I've suffered with anxiety since...well, as long as I can remember. It waxes and wanes, sometimes so terrible that I walk around in a constant state of fight or flight. I don't suppose I am a particularly restful person to live with. I have long suspected that my brain has a glitch. Put it this way, if my brain was a gadget with a fruity logo it would have gone back to the shop some time ago. But we're stuck with whichever brain genetics decides to give us, so I have to work with the faulty one I've got. That's not to say that all of it is faulty. It generally functions quite well. I can see, and hear, and speak, and dance, and have all kinds of wonderful thoughts and ideas. The bit that is broken is relatively small. It's the bit which percieves threat. This bit is bloody useful if you're about to be eaten by something, or are living in a war zone. It should theoretically be idle when you're living in suburbia, happily married with a couple of sproggs and enough money to pay the bills. But mine gets bored. So to shake things up a bit, it decides to create threats from seemingly unthreatening situations. If that doesn't work, it steps it up a gear and invents entirely imaginary ones. Those are the worst. It is very hard to reason against an imaginary disaster. Let me give you my bastard brain's current example.
This is our dog.
He's a spaniel. He is insane. In this picture, he is chewing a feather. We all adore him. Well, most of us do