everything in small steps.

Accepting that I wont ever be the person I was before this all started, then realizing that the person I had wanted so badly to get back to wasn't a healthy person.  I may want to keep some of the traits from him, but a lot of the things he was doing were detrimental, both short and long term.

I didn't end up in this situation without good reason.

Below I have attached an edited copy of the letter I penned to my good friends and family about what had happened to me.  This is where my recovery really started :

 My life hit a major hurdle nearly a year ago and a lot has changed since I last threw some words around.. Iv been to 4 continents, spent months on holiday, purchased a Beautiful automobile, wakeboarded at dream lake, got a new tattoo, taken a photo outside Hank Moody's apartment, driven a brand new Camaro, scared myself shit less in bear infested hills, laughed like I was a kid, Driven a big ass Jacked up Chevy truck.  Allegedly been up the empire state building in an earthquake.  Got off a train in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with a guy we didn't know on a whim of adventure, lied about being on  my honeymoon to get a free bottle of champagne.  Iv flown over Antarctic pack ice, Watched the Blue man group live at their home theater  gambled in Vegas, Missed 2 flights, slept in an airport, gone par for 6 holes in a round of golf, reconnected with some really good mates, taken chances, lost weight, put on weight, given up drinking, taken it back again, then given it up again.  Been to a ball game, been on a train across America, heckled a stand up comedian, been fucked out of my mind on beer more than a few times, Caught my first trout on a fly line with my dad and lastly smiled like I meant it. I have Cried myself to sleep at night, been too scared to get out of bed in the morning , wondered how im going to live through the day, week, month.  walked off a golf course in disgust, embarrassed myself, felt foolish, hurt other people, hurt myself, lied to myself, lied to other people, thought I would never be able to go back to work again, hell there was a time that I didn't think I would be able to do any job, let alone continue the one im doing now. Its been an eventful, emotional year... that's putting it lightly.
To those of you who don’t know I was diagnosed with anxiety at the start of this year.  A-n-x-i-e-t-y; sounds pretty harmless.  It rolls off the tongue.  Sadly for me it didn't, it kept me from myself and from other people.  I never thought I would wake up one day and not feel like myself in my own body, but sometimes things happen for a reason, sometimes you need a wake up call to figure out what is important in life... Before I got sick I was living a great life, so I thought , 6 months holiday a year.  But I wasn't being honest with myself, I was living for nothing, had nothing.  No, that’s not true, I had something but I didn't know what to do with it. Now, 9 months later I'm doing what I thought I would never be able to do again, I'm sitting back on a ship, have crossed the Indian ocean, flown the equivalent of the whole way round the world! I'm cautious about how I'm doing because I still have a long way to go before I get off the ship, I have my good days and I have my bad days, but I feel for the first time in a long time that I have started to find the old me again, the one who enjoyed life, not shied away from it because he was scared or worried.  Got back in touch with friends I had lost a long time ago, only to find that they never left, it was me who disappeared.
To all of you whom are reading this I just want to take the time to say thank you, somehow or another inadvertently or otherwise you have helped me through the toughest time in my life and I am eternally grateful for your support and friendship.  May the summer bring you all the happiness you all deserve.

How i deal with flying

One of the biggest fears I had developed around the anxiety was the fear of flying.  I had never been a huge fan in the first place but the anxiety made it even more horrible.  Suddenly I was very aware that I was locked in a tube 10Km above the earth, completely at the mercy of the pilots who were flying it.

Flying turned out to be something of a trigger for me even before I was  aware that I was experiencing anxiety. 

Looking back on the days when I first started out in the offshore industry, I had  developed a cunning coping mechanism which involved consuming copious quantities of alcohol before and during the flight to numb myself from the scary reality of flying

So how did I get to the point where I could fly again without losing the plot?

I had better explain why I needed to change my initial coping strategy.

I often think of the time before I suffered my first attack as my “stupid period”

As so often seems to the story with me and this stuff, I never really realized it at the time, but the way I was acting and behaving was heading me towards some kind of downfall.

 

I think the thing that knocked me around initially was that I didn’t sleep very well on planes.  I think it’s a bit of the old brain ticking over and not letting me relax along with the anxiety that often seems to be just lying under the surface.  Oh and throw in a bit of having a hard time getting comfortable sitting upright for hours on end….

You can start to see why I started drinking before flying.

My flying and drinking strategy was pretty fine tuned… I knew exactly how much I could handle and not get totally obliterated.  Over the years I grew into quite the alcoholic at airports.  But there came a point where I started slipping a bit, maybe over-shooting the mark just a little too much. Like the time I wrote on the Australian departure card under the “which country are you travelling to?” I wrote Australia.

I learned all the tricks to travelling under the radar when it came to being drunk in the airport. 

