The assault of anxiety got me yesterday. That, I think, is the assault weapon we should work harder to ban. Firearms don't frighten me; I'm familiar with them and enjoy shooting as a hobby. A restaurant - this seems to be a trigger place for me - and a growing feeling of anxiety extending even to panic slowly building up within me. Various feelings within my guts competing with anxious questions in my mind. People talking behind me or meeting new people at lunch, both can contribute to my feeling of panic. Waiting for the food, the pressure of making a choice from the menu, eating slowly in hopes of settling the stomach down, but in the end only leaving the immediate environment worked. And that, only after my friend finished his business and we left the premises. If one or two of the conditions caused my symptoms every time the anxiety arrived, I think that I could control the problem. If I had the same reaction every time I ate at a restaurant, that would also provide an obvious solution. However, as you know it just isn't that simple.
As I sat out on the back step of the restaurant, one of the kitchen employees came by and said that I looked bored. Usually, it's a comment like, 'You looked fine' after the battle is over, but this time it was the cousin - bored. Boredom of course was about as far from what was going on in my mind as could be. I prayed, talked, tried to sing (quietly, no sense in frightening the natives), stretched, tried a little muscle relaxation exercise, even tried to imagine a new start for my novel that needs a major rewrite. I heard God say, "I'm here with you." Did that mark the time I rotated fully around the bend? I don't believe so. Of course different people believe different things, and brother, am I ever different!
I gave some grunt or grimace in response, but that is one of the interesting things that goes on in PTSD. I may look normal, fine, or bored to the casual passerby, but on the inside I'm fighting an emotional rebellion. While my face maintains its emotional distance, my mind is causing pain and other uncomfortable sensations in my body. Perhaps this is payment for the years in my youth when I tried to be like Spock. Maybe I wrote that already in another blog. The Spock character dealing with PTSD after that episode, The Galileo Seven, wherein Spock made life or death decisions for a small crew marooned on a planet while the Enterprise appeared to abandon them would make some good television.
Spock was the model of self-control, something that seems to flee my grasp the harder I struggle to close my fist around it. Vulcans crushed their emotions with logic, except for Spock who being half-human, suffered occasional outbursts. In the first movie, the character seeks to quash his emotions once and for all only to be contacted by V'ger, who apparently thought he was some kind of machine. The logical priestess mind melded with Spock and then tossed him from the program in the final test. Spock didn't get to sing The Logical Song or something like that, and as a punishment had to rejoin the Enterprise. I think I'm mixing up my retro-references a bit, but doesn't that bring to mind an idea. What if we could open our minds to a doctor or therapist and let them join us for a bit in the pool of panic? Of course that might make them crazy too. Imagine the Vulcan logical priestess running off into the wilderness screaming, "Gah! The anxiety! The FEAR! My mind is broken!"
I would hate to be responsible for causing the poor old gal to suffer six months of mental traction. Imagine the delays while Vulcans waited to take their final logical test. Imagine me getting back on topic! I guess any more discussion of my self-control is kind of useless after that little journey far off the beaten path. Truth is, when my buttocks are parked out behind a restaurant or in some other odd place, I am neither bored nor fine. Getting away from the immediate situation is a temporary solution at best, though sometimes we find it necessary in our struggle with PTSD. For some this method might cause their assaults of panic. I don't have the answers to every situation. Certainly, I desire that God should take this cup from me, if you will pardon the reference. A restaurant should be a fine, social place to gather for a meal, not a test to be endured.
God's blessing to you,Bucky
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