Heading back to work.

From the time I was shipped home, till the time I passed my medical and was cleared to return to sea almost 5 months had passed.  

During that time I was seeing my psychologist fortnightly and we had primarily been working on happiness. 

Which, I suppose is a seemingly strange thing to do when you are supposed to be working on being scared.  Her reasoning being that anxiety is either very close to or a direct function of depression; and depression is caused in part by negativity.  We set out to try and re-train my brain at subconscious level.  In the words of the French philosopher Rene Descartes: "I doubt, therefore I think.  I think therefore I am"  

First we started looking at why I was unhappy.  What had changed recently that had made me this way?

It took a fair amount of soul searching to find the last point in time when I could honestly say I was happy for any decent period of time... which turned out to be a fair while earlier.  A changed had occurred both in and around me since then.  It was so subtle that until reflecting on it nearly two years later; I had no idea that it had even taken place.

I had only been doing my job for 18 months prior to getting sick, and I didn't realise how much I had become disjointed from friends and family at home.  I began to feel disconnected from real life.  I was stuck on a ship where I was learning nothing and feeling stuck and unenthusiastic, constantly fighting with the office to get me onto a bigger ship where I could increase my skill base and have some sense of pride in my job, this had ground me down to a point where I stopped enjoying what I was doing.  The friends that I was close with when studying were also working at sea and so; often when I was at home, we would only overlap by less than a week.  I wasn’t really getting much time to interact with people.  The ships I was working on in Auz had only 10 or 15 crew instead of the 1000+ on the cruise ships I trained on which were social by nature and more focused on fun and entertainment.  I was generally working the normal sea watch of 4 hours on 8 hours off and would often be lucky if I conversed with two people in the 8 hours that I was on the gear (which can start to feel a bit like solitary confinement after 36 days).  All of this lead to me seeing less of people and in general making me more isolated.
 

In the first year of being qualified, I purchased myself a horrendously cool car on which I spent a great deal of time (and money) fixing, planning, driving and just generally enjoying.  After a series of expensive problems came up while I was at sea it was decided that I should sell my baby.  At the time it wasn’t much of a bother, in fact it came as somewhat of a relief.  No longer did I have to worry that it would break down while I was away (saving me thousands in paying someone else to fix what I could do myself!).  We brought a sensible car and life went on as normal.  Somewhere along the lines repairing that car and spending so much time playing around with it managed to mask the fact that I was becoming more and more disconnected from friends and family.  So in the 9 months that followed, I became  more depressed both at home and while I was away at sea.  This combined with a long running lack of self esteem lead me to a very unhappy place.  All unbeknownst to me at the time of course. 

So what changed before I went back to sea?  

Betty Benz, the new money sucking automobile

Well for a start I decided I needed a long running project and once again now own another money sucking automobile.  To those of my friends who are reading, I'll save the ramble about how awesome it is (but to those who don’t know me... it’s pretty awesome! And you can read more about it on my other blog: http://kiwiengineer.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/betty-benz.html).  Once again I have something to plan for and spend time thinking about while I’m at sea and tinkering with while I’m at home.  
I started playing rather obscene amounts of golf and catching up with friends again. 
I began trying to structure my leave and holidays so that I had something to look forward to and so that I didn't feel so disconnected from life while I was away
I started exercising regularly again, it helped with squashing the idea of heart problems I.E - if I could prove to myself that I could get my heart rate up and nothing bad happens, then I must be fine.

Aside from all the physical changes I have made to my life, I have also spent a lot of time working on thinking positively, reinforcing my thoughts with positive affirmations and learning to trust in myself.  By far this proved to be the toughest of all the changes I have made.  Because its something that needs constant attention and has to be kept in check.  For me this was the real staring down the barrel stuff that if I didn't man up and do, no amount of exercising or planning for holidays would have made a difference.  
I have over-time developed somewhat of a routine that I try to stick to where I repeat about four or five positive sentences out loud to myself, aimed at convincing me long term that I am :
1) ok
2) allowed to have shit days 
3) a positive member of society, or a team blah blah blah
4) allowed to be good at what I do
5) allowed to be happy

With this new found confidence in myself and skills I had acquired, I felt finally like I was at least to some degree prepared to return to work. 

