Anxiety – My Blissful Ignorance

 

I never really understood what people meant when they were talking about “anxiety” – because for some reason I’ve been so used to cope with little help.

 

Anxiety – yes, an actual a real thing…

I have a confession to make. I never quite understood when people were talking about experiencing anxiety, and much less thought that I would ever be actually diagnosed with anxiety. Well, I am. I just found out, and things start to make clear sense on how this has been brewing for a long time – apparently it is a long time coming. To me, it was like all the stuff in the back burner hanging out in the shadows – just out of sight, and suddenly got right in front of me. I have to admit that I’ve been holding to additional and progressively higher stress, and in my mind, I thought I was coping very well. Which apparently it is a statement of fact, I am coping well, still – all things considered, that’s why I haven’t lost my s—t yet. But this positive control over my reactions to stress has been taking its tool. So, I feel no stigma about this. It is really more part of being human, and I embrace the realization as a functional adult.

What do I mean by that? Well, simple… when you’re compensating and overcoming situations that are not quite resolved, there is a residual level of stress, and this keeps accumulating. I have to be humble enough to realize that no matter how hard we try, sometimes there is going to be some mental wear and tear as we plow through stressful situations – even if a particular stressor is resolved… and if this continuous process gets normalized, it will accumulate. The question to myself is then, how do I cope with this situation in the most positive manner? Rhetorical question, that’s exactly what I am attempting to figure out.

I like to give an example of how I see the situation. Much like a guitar string. Stress is good… within limits. For example, if the guitar string is not under tension, then it will be floppy, and no sound will be produced. In other words, the intended purpose of this string is not put to use – it gets underutilized. But it you put too much tension, then the string will pop. And it might pop either before you can play a sound on it, or while it is “action.”

However, depending on the gauge of the string (how thick it is), there will be a certain range of frequencies it can produce. Somewhere in that range there will be the optimal frequency (or note) that that particular string is intended to produce. For example, you would not want to tense a very thick string so much as to attempt produce the sound of a very thin string. It will likely pop.  Vice versa, if you slack too much the very thin string, it will not have enough tension to produce the sound of the very thick string. Or no musical sound whatsoever for that matter. The way that I am understanding anxiety is that the string goes from very floppy to very tense… it sounds, but it might be tuned to the wrong note, or not musically viable at all… if that makes sense. It does to me. Likewise, each string, and each person is different. And pair that to the fact that the string tension is also extrinsic, there is a part that is holding the string at the bridge and one that is controlling the tension with the tunning pegs. Also, much like in real world some of those two extremes can be great or can be crap, and that will affect the tuning stability. I intend to do an actual article just going on a rant about this analogy. Meanwhile let’s continue.

Likewise, much like a guitar, all strings must be tuned in a way that they complement each other. The way I am understanding and experiencing anxiety is as though some strings are too tights, and some too loose, but I am still making melodies with whatever strings are properly tuned… and keeping “in the back” burner, a.k.a. not playing the strings that are obviously out of tune. Can I still play it? Yes, does it maximize the instrument potential? No. Think about each string as part of your life. Family, a loved one, a project, your home balance, your proficiency at work, etc. And yes, for a person it might be a lot more than six “strings.”

As some of these strings in our lives might be “out of tune” – or even technically in tune, but not properly “intonated” – two different things that work together in the tunning stability of an instrument. For anybody out there who does not the difference, tuning means the entire string is ringing at a certain note. Intonation means that every fret (every note) in the fretboard is producing the correct note. And no, that’s not an automatic thing when you tune a string, that’s why guitars (especially electric guitars) have all those adjustment options. Back in topic…

Then this anxiety could be creeping almost unnoticeably – depending how much attention gets diverted from the strings that are not properly tuned, and instead leaning on the ones which are in tune and intonated. Then this becomes a matter of sustainability. How long, before the strings that are being in tune and intonated get enough wear and tear to join the group of the strings which were left out of commission?

I know my analogies might seem wild, but my mind is a scary place, and the way I process information is very abstract. Therefore, I need to find parallels to make sense of it all. Especially if I am troubleshooting something complex I realize I need to fix.

It is interesting to me because I am actually a very happy and positive person – generally speaking. I don’t sweat the small stuff, and I am pretty much somebody who feels like my life is in control, and that I have a great lifestyle all things considered. In other words, I am happy with the person I am at this age. “My strings – the ones that are properly tunned and intonated are in harmony.” I mean, I control what I own, but of course there is so much I don’t own; hence I cannot control. This latter part is inescapable, no matter how rich or powerful, or successful you, me or anybody out there are – there is a lot in our lives we cannot control. And all these “I” statements clearly show that there is a part of “me” that needs to be addressed. And it seems that a lot of that is extrinsic, and it is demanding my bandwidth. So, that’s exactly what I am doing. I’m really thinking out loud “per say” and you’re all along for this ride through my epiphany. Thank you for reading, hopefully this helps you too, if you or someone you love are going through something similar. Let’s reach a good starting point together.

