Monthly Archives: August 2019

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It’s Time We Talked … Part 2 (He Wins)

28 Wednesday Aug 2019

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adult black and white darkness face

I have always been an overachiever. In school, I was a 4.0 student. When I made my first B, I thought the world had come to an end. I still find my actions today to be led by a need to be absolutely perfect. Luckily I see that when things are not perfect, I can still function and the world as I know it did not suddenly cease to exist.

As a young adult, my anxiety began to change a bit. I noticed that I was on constant red alert while at work. I felt like my employer was constantly judging me and never gave me even a small pat on the back to let me know I was doing good work. So there would be days when I would sit in my office and literally tremble because I was certain I would get yelled at or ridiculed. I never did but that didn’t stop the thoughts in my head from telling me it was going to happen.

I remember one incident when we had a board meeting. I had on a pair of grey slacks, white blouse, and an argyle sweater vest (it was the 90s so give me a break). I remember feeling pretty that day. I was getting ready to walk into the board room to help set up and my employer told me I looked unprofessional. I was stricken on the inside like I had been struck by a hand. I just sat there the entire meeting completely embarrassed. Once the meeting was over, I got in my car, pulled out of the parking lot, drove to the first side street, and threw up.

I spent my entire paycheck on new clothes.

For those who have anxiety, you can relate to the sheer struggle that I have lived with internally. It’s a deep desire to be included and accepted while also an overwhelming urge to hide away at home where you are completely alone and secure. The little voice in the back of your head constantly creates self-doubt and your eyes see the negative pieces of who you are while conveniently skipping over all the wonderful parts of your being. If you are like me, you hide this struggle. If you are really really like me, you hide this struggle very well.

I changed jobs eventually and went into the pharmaceutical sales field. Lord, have mercy! This is quite possibly the worst job a person with extreme anxiety can have. In my initial interview, the interviewer asked me if I belonged to a gym. When I told him I did not, he informed me that I needed to make that a priority. Clearly, that meant I was overweight and unattractive (oh to be that size now!). But I landed the job on the spot and was actually pretty good at it. I had to talk myself off a cliff nearly every day because it was a tough atmosphere. The front desk staff at many of the physicians’ offices were quite mean. Doctors weren’t that much better. And the competition was downright volatile.

Because I was in the car alone most of the time, I had way too much time to think. I would replay conversations in my head or overanalyze an encounter. It was ridiculous. Then my anxiety took a brand new approach to steering me off balance. I was coming home from a workday in Hopkinsville. I was on I-24 somewhere between Cadiz and Eddyville when I felt a constricting in my chest. It came out of nowhere! My breathing was labored and I broke out into a sweat. I somehow managed to get pulled over on the interstate and opened the car door for some air. My peripheral vision was growing darker by the second. I threw my head between my knees and began to pray for God to not let me die on the side of the road. This, by the way, was the first time I bothered going to God with this problem.

I didn’t have a strong faith at the time. It was something that I believed but didn’t practice at all. I did not have an understanding of a God of salvation nor did I know that I could go to God with any burden on my heart and he would not only hear it but actively work within it. Unfortunately, I really only had one friend who was a believer. She spoke to me regularly about God but I didn’t accept the truth she was offering. It just didn’t seem that important.

Obviously, I did not die on the side of the road that day but I had many more episodes of that scenario, the worst being several years ago in Louisville while my then young son was in the backseat. But I digress.

I continued in pharmaceutical sales for several years, doing very well. In fact, one year I was in the top 25 sales reps in the company and won a trip to Bermuda. The last straw for me, however, was a doctor who decided he could make some very disparaging comments to me about my personal life. I remember every aspect of that moment. Standing in the “drug hall” with no way out because he was blocking the way, I had to listen to him call me names and make really inappropriate statements about some very personal things. And he did it with a smile on his face. That small hall felt smaller and smaller the longer I stood there. At one point I had to reach out to hold on to the sample cubes just so I wouldn’t fall to the floor. Trying to “save face” while feeling as if your chest is going to cave in is not an easy thing to do. Unfortunately, a single tear did manage to escape in front of him.

I never went back to that office.

I quit the job a couple of months later.

I could go on and on about different events that left me breathless, full of doubt and overcome with fear but I think you get the point. Anxiety is a very real thing. It’s a painful, physiological, and psychological life-altering disorder. It has the potential of robbing you of some beautiful and fulfilling moments. I have fought very hard to keep this thing neatly tucked into my box of shame. But no more. It is a part of who I am and I am determined to not be ashamed of it. I think back over the years where society has deemed certain things taboo. Anxiety and depression used to be a part of that unspoken world. And yet, every one of us knows people who suffer from one or both. We must give it a name so that men, women, and children will know that they can seek help because help is available.

