Life Saturation Part I: Anxieties Observed

The summer after I graduated from college was marked by a crippling sense of paralysis both spiritually and emotionally. I can remember long nights of wakefulness with every nerve in my body burning and anxious thoughts coursing through my mind like poison, convincing me that this comfortable, quiet bed that I used to love with its moon-touched quilt and a sleeping cat at its foot, was actually my deathbed. The paralysis that started in my mind would creep to my limbs and I would spend hours in trembling stillness feeling the muscles of my legs tighten and my sweat dampen the sheets below me. I felt like a child again, afraid of the headless horseman and unable to move for fear of awakening an unknown terror in the dark. But the fear and danger were now inside my own head, killing me from the inside, and producing an insanity that scared me worse than anything else.

The terror had begun in the late winter of my senior year, just before the air warmed and the trees turned green. It crept up on me like an unknown enemy. It was, at the time, beyond all of my knowledge or power to control. Although I had lived with a naturally anxious disposition all of my life, the fear had mostly stayed inside my head. Never before had it broken through the barriers of my mind into the entirety of my physical body. 

My first panic attack came during a major performance on my Senior choir tour. Looking back, I can see the signs leading up to that moment. Several hours before the performance I can remember experiencing powerful waves of dysphoria, like nostalgia only unpleasant. It was a persistent buzzing like a wasp in my brain, and a feeling of ice in my veins. The feelings intensified as the concert grew closer. I went through the motions of donning my black dress, touching up my hair and make-up, and smiling falsely through waves of discomfiture, while the feelings intensified into dissociation, like I was watching myself from above. The buzzing of one wasp grew to a nest-full at the base of my skull until I thought I would faint.

Concert time grew closer. Five minutes, two minutes, one—my feet brought me mechanically to my place on the risers. A dialogue between my fear and my reason had begun with the first song.

It's just your mind. Breath, relax, enjoy the music, move with the beat. Smile, smile, smile.

But each breath brought a fresh wave of panic and soon my legs were trembling so much that I was astounded that they still supported my weight.

Smile...smile....smile......smile.

But to no avail. That night, and that night alone, I gave up. I allowed myself to slip off the risers, and collapse into a chair beside the choir, amidst the humiliating concern of classmates still singing.

The rest of the semester was continuously punctuated by performances identical to this one that beat out my final months as an undergraduate like some sick clock sounding the hours until graduation. But unlike the first experience, I forced myself to stay on stage for every last moment. Through tears and desperate pleas for prayers from friends and strangers alike, I battled my way through concerts that were torture from the first note until the moment I could step off the stage and rest my weary and shaking legs.

Finally...summer. But summer brought little comfort. All of the places where I had felt safe before—my home, the mountains, my bedroom—all became a threat. The walls of my own home were closing in around me, and I could not even leave the house without having another panic attack. I got a prescription that summer for an anxiety and depression medication, which got me back on my feet and gave me the courage to restart my life and begin searching for a job. But even with the help of medication, I knew I had a fight ahead of me. 

Over the course of the next couple of years, I would battle anxiety and accompanying depression that seemed to pursue me staunchly despite otherwise happy occurrences. My marriage brought with it enough stability to stop the medication, but terror and an ever-present dull ache dogged my steps, making me irritable and irrational at times. As I learned more about myself and my illness, I was brought, through complete divine intervention, to a place of relative healing, and the sharp and violent panic diminished to a prick that only flares up in particularly vulnerable times.

One of the most surprising things that I learned over these years was, despite how utterly alone I felt in my suffering, my struggles were downright commonplace, particularly among my musician friends, and I began to take a serious look at the conditions in which my natural anxiety grew and thrived during my years in the music program at school. Although my breakdown was a result of many things that were happening in my life at the time – the divorce of my parents, rejection from people that I admired and loved, and the natural pressures of my unknown future after college—I strongly believe that part of what contributed to my weakened state of mind was the culture of busy-worship, or the state of valuing quantity of activities over quality of life, in the school I was attending, as well as in the world outside CCU.

The myth that I told myself, and that I was told by others, was that some people can handle more busyness than others. I was simply weak, or perhaps more used to a quiet lifestyle from growing up in the mountains. Although it is true that not everyone I knew at the school of music spiralled into a state of complete mental breakdown like I did, I think in the end everyone that I came into contact with suffered from the culture in some small way, even if it was unconscious. Their relationships suffered, their learning suffered, their spiritual growth suffered, and their health suffered.

The culture was subtle but pervasive. Those who involved themselves in the most activities were the ones that were the most revered, honored, and rewarded. Conversations in the hallway between classes centered around who was the busiest as though it were some sort of contest. If someone dropped an ensemble from their schedule, they would be made to feel guilty. If someone tried to confide feelings of being overwhelmed by their class load, they would be besieged by comments such as “at least you don't work 20 hours a week like me.” It became a gruesome competition which no one could ever win.

The result was that everyone filled their schedules to the brim. In fact, I did not even realize until several years after graduation that at least six of the twenty-one credits that overwhelmed me in my last semester were filled by ensembles and classes that I did not even need in order to graduate. Looking back, it is impossible to regret the choices that I made because they led me to my husband (who I met my Senior year in the same choir that still gives me anxious dreams), my best friend, and my job, but I still wonder if perhaps we, as a culture, and most especially as followers of Christ, are doing it all wrong.