For example, we cannot control as an individual how traffic will behave from one commute to the other. We cannot control if there will be a major military conflict in a country somewhere in the world. We cannot control if a volcano will erupt, or if an earthquake will shake a metropolitan area. There might be some ways to prepare for any of those events. This might not mitigate at all the potential overall damage; but might minimize the factors of something going awry could maximize the full range of damage. In other words, we would be able to get a bit of control, but not full control over any given situation extrinsic to us.

However, this tension does not seem to dissipate, it might just get transformed or managed. Again, with the guitar string example. Some might get fixed, but there are plenty of other strings. Also, there is the dynamics on each situation. To illustrate the overall string will be tuned to a certain “note,” but depending where you press your finger on the fretboard, you’ll be producing a lot of different notes. In other words, the stress is there, but your reactions to his stress might seem as though you’re fully in control. In other words, properly intonated notes are being produced through the fretboard, but that alone does not mean you’re playing the correct notes intended for that level of string tension. Back to real life using this guitar string parallel analogy, gradually this deviation from reality might seem normalized, and life goes on… but gradually – perhaps in perceptively it is just a matter of time when the misalignment starts to appear. In other words, we start to realize their effects in other faces of our life. Especially if all these strings are played together as they should… but then we realize there is a mismatch on its harmony. Something is not sounding the way it should, even with the right chord shape being flawlessly executed. You can still have your hand make a perfect looking chord, but if any of the strings are out of tune, it will not sound right.

What I am realizing is that stress is not going away – and the more I’ve controlled myself from going off the rails when things out of my control seem to accumulate – even if they are brought to resolution, the more this stress has been manifesting in other health factors. I won’t go over my medical history over here, but I will say that I’ve been finally able to look into things that I’ve left in the back burner for several years. In other words, things that I was keeping in the back burner scheduled themselves… if that makes sense. We just can’t ignore things for too long.

The truth is that time won’t stop for anybody. We all have stuff that we need to do and are doing every day. And even under exponential levels of stress you and I can still live a seemingly fulfilling life. At least in my case, I have not fallen into depression, but I do find myself exhibiting a lot of other symptoms that I was for the most part putting conscientiously or unconscientiously in the back of my mind. In my case the motivation to do my best and be positive is always centered around my daughter and wife. That’s why I am making sure that I am reaching for help, now that I realize without a shadow of a doubt that there is indeed need for that help. We all have blind spots, and none of us can do everything 100% alone. Like it or not, we all depend on each other in one way or the other.

 

My world today

My actual job as an analyst affords me the opportunity to see a lot of very interesting things and understand how these come together.  It is kind of a people watching, and reading comprehension, all combined into understanding the way the world works. It’s pretty awesome actually.  However, it would be naïve to think that everything out there in the world is roses and lullabies. It’s not, in fact the world can be a very dark and sinister place for millions of people.

For anybody who was wondering, though it might seem tangential; part of what the United States of America does is try making it better for the rest of the world, even if this might see contrary to some people’s immediate reality. The truth is that a lot of factors come into play, and no system is perfect. And the imperfection is because the systems themselves are man-designed… and nobody is perfect. We can strive for excellence, but perfection is not attainable. That does not mean we shouldn’t make every new attempt better than the last. We should always strive for improvement. Again, think about that strings example, if not all the strings are in tune it might not sound exactly as intended. Still, they might sound but, if we adjust them properly, we’ll be able to regain some control.

Also in our lives, not everybody will be afforded the full context of a situation – and yes, that is true for most everything in life. If you’re drinking a Coca Cola, you might enjoy the flavor and can purchase it anywhere in the world – but you won’t be able to read the recipe for that drink, because it is saved in a vault somewhere possibly in Georgia at the Coca Cola headquarters.

Something similar happens around the world, and this does not always mean that people are necessarily trying to conceal information from you. I’ll give you an example, if you need legal representation, you’ll hire a lawyer. All those books and laws, and statutes are available in a public library… but it takes the experience and copious amounts of relevant knowledge from a trained attorney to make sense of all that information. In other words, it not just about not having the information available, it is also about having too much information and too little time in order to properly process it and contextualize it effectively.

And in this large scheme of copious information, we get to understand that there is no single-human possibility to assimilate and process everything that surround us. In fact, the human mind is very limited to the amount of information it can process – we, as humans make “logical” shortcuts in order to perceive our environments.  And this perception is what can invertedly overload our senses, even if we are thriving and generally coping with the inevitable curve balls that might come our way. The question is, for how long can we do this? How sustainable it is?