Today, I am a Christian counselor and an ordained minister. Oh, that journey toward ordination pushed me to my limits at times. The anxiety of fitting in, being completely judged, talked about, discarded by colleagues, and even pushed to quit at times led to a depression that I had not experienced before. Perhaps someday I’ll share about the journey toward ordination but right now I simply cannot. It was not the kind of experience it should have been. Instead, it felt like that middle school hell all over again. Even on the night of ordination, while I was all smiles and hugs, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and disappear. Looking around that reception area, I remember thinking, I’m not even a welcome guest at my own party. Feeling my heart race (it was around 138), I just grabbed my husband’s hand and asked him to please take me to dinner. In the darkness of the drive to the restaurant, I stared out the window and cried silently.

As a counselor, I am very good at what I do because I really get people. I just get them. I have lived so much of what they come to see me for and so they experience not judgment but love and mercy from me. Basically, I try to give them what Jesus Christ gave me. I give them space to simply be. I look them in the eyes and love them. I never try to fix them or make them be something or someone they are not. I simply give them space to be. And that is grace.

I still struggle with anxiety and panic attacks. And I still put on a very carefully put-together mask to hide that struggle. As a minister, it can be very hard. I find that home visits are quite possibly the most difficult thing I have to do. There are many times I plan on making visits only to sit in my car mentally talking myself through each breath so I don’t collapse on the spot. I never seem to make those visits. And that invokes a tremendous amount of shame within me. I hate letting people down. Truly.

Church people can be some of the most beautiful souls in the world. And they can also be some of the cruelest. Unfortunately, the way my mind works, I tend to focus on the cruel more than the beautiful. It’s something I’m actively working on to improve. When someone gets upset or seems to be a bit aloof, I immediately take it too personally. And then the anxiety cripples me.

I have learned that resentment and anger are intense triggers of my panic attacks. When I refuse to forgive someone or something, I can actually feel a vice take hold of my lungs and squeezing. So I have learned to rely upon scripture to walk me through forgiveness. I actively pray the Jesus Breath Prayer when that vice takes hold and once my breathing is returned to a fairly normal state, I ask God to forgive me for my inability to forgive another. I’m a work in progress.

Before every sermon, every talk, every Bible study… before any time I’m asked to stand up and speak to a crowd, I feel my heart jump up into the lower part of my throat. I feel redness begin to creep up my chest. I can hear the heart beating in my head. And my breathing becomes just a bit shallow.

And then I pray.

God, please get me through this. Please let them hear you and not me because if they hear me, they’ll hear nothing but if they hear you, they’ll hear everything. Please Lord, have mercy. Amen.

Every single time I get ready to speak, I go through this. Every single Sunday I walk in circles in my office the 5 minutes before worship begins, praying this prayer over and over. Every. Single. Time.

Anxiety is part of me. And perhaps it is part of you. Before I could really make any progress, I had to first admit that I needed some help. My husband informed me one day that I “needed medication.” For those of you who are thinking of using that line on someone – DON’T. It didn’t go well at all. But he was right. I did need some medical assistance. I take an SSRI which is a class of non-narcotic medications that help with anxiety. I take it every day regardless of how good or bad I might feel. And once I was able to get things a bit under control, my eyes were able to see the rest of the needed treatment – the spiritual component.

I was spiritually bankrupt and needed God. There was a lot of ugly stuff that had to go down before I realized the depth of my need for Him but once I acknowledged it, I found a sense of mercy and grace and acceptance that I didn’t know was possible. And you can, too. Jesus Christ saved my life. And my soul.

Praise be to God He never gave up on me.

Lauren Daigle’s song Rescue sums up my life of anxiety. It sums up the feelings of being alone, lost, scared, unaccepted, and not good enough. May this song bless you, too.

“Rescue”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U4Q2R7ZZAE

You are not hidden
There’s never been a moment
You were forgotten
You are not hopeless
Though you have been broken
Your innocence stolen

I hear you whisper underneath your breath
I hear your SOS
Your SOS

I will send out an army
To find you in the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you

There is no distance
That cannot be covered
Over and over
You’re not defenseless
I’ll be your shelter
I’ll be your armor

I hear you whisper underneath your breath
I hear your SOS, your SOS

I will send out an army
To find You in the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you

I will never stop marching
To reach you in the middle of the hardest fight
It’s true, I will rescue you

I hear the whisper underneath your breath
I hear you whisper you have nothing left

I will send out an army
To find you in the middle of the darkest night
It’s true, I will rescue you
I will never stop marching
To reach you in the middle of the hardest fight
It’s true, I will rescue you
Oh, I will rescue you

 

It’s Time We Talked … part 1

27 Tuesday Aug 2019

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monochrome photo of woman sitting on floorI can still remember in vivid detail the first time I experienced a panic attack. I was in 8th grade.