Write your departure card out before you start drinking if possible (hence the failure above!) Look at your feet, don’t talk unless spoken to and only one word answers - that way you won’t slur so much:

But then I started messing up more and more:

Leaving my cellphone at the bar because I was drunk and running late for my plane.

Nearly missing flights because we were drinking in the flight lounges and getting completely rancid… We found out that once you were through customs it was less of a hassle to put us on the plane and let the stewards deal with the mess than for security to have to take us back through customs and recover our bags of a fully loaded plane.

Never was this more true and more proven correct when our flight was delayed for 4 hours on the way home from Perth.  My drinking plan was thrown well and truly out of kilter because I had been drinking to be shitfaced as I got on the plane…. by the time the plane had been delayed I was well on the way and hadn’t planned on having to develop a mechanism for putting the brakes on.  So after a 4 hour delay, a very very very heavily intoxicated Brendan trots (stumbles) down the airwalk and into my business class seat for the flight home ..  I’m just clipping my belt up when I realize that I have made a very serious mistake. I look up and I can see the plane spinning and I know I’m in some serious trouble.  I vaguely remember a voice booming over the PA system as the plane was taking off and I was halfway to the bathroom “COULD THE PASSENGER IN THE AISLE PLEASE MAKE HIS WAY BACK TO HIS SEAT IMMEDIATELY” 

The rest of the trip as I’m sure you can imagine was awesome… I think I may have passed out in the bathroom and then somehow woke up at the back of the plane… (I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination).  That was the end of that messy episode and time for me to start winding back my drinking on planes and trying to find a new strategy to survive the flights.

What is intriguing about this moment is it came about barley 6 weeks before I had my first anxiety attack.  So the timing was almost perfect when it came to reassessing my coping mechanisms.

After finishing on the drill ship, I travelled around the USA for a few months.   My company emailed me asking if I was willing to come back from the trip a little early as they had a ship on a long term contract that they were intending on mobilizing.  Conveniently the USA trip had put a larger dent in my coffers than I had first anticipated. Securing an income for 6 or 7 months really appealed to me.  

What didn’t appeal to me was that I would have to fly halfway round the world to get back to work.  I arrived home in N.Z. and received the flight details arrived for the new job, only to discover that I was not going to Perth Australia but to Cape Town, South Africa - a much longer and more demanding flight.

So I arrived home after a 12 hour flight from LA to Sydney and then a 4 hour flight to Auckland, spent 3 days in town and then flew out 4 hours to Sydney again and then another 14 hour flight to Johannesburg and then 3 hours down to Capetown.  I found the thought of this very daunting and to be honest I was not looking forward to it one bit. 

So how I have learned to deal with it ?

The short and curlies of it are that I haven’t.  Not completely.  I still get the racing pulse every now and then, I still get hot flushes… sometimes I feel like I have to just escape. 

And then I remember something a good friend and fellow sufferer once told me. 

You need to learn to take control of what you can when flying.  Even the smallest of things make a difference. 

In his words “If you have to get off the plane you can get off the plane, anywhere, just about any time” What he meant by this is that yes, it’s scary being in there when you are feeling anxious.  and you feel you can’t get out.  But you actually can.  You can take back that little bit of control, tell the hostess while you are still on the ground that you need to get off.  Hell, make up a story if you need to.  You can even do it in the air…  Feign a heart attack… sure you may not ever be able to fly with that airline again.  But that doesn’t matter.  Because you are in such dire need of getting out of there that you are willing to do anything to get out at that point. 

For me this is the amazing thing.  When I’m there, when I feel that bad, when I have made that decision, I feel in control and then I feel better.  And then I feel I don’t need to say anything because I know that I have a way out if I need it.  But I don’t need it.  It sounds perverse, but I have found a way to take control of my situation, just through thinking the action, not actually having to do it!

It sounds a tad on the crazy side… but just knowing that there is a way out makes a massive difference when I’m on the slope towards a panic attack. 

It’s just one more little weapon I can tuck away in my arsenal against this illness.  And every little bit counts.   

Other things I do are plan, take books, have things accessible, bring things to keep me entertained. 

I generally request (often firmly) to have an aisle seat as it helps ease the feeling of being trapped.  Although my last flight (Perth to Bali) I had a middle seat and I coped, now that I think about it Ha!

I steer away from alcohol when I’m on the planes these days too. 

I try and strike up a conversation with the person seated next to me early in the piece. That way if I’m feeling anxious I already have a dialogue with them and I don’t get more anxious trying to figure out what to say.

Since I suffered my first attack I have flown to Australia, South Africa, Bali, Singapore, America and Canada and many other places in between.  Very rarely do I enjoy the flights, but I do tolerate them now, with very few episodes of panic.  There is a way through this!