Something in our environment will be left out of sight. But this might or might not affect us directly. For example, if you’re in a place where the air is not 100% breathable – there are toxic colorless and odorless gasses in our atmosphere and depending on where you are or the percentage of each gas, you might very well be essentially getting killed without noticing your life is fading away. However, if you were in that environment very briefly, however dangerous it was – you might not have noticed much of a change. However, a damage to your body might be lingering inside your system, even with that brief exposure to a toxic gas.

That type of seemingly imperceptible asphyxiation for example was what Dr. Kevorkian utilized. For anybody who is not familiar with his legacy, he was a strong proponent of physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who wanted to stop suffering. He used as a technique with carbon monoxide. The patients (in this case who willingly wanted to end their lives) would breathe this air, they would get sleepy and drift from life to death gradually. Now, I cannot attest, nor mean to condone nor condemn the decisions of those terminally ill patients who voluntarily chose to end their lives using this method. I am, however, a strong proponent that if a terminal ill person prefers to pass away with dignity, that should be their choice. None of us is going to get out of this life alive. A dignified end for a person who’s terminally ill seems reasonable. I remember seeing my mother, grandmother and great-aunt suffer as their health took a turn for the worst. But they were in control of that decision, it was their choice – sort of. There was no such thing as physician-assisted suicide where and when they all passed away, which was in Quito, Republic of Ecuador. Their only choice really was to suffer and get medicated as they reached their final breath. Let me get away from this family related topic as it does stress me out, even after all these years.

I should note that there have been many people who died due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Some examples were due to car engines running with the garage door closed. All gasses in our atmosphere have different levels of density based on their atomic weight, and that means that some toxic gases will displace oxygen.

For instance, did you know that humans don’t breathe pure oxygen under normal circumstances? The air we breathe is also mixed with other gases in the atmosphere. That’s why when you use a Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus (SCUBA) to dive, the tank is not an “oxygen tank” but it is a compressed air tank. Same principle is true to the gear firefighters uses with their Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) tanks. It is air, not pure oxygen. Also, it not advisable to add pure oxygen if you’re fighting a fire because it makes the fire burn like crazy – oxygen combusts. A normal fire burns when there is oxygen, heat and fuel. #Physics.

And I really went on this side bar, just to illustrate as I make my point that there is so much more to each story – even if the information is publicly available, there are so many intricacies that require context. And as I work through my epiphany, perhaps is because I am exposed to and process so much information on a daily basis, is why I have been little by little experiencing this increased anxiety, without even realizing it.

There is a lot I can control, but there is a lot that I have not been able to schedule long term for quite a while. That’s one of the reasons why I have not even published or written articles for quite a long time. And not only that, even if I do write something – I might feel it is not quite the right time to release something… I have my reasons. My mind is a scary place and the way I see the world is very abstract. This can be hard to explain when a lot of the people I interact with prefer to see the world in a very concrete black-white manner. But that’s not how the world looks to me.

On the fact that I not been able to control a lot of my schedule, this goes contrary to my personality. I am a very organized person, and I like to get all my ducks on the road even months in advance in some cases. I like making plans, because everything I do is sequential. In other words, what I do will have a follow-on task or goal. And these tasks and goals already account for the deltas, and factor unforeseen circumstances, and alternative courses of action. I hate rework and hate even more being in limbo. But due to circumstances out of my control limbo has been the new normal for a lot of my long-term schedule planning. I can’t function very well that way… though I have been successful in whatever is that I do for a living, and I am very proficient at my day job. But I am not necessarily happy, because even though I am thriving, this goes against my intrinsic personality traits. But to be honest, my days are usually so busy, and my throughput is so high that I would have not noticed its effects. Again, that guitar strings example. I am making music, but not all the strings are perfectly in tune.

For anybody who is familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personalities, I am what it is known as an Introversion Intuition Feeling Judging (INFJ), which apparently is the rarest personality, only 2% of the world population have this personality type. And from that minority it seems that I fall on a subset of INFJ some describe as a Sigma INFJ. Which apparently makes my way of seeing the world and processing information even more unusual. As with any personality trait, those are not hard lines, but instead guidelines to try to understand the complexity of our minds. Some people agree, some disagree to these theories, but they have helped me cope. In fact, I attribute some of those to the fact I have not lost my s—t yet, and that I have been able to identify it as a point that needs to be addressed.

But this also means I need to get better at taking care of myself. We all have one lifetime in this reality. Regardless of if you believe in an afterlife, right now – in this world and people who surround you – that’s THIS lifetime. Time is the one thing we cannot recover, and as I am putting my thoughts into words, I realize the obvious. I’m in a transition period in my life, and that is good. I’ve had some of those transition moments before, and I welcome change. I am excited for the new adventures ahead. But in order to explore those adventures I have to be able to fix or cope with what is a reality right now. And for that I am seeking the help I need. There is no stigma, I am just grateful that I’m one of those lucky few who is afforded this opportunity. I don’t take that for granted. For today, I’m calling it a night. HLC