A Step by step Terror attack

Me at work, just days before I suffered my first panic attack in grand style

One thing I resent about 9/11 and the whole planes crashing Al-Qaeda buzz is that they stole the word terror.
Calling it a panic attack doesn't really come close to explaining the all consuming fear that washes over me like a wave.  When I consider how it feels,  terror is the only word that even comes close.  It is singly the most intense, scary, overpowering thing that has, and hopefully will ever happen to me. Absolutely terrifying.

To people who have never experienced anxiety on a major scale it can genuinely be difficult to understand how it feels. Even to the most sympathetic of people.

It changes a lot from attack to attack and from person to person, but ill try to explain how it generally feels for me.

First is a sudden feeling like something is not quite right, like someone is watching me.

Its surreal. Like I'm not in my own body.  Everything seems to be happening around me and I cant focus on anything.

Next I notice that my face feels flushed.  Initially flushed, but soon it feels like its on fire.

All of a sudden I feel like I cant breathe.  The sensation arrives like a freight train.  It hits me at a hundred miles an hour and as soon as I feel it, I start panting, breathing fast and shallow.  Trying to suck as much air into my lungs as fast as I can.
My head begins to feel light and I feel as if I'm going to faint. My fingers go all tingly and I can feel my palms getting clammy.
I become acutely aware of everything that is going on in my body, I can feel the individual hairs on my arms moving. I Can feel my chest expanding and contracting.

What happens next is for me the most traumatic part of the anxiety attack.
The initial sensation is like going over the top of the roller coaster.  I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and all of a sudden I get the sensation of free falling and as adrenaline takes over I start to lose control of my body.  My heart rate increases so quickly I feel like my heart is going to explode.  The walls close in around me and all of a sudden I'm out of control.

The only thoughts I have are negative.  I cant breathe. I cant survive this, I'm going to die.
There is no ability to rationalise, because my brain is in survival mode.
At this point I genuinely feel that I am as close to my animalistic instincts as I will ever get.
running completely on adrenaline.

Understanding why this happens is key to getting through.  Because once you can recognise the stages (it always happens in stages).  You can start to develop techniques to break the chain.  you can say "hey, I can feel my face burning up.  I know what that is,  Its anxiety".  From there you can learn to do things that stop you from moving on to that next step.
For me its usually getting up to get a drink of water.  Or moving around the room a bit.  Just to break the cycle,  and once that cycle is broken, its pretty hard to keep connecting the dots and keep heading down that road to a full blown attack.

I mentioned that its Animalistic.  This is because at the fundamental level, anxiety is sending your body a message.  saying loud and clear.  I'M FRIGHTENED.
Back in the days where a cave mans idea of a relationship was hitting women on their heads with a club and taking them back to their caves and fought saber tooth tigers.  The only time they really got scared was when something was going to hurt or kill them.  So as a natural defense our bodies developed a response when this fear was awakened.  Basically its like a switch being turned on, and it happens somewhere around the top of the roller coaster part, when the brain goes "OK I sense fear,  I'm gonna feed my body some adrenaline so what ever is scaring me will either be left in the dust or I will kill it".  This is known as the Fight or Flight response.   The adrenaline in our system heightens our senses and allows more blood to flow to muscles and vital organs allowing us to run faster and fight harder.  This could have been the difference between life and being eaten by that saber tooth.

As I learn to deal with this illness and the more of these attacks I have, its only stands to reinforce what I have learned.  At times I'm calm enough to sit there and ride out each stage one by one just to see how it feels (now that I have skills to deal with it) and funnily enough when I get to the point where the adrenaline comes and my hands start shaking.  There is a part of me what wants to run for the hills.  Which is strange, considering the other part of me is worrying that my heart is going to stop beating.  So maybe this anxiety stuff is only that.  Anxiety.

So I figure I should probably introduce myself now that I have your attention.

I'm a 27 year old male and I live in Auckland, New Zealand.  I'm generally a pretty fit and active person.  I have been married for two years and we don't presently have any kids.  For my job I work as a Marine Engineer and I work at sea for 6 months of the year working 5 weeks on 5 weeks off.  For work I'm primarily based off the coast of Australia.  So I fly between the two. On leave I play a lot of golf and fix up my old Mercedes along with all the usual stuff.
So now you know more about me and who I am, you can see how something like anxiety can play a big role in my life with me being isolated for half of the time.


