In the last two months the small community I grew up in has experienced no less than three attempted suicides, two of which were successful and one that left a young man in an induced coma. Since then a coalition of community members have banded together to form a group called S.A.M.H.I with the view of encouraging members of the community to speak out, confront their problems, find common ground with each other and one Facebook post at a time, destroy the stigma attached to mental health.
When one of the departed mentioned above committed suicide last month it jolted something in my psyche that I did not know existed. To this day I can't describe what that moment felt like, all I can do is speculate that the moment I received the news that a childhood friend had taken his own life my own life was subjected to a new perspective, a new understanding of how fragile the human mind can be. I knew beyond any reasonable doubt that I had the ability to help, if he had come to me for help, if anyone ever came to me for help I would be ready to help them with as much understanding and knowledge as possible. That is the reason for this blog and that is my promise.
Since that day I've spent every waking moment trying to understand what could be causing this pandemic in my own community? How can I learn more about human psychology from my own living room? What can I do to help? The answers to these questions lie between the lines of this blog. All I had to do was confront my own problems to realise it.
The problem I had to confront was severe, crippling anxiety. Usually in the early hours of the morning anxiety attacks would take me out of sleep (which is incredibly rare) and throw me into a state of severe panic. My heart would pound out of my chest, I'd be sweating like a gypsy with a mortgage and the only thoughts I could manage were thoughts of being anxious. What was causing these attacks? That was the big question I wanted to answer and I didn't want a doctor to tell me the answer, I needed to work it out on my own. "No meds, no counselling... Just understand the problem." That's what I kept telling myself and through perseverance alone I managed to suppress something that could have dominated my life.
I read page after page of internet articles, psychologist journals, asylum reports and even talked about it (anonymously of course, I wasn't ready to speak about it then) on some public internet forums. What I found literally blew my mind. I found some information on the actual chemical makeup of the brain. Specifically a part of the brain called the
Amygdala. (And no it's not the one from the movie Waterboy, although it is similar.)
The Amygdala is responsible for an umbrella process called emotional learning which means it handles fear, anxiety, depression, PTSD, hyperactivity and even hypersexuality. (Yep, that's you sex addicts, listen closely. The morning horn is a real thing.) What I found led me to specific information on how the body and the mind reacts to anxiety. When an anxiety/panic attack kicks in your Amygdala is releasing too many chemicals for your body to handle, that's why you shake and lose your breath. Your body is in safe mode and your mind is trapped in limbo, it's trapped in a phase we refer to as, "Fight or flight." This boils down to a simple decision; do I attack this problem head on, or do I run? Think of this like you were in an actual physical fight with someone, adrenaline kicks in and you decide in a split second if you're going to attack this person or run away from them. That fleeting moment is your, "Fight or flight."
The reason an anxiety attack is so frightening is because your mind wont let you make this decision and there's a simple reason for this:
There is nowhere to run and there is nothing to fight.
Let that sink in for a moment. I know it's terrifying to think like that but it's actually the most positive situation you can ever be in. You can't run because you can't run away from your own mind, wherever you go, it will follow. But what about fighting? What are you really trying to fight? There is absolutely nothing to fight. There is absolutely nothing physically dangerous about an anxiety attack. It's scary, but it will never harm you. It physically cannot harm you. That is the most important thing to remember if you ever feel like one of these moments is just around the corner, you don't have to run... because there is nothing to fight.
Thanks for reading, until next time.
Glen Armstrong.
