Sometime in late October 2019 while I was living in Washington, I had an experience that I look back on now as a microcosm of the last decade of my life. I picked this story today to think about because of an experience I had last night that's reminded me that my psyche is heavily influenced by my past experiences. I believe it's important to address your present psyche through a lens which considers how that psyche was formed, how the intricacies of thought, behavior and emotion in the now, are affected by your past. Because it's not an accident. And perhaps understanding it can aid in the resolution or overcoming of a nagging issue.
When I moved out to Seattle in August 2019 I began experiencing heart palpitations. My heart would skip beats and become irregular. It caused me obvious physical discomfort. But the most sinister aspect was the psychological discomfort that accompanied it. You know when your leg cramps or your eye lid spasms you can pretty much brush it off as lactic acid or dehydration or stress or sleep or something, and you think, "okay this isn't such a big deal." But when it's your heart, you immediately think, "if something fucks up here, I'm dead." To have death in your bag of possible outcomes changes your psychology completely.
At first I thought it was dehydration since I don't have a large intestine I'm more prone to it. Over-hydrating didn't fix it. Next, I considered the blood in my stool that I was still seeing. I'd figured it was residual from the multiple surgeries I'd undergone in the last 6 months. But I never considered that I'd developed a second auto immune disorder, one in which the surgeries didn't solve for. That's Murphy's Law; anything that can happen, will happen. And so it did.
I'd lost so much blood in the last 6 months that I was even more heavily anemic than when I checked into a hospital on the verge of death in 2013. I was iron deficient, low in mean corpuscular volume, and had immature, small red blood cells. Another month or so of ignoring the symptoms and who knows what could've happened. The realization, for a second time, that I was perhaps days or weeks away from death, sent me into a dark time.
I was rescued from that dark time by a friend, my best friend, who stayed with me for 2 weeks. He pulled me out of the abyss. He took me to doctors appointments, distracted me from harsh realities, and cared for me like a brother would. Gratitude is a large understatement. In a not-so-indirect way, and to use less words than more, I am alive in part because of him.
After we diagnosed the problem and began treating it, there was a waiting period, while we decided on the correct course of action. In that waiting period, and with the aid of my friends' visit, I emerged out of the darkest period, and I kept my head above water, just barely. For months I went to bed at night not knowing what tomorrow held. Not knowing what symptoms would come. Not knowing whether I'd need more surgery, new medication, or whether there would ever be a fix to my seemingly endless years of struggle. This was a new line of thinking, escalated from previous years. I'd been living in ambiguity for the better part of a decade, but there had always been options so it never seemed too dire. But this time, I was entering an arena where the options were experimental at best. The sheer statistics didn't play well in my favor. The outcomes were bleak. And that took root in my mind.
I remember laying there that particular night in my bed. It was cold outside and dark. Washington was entering the Winter months and the daylight was short, if at all. The rain persisted, all day every day. And I was very alone. The closest friend I had was in Los Angeles. And my heart was out of control. I had cold sweats and shivers so I assume I had a fever. My heart was skipping beats at a frequency that I deemed serious based on previous experience. After attempts to hydrate had failed, I sat up in my bed at about midnight and contemplated my options. I thought about the possibility that I could have a heart attack in this bed. I gave real consideration to the idea that this could be my last hours on Earth. And I made the decision to pack a bag, get in the car, and drive myself to the hospital.
After a few hours in the ER I had been hydrated intravenously, warmed by heated blankets, and seen by doctors who told me I was going to be okay. Some intravenous antibiotics and cortical steroids quelled the symptoms. It was deemed to be pouchitis on top of the Crohns and anemia. A nasty cocktail of shit. I had a very real discussion with the doctor at 2 AM and told her that to be frank, I wasn't sure how much of it was impacted by my own thoughts. How much of the heart flutters was a result of anxiety. There was no answer to it, perhaps the answer was 1% and perhaps it was 70%. She suggested that she would give me a short supply of anti-anxiety medication in case I felt something like that again.
I never took that medication.
I overcame that struggle as I've been doing for almost 10 years, one day at a time. I live now with the mentality that another dark season will ensue eventually, as it does for everyone eventually. And when it does, I'll deal with it too. In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson details out in Rule 12 how to cope with dark times - shorten your time frame. I came to the same realization myself through many years of struggle and dark times. Avoid slippery slope fallacies and false dichotomy fallacies, Avoid trying to understand the macro picture or plan for the future amidst the ambiguity, and just take it a day at a time. Or an hour at a time.
The reason I reflect on this story today is that I had an experience last night of moderate anxiety in a relatively low-stakes situation. A very small impact, almost dismiss-able compared to what I've been through. Certainly not crippling anxiety as I have experienced on rare occasion during truly dark times. I questioned why I would have it at all. It was frustrating and nagging. In my mind I wasn't anxious at all, in fact I was calm, but the physical aspects of anxiety that accompany the psychological components, were present. And thus, I tried to gain some clarity on why I have a root, albeit small in comparison to some others, of anxiousness. Through the examination of my past, I understand that there was a very lengthy feedback process driven by a decade of illness, pain, struggle, and near death experience, that has created a default setting of moderate anxiousness to anything of consequence, not considering the preconditions that exist in my personality.
To be honest, I was a shy and nervous kid growing up. I yawned in the car on the way to preschool because subconsciously or consciously I was nervous. It's my personality. And speaking very introspectively, it's why I've always tried to bolster my confidence through achievement. It's why I am so competitive. I need to convince myself of my own worth so that I can rely on that confidence to reduce my natural nervousness about life. And it has gotten me this far. Plus, I've achieved a large reduction in the downsides associated with this behavior over the years as I've gained more balance.
When you establish that my innate personality is that of being tentative and nervous about new things, you understand why I've tried so very hard to build competence all these years. Why I am so competitive. And why I desire achievement so much. Then, when you factor in my experience of crippling disease and a persistent weakness that exists out of my control, you can understand even more why it was especially debilitating psychologically. But in the same sense, it is that very curse that's created the gift of forced humility with byproducts being some wisdom and self-awareness.
It is that totality of understanding that allows me to formulate a plan and find some peace. I know myself, I know my past and I know my deficiencies. But I also know how to beat it, and I can beat it as I have before. Unfortunately, you're stuck with the hand you're dealt. But fortunately, you're way stronger than you think. Way more capable of recognizing the forest for the trees. And way more able to see past a single experience, adjust your time frame, adjust your mentality, and succeed the next time around. I've experienced this in my own life. So that's what I'll do. Take yet another defeat as a lesson. I'll embrace the bad experience and turn it into a better one. And continue to press forward.
As the great Harvey Specter always says "when your back is against the wall, break the goddam thing down."
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