The first month was the toughest.
When I got home I had no idea that what I was experiencing was anxiety.  I had been discharged from the hospital in Perth, Australia and thrown onto a plane home being told that there was no point waiting to get a diagnosis which would take a few days at the least. (real cool flying home in a packed out tube and thinking that you are going to have a heart attack at any minute)
So I arrived home tired and confused.  Actually maybe bewildered or swamped or completely out of my depth is a better word.
On the journey home I began to have trouble breathing.  Like I was constantly short of breath.  No amount of deep breathing would do anything to help except make me dizzy, which in turn would get what i later discovered to be anxiety cranking.  The only thing that I could do to make myself feel better at that point was to close my eyes.  It wasn't like an instant fix but when the other alternative I could for see at the time was to either faint or die, it seemed to be a pretty good option. It became my first real coping mechanism.  Even today its my last real line of defense from a full blown panic attack.  Lying down in a dark room with my eyes closed and breathing deeply.

So the first 3 weeks I was home were spent being diagnosed by various Specialists.  I had arms like a pin cushion from all the blood samples and IV lines they were attaching to me.  One specialist put me on a training bike hooked up to hooked up to a heart monitor and made me ride as fast as I could for as long as I could.  Trying to replicate what had happened to me earlier.  Another took and ultrasound of my heart to test its function.  Everything came back fine.  Then the final test I had the Doc strapped a heart monitor to me and told me to go about my business for 24 hours.  During this time I was at home alone for a while.  The palpitations started while I was watching TV.  I got scared and called an ambulance.  My poor wife came home to a note on the counter saying "At hospital, happened again, I'm OK" I was cleared in a few hours and went back home to try and relax.

A week or so later I received notification from my GP that all the tests that had been done came back either OK or inconclusive.. which, the good Dr explained is as good as OK.  I still felt like crap and was on edge a lot of the time.  However, stupidly I decided that it was time to celebrate that I was officially in the clear from heart problems.  So went to a friends place for a bit of a celebration on the wines.  This was the first time I had really had anything to drink since I got home and once I had a few in me I felt fine. In fact I felt better than fine.  I felt as if nothing was wrong.  So I kept drinking and eventually stumbled to bed in the wee hours of the morning.  I was back to normal, just like I was supposed to be.

The following morning I woke up with a bit of a headache and the familiar taste in the back of my throat of too much good pinot noir.  I decided to resume my normal life.  I made a cup of coffee (the first one since I had got home) and sat down to chew the fat with my mates.  After a few minutes I started to feel like I was on the outside looking in.  Like I was not in control and spacing out.  I started struggling for breath again and all of a sudden one of my friends commented that they could see my heart pounding through my shirt from the other side of the room.

Next thing I'm in an ambulance on the way to hospital.  3 Hours of sitting in the emergency room and I'm finally told that nothing is wrong.  No heart attack.

Now I was really starting to worry about what was going on with me.  If it wasn't a cardiac problem.  If the palpitations weren't caused by a physical problem then what could it be ?

I didn't feel depressed.  In my eyes I hadn't done anything overly stressful to cause anything like what was happening to me.  I had just been doing what i had always done.  Sure things had been intense as hell the last time I was back from sea on leave.  But I survived it.  In fact I was probably the fittest I had ever been before I got sick.  Was hitting the Gym almost every day when I was away and was feeling fit and healthy.

Somewhere along the lines my wife suggested that I go and see someone who might be able to get inside my head and maybe might be able to figure out what was going on with me.  I was too messed up to deal with it so she took care of tracking down a psychologist that was nearby and could take me on at short notice.
What followed was perhaps the most interesting and life changing thing that has ever happened to me.

Within the first 5 minutes of being in that room my psychologist had a pretty good idea for a diagnosis and come up with an action plan for getting myself back on the road to recovery.  The first thing she had me do was draw up a plan of what had lead me to where I was at that point.
What I put down on that page was a very humbling and scary sight.  Never before had I seen how destructive I was being towards myself.  How little time I was allowing for me ( and how much of it i was giving to other people).  It can be very powerful when you see how you live your life laid out in front of you.

