The retreat

 Ok, this is going to be a long brain dump, with me vastly over sharing (as I do) so near with me or shudder and quickly pass on!

I have anxiety. Well, so does everyone now and then, which is all right and proper. However, I have got debilitating anxiety, which stops me doing a huge numner of things and I’m going to explain just what I mean.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with a therapist trying to pin it down, and I’ve been really trying to remember my younger years which have been locked away for my whole life, but working with her and umm, various “substances” (all um perfectly legal obviously) I’ve uncovered more than I thought I could. My earliest memory of anxiety was when I was about 3 years old. We had a cat called Smokie, and I would have hysterics whenever it went out. I thought it was going to get lost or killed or something, and I’d be inconsolable until it came back in. At 3. WTAF?

Move head until I was 5 or 6, and staying in London. My parents went out, leaving me safely with my grandparents. Apparently I woke up and wanted my mother and she wasn’t there. Didn’t calm down until they came back. From then on, for years I was terrified that for some reason my parents were going to abandon me. I would lie awake for hours trying to catch the sound of them talking or making tea, so I would know they were still there.

Move ahead to 7; most people counted sheep. I counted my worries, amd what might happen. I’d turn them all over in my mind, and that was when I first started to catastrophise what would go wrong.

About the same age my grandmother, who I apparently loved, died. This devastated me for 2 or 3 years. I was pretty much left to my own devices, no such thing as counselling in those days! In the end I just blanked out all of the memories I had of her - it was the only way I could cope. It’s what I’ve done ever since - just block things out. Shut down the memories and suppress the emotions. To this day I have very few readily available memories of Jill for example. Remembering is too hard, and I can’t control the floods of emotions that I get when I try.

I have always had extreme anxiety, and for the most part I haven’t recognised it, until now. It’s debilitating and exhausting. Logically I know there isn’t a problem but my mind spirals out of control and I just think of different possible outcomes, however unlikely they are. And I go around and around like a rat in a trap until I get to the point of being completely wrecked.

Most of my anxieties revolve around abandonment I think, of one type or another. Work stuff… no problems at all. But social anxiety is entirely different. It grips my stomach and works it’s way up to my chest, to the point I can hardly speak. It’s odd… give me a stage and 500 people and I’m at home, but 5 people in a room, that’s really hard. If it’s really bad all I can think of is running; no other thought has room in my head. Which can be hard to do when my legs turn to jelly.

Anxieties can be all consuming, and they rob life of many joys. I find it difficult to read, concentrate on a game, watch tv… I just don’t have the brain power any longer. It constantly drags you down and the anxiety turns to a possible future which you’ve got to consider. Meanwhile anxiety throws out another ridiculous scenario which has to be considered, so you juggle both sets of possibilities, and those possibilities branch off into others and before you know it you can’t think of anything, there’s simply no brain left, and the whole thing comes crashing down. Even when you can think part of your anxiety brain carries on, only to interrupt the film or the conversation I’m having with someone. Those are bad, because you’re chatting away and then boom! In comes the thought and knocks you sideways, but you have to keep in the conversation and get that thought under control. And that’s really hard. Or you’ll be chatting to someone and they will mention a person or item and anxiety is on the alert, spinning you off into thought after thought and you just want them to stop, for a few seconds. Both person and thoughts.

And I thought that was perfectly normal. I thought everyone did that as well. What do you mean, you don’t always reach for the worst case? You seriously think there might be a good outcome? You don’t plan for every possible outcome? You don’t have two or three sets of entirely different thoughts running in your head at the same time? I had a conversation with my brother recently and in about 5 minutes of a chat I had also considered how arches are made, the colour of a pirates shirt, how to get a nail out of some wood without tools, things in the house that needed fixing, and trying to see something outside. It wasn’t that the conversation was boring - far from it, but all the other thoughts have to thought as well. And yes, right NOW!

I finally realised that I wasn’t quite the same as everyone else when I had, well, just let’s say some mushrooms perhaps, and leave it at that. I have to say it was one of the most profound experiences of my life. It’s difficult to describe, but my mind went quiet, and I could just have one thought in my head at a time. It was silent! Like an itch you’ve got used to so you don’t notice it until you scratch it. And I didn’t feel anxious. I wasn’t worried, in fact quite the opposite - I had a visual disturbance which normally I’d freak out over and I just shrugged and thought “it’s what you’ve eaten, it’ll all be fine”. The total relief was overwhelming. Think the colourblind people who put the special glasses on the see colour for the first time, it was like that.

It was only after that when I realised that what I thought was normal, well, wasn’t. So I’m now on a couple of journeys. The first, via a therapist is to dive more into the anxiety. Which means I need to remember more things, which bring back the emotions as well, and I’m not too good at that. And that leads to the second journey, which is to ‘explore my mind’ if that’s not too grandiose a term. The active drug in “magic mushrooms” is a thing called psilocybin, and it’s astonishing. It opens up connections in your brain - there are pictures of brain activity before taking it and then an absolute explosion of brain activity during it, and some of these new connections last for months if not longer.

Now this is a class A drug in the uk, so obviously I’ve never tried it - and if you’ve read this far you’re a really good mate - and we both know what I mean by that. However, in the Netherlands it is legal so you can go on a retreat for a few days, decide in conjunction with counsellors what you want to achieve, do yoga, breathing exercises, micro dose, and then take it. The counsellors help guide you, but it’s something you have to want for yourself. And clearly with me, it’s overcoming this anxiety. So I’m really writing this to make myself book it for next year, or my anxiety will keep stopping me. I really don’t know if it will make a difference, but from the experiences I’ve had so far I’m hopeful. Oddly, not anxious at all about actually doing it and experiencing it, just getting there. (Oh yeah, travel is another anxiety kick these days, and I’ve been around the world twice for goodness sake!)

(As an aside I just stopped writing for 5 minutes while I considered snowploughs, what will happen to compasses when the north and South Pole swap, something that happened to me at school, then remembering the first girl I asked out, steam trains all the while visualising the lyrics of a song. All at the same time. I tell you, this shit gets exhausting!)

So yes, doing it. I’m not going to let my anxiety control me and try and ruin my relationships any longer. (Oh, and don’t get me started on relationships. “It’s complicated” doesn’t even reach first base.)

Wow. That was a lot, sorry. If you skipped to the end that’s fine too. The tldr: version is I’m so mentally fucked up I just have to laugh about it, there’s nothing else left to do. I’m not sure if I’m expecting comments or not; feel free to say whatever you’d like. Don’t if you don’t want to, I can’t tell you what to do! You can see I’m procrastinating now… I’m managing to concentrate on this (just!) so the anxiety doesn’t build up, but when I stop I’ll get an onslaught. And that’s not nice. Already had one today, don’t need two. Jeez, I sometimes do wonder if I’m going mad. And imma gonna post this? Fuck it.