I was sitting in English class. My best friend at the time was sitting to my left, one seat back. The creative assignment we had just been given by our teacher was to write about the “person we hated the most.” Seriously. That was an assignment given by a middle school English teacher. Looking back, it was really a bullying 101 assignment. I mean, what kind of teacher encourages that? But hey, she was my teacher and this was our assignment.

I remember looking over my shoulder to my best friend to whisper to her my choice of targets (I’m am deeply sorry, Jennifer, for any malice thought I had towards you). But there was something in my friend’s expression that seemed off. And at that moment, I just knew.

After school that day, I slipped back into the English classroom and went to the file cabinet where we kept our writing notebooks. I opened it and quickly found the royal blue spiral that belonged to my friend. As soon as I read the first sentence, my heart began to beat faster than I had ever felt. On and on, I read words of hate, mockery, and judgment. Pretty much anything that a young girl deems off-limits was touched. My weight was shamed. My face was ridiculed. The things I enjoyed were made fun of. And at the end of the paper, the one who I believed was my very best friend wrote in her bubbly cursive handwriting, “I hate her and always have. I just feel sorry for her so that’s why I keep her around.”

I put the notebook back into the old grey filing cabinet, listened for the click of the drawer, and began to walk out of the room. Before I made it to the door, my breath was so shallow I was certain I was going to die on the spot. And thus began a life of anxiety.

I don’t really talk about my anxiety much. I might mention it casually if anxiety is brought up but for the most part, I keep it pretty much under lock and key. Even writing this now has my heart fluttering a bit faster than I like. It’s very difficult to talk about even though it is very common. In fact, anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. Anxiety disorders affect 25.1% of children between 13 and 18 years old. (ADAA, 2019). My bet is that you know of someone… or several someones … who has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or is suffering silently from one. So, I think it’s time we talked. I mean really talked.  

I think my anxiety actually started when I was much younger. I had the privilege or burden (whichever way you want to look at it) of having my father as my elementary school principal. I really didn’t mind the authority he had because, honestly, I was a good girl. But not everyone fits into the category of “well-behaved.” And those less mannered children sometimes found their way into my dad’s office for discipline. Unfortunately, their anger was often let out in ways that did impact me. I can tell you that finding my dad’s name laced with profanity on the elementary school playground was never easy. I can remember feeling this sense of fear because I knew there were kids who didn’t like him. And as I people-pleaser, I couldn’t comprehend that fact without feeling what I thought was fear. In actuality it was anxiety. Overhearing teachers talk about him in ways that were … colorful … shaped me and my sense of safety. So in my little mind, I thought if I tried harder for those teachers and if I were perfect around those kids then they would definitely see my dad as the greatest guy ever. But they didn’t so I felt like I’d fallen short.

During that middle school year, I suffered tremendously. All self-esteem left me. I worried constantly about what I looked like or what I said. I often wondered when I walked up to a group of kids if they were going to make fun of me the moment I walked away. I thought seriously of suicide because all seemed lost. I was so lonely and so fearful. And yet I buried the true source of my pain. I never told my friend that I knew what she wrote.

Several weeks later, we had a new writing assignment. This one asked us to write about something that made us sad or upset. So I “confessed” to what I had done. Once my teacher read my assignment, she was beside herself. In all fairness to her, I think it was the eye-opening moment she needed to realize the “hate” assignment was not healthy for pre-teens with changing bodies, hormones, and attitudes. She asked me multiple times if I was okay. I lied and said I was. To my knowledge, she’s never assigned that writing activity again. (Silver lining!)

I would love to say that high school was better but it really wasn’t. I just learned to hide my anxiety better. I struggled to fit in. I was smart. I was involved in so many things. Looking back, the places where I felt most at ease were the activities where I could step away from being me. Theater, the school mascot, the newspaper staff. All these things allowed me to hide my face… hide my eyes… so that others couldn’t see the fear, the desperate need for acceptance, the anxiety that took me to shallow breaths and trembling hands.

I remember one incident that still rocks me to this day. I had been out of town with my family for the weekend. When I got home, a friend called me and told me she had something I needed to see. I think I was 16 at the time. I went to her house and she had four or five handmade signs. She had pulled them from my yard while I was gone. Someone had thought it would be great fun to put signs in front of my house with a degrading theme. As I read them, the room went a bit dark as I struggled to maintain consciousness.

When you look at my yearbooks, you would think you see a happy teenager. All the clubs and sports that I was involved in could not trump the amount of self-doubt and loathing that I had. I was the master of hiding it from others but the biggest failure of treating it. From high school to college to adulthood, this anxiety controlled my life and my successes. And it’s time I start owning it if I ever expect for it not to control me.

To be continued…

 

  1. Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention, treatment, and cure of anxiety, depressive, obsessive-compulsive, and trauma-related disorders through education, practice, and research.

If you or someone you know is struggling with anxiety or depression, please know you are not alone. Call your pastor, a counselor, a physician or mental health hotline for help.