I began to learn that what had happened had been a very long time coming.  I had Been a slow moving train wreck for the better part of 10 years.  Running away from things that I didn't like dealing with, ignoring my needs, hardening myself to the outside world, not acknowledging my emotions.  Eventually and I guess inevitably the train ran off the rails.

This was the start of my recognition of anxiety, from here I was at last able to a give a name to what was happening to me.  It didn't make it any less scary, but it did mark the start of my recovery.
Even at this early stage I had begun to establish some steps to look after myself.
1)  Alcohol is bad for anxiety.
2)  Not looking after myself is a recipe for disaster.

I have a bit of a rule of thumb now when it comes to alcohol...  For the amount of time I'm consuming it, I pay for it two fold the next day with anxiety.

The start of it all

Before i start...

I am intending on making this a fairly frequent blog for the next little while at least.  It's as much for me as for everyone else.  To help those that don't know to understand.  To help show other people suffering from Anxiety and other similar disorders that there is a way through it.  That you will survive and you can find happiness again.  There is light at the end of the tunnel.

About 6 months ago I decided enough was enough.  So I got my write on and penned a letter to all of my close friends and family telling them that I hadn't been very well for the past year.  It was a pretty soppy have a cry, spill my guts and feel all good about myself style letter that I hadn't really thought I was going to write... But it turned out to be such a positive thing to do.  All of a sudden I was getting emails from friends who I thought had known what was going on telling me they had no idea of what the story was.
The response I got from people really helped to give me the confidence to be open with people about what was  going on with me.

Since then I have ended up doing quite a bit of finding out that there are actually a lot of us out there who suffer from much the same disorders.  Varying degrees, but the same disorders or something very similar
Actually I have been doing a bit of helping others through the same thing that I have been going through.  so I decided that it's about time I shared some of the stuff that I have been doing over the last 14 months to help get back on track.

For a long time anxiety was suppressed in my subconscious and didn't really bother me too much.  I just started taking on more and more and more and more stuff until one day after spending 5 weeks at sea and then 5 weeks at home fixing unexpectedly broken vehicles I snapped.  Sadly for me it was nearly a career ending snap.  No, not like flipping your boss the finger, or abusing a customer.  I had a full scale panic attack while I was doing my job, at sea.  emergency evacuations for a suspected heart attack.  The repercussions of that day have cut deep into my psyche, and its been a long hard road to turn my thoughts around from the daily battles I have faced in the nearly 500 days since it happened.

When I got home, possibly the biggest battle (aside from the one I had with myself) was the battle I had with other people.  Trying to get them to understand that I couldn't just "Snap out of it".  That they cant just wave a wand over me or give me a hug and everything will be OK.  It took a few tense moments with my wonderful wife for her to begin to even get a grasp of what was happening to me and why.  It wasn't her fault.  she just didn't understand what was happening to me.  How could she? our dynamic had suddenly and unexpectedly changed.  For her, overnight I went from being this rock who could handle any situation, who looked after her through some really tough times.  To being this infantile babbling mess.  Shit I couldn't even close the door to the bathroom when I was having a shower for the first few weeks that I was home.  I was that bad.
She has been truly amazing throughout this whole saga,  once we both had a better idea of what kind of support I needed, she really stepped up to the plate.  Both in support and in challenging me to push my boundaries.
My family were quite shaken up by it all too.  I had always been such a strong independent person, and overnight I went from that.  To withdrawn, quiet, sad and lonely.  Nobody new how to deal with it.


I started seeing a psychiatrist fairly early on in the piece and low and behold... it actually really helped.  I learned lots of techniques and skills that I could apply when I started feeling bad and began to evaluate why it had happened to me in the first place...  It takes a lot of courage to look in the mirror and face your demons.  For me it wasn't one of those stare in the mirror type revelations where I got down and wrestled with myself... and came out of it better off.  It took me months to even recognize the patterns I had created and my triggers for anxiety.

The next few blogs are going to combine a bit of how to stuff and a bit of how my life has panned out.  Leading up to what i'm doing now and my plans for the future.  Please feel free to share this with anyone you know that may benefit from reading this.  If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.  I'm more than happy to discuss just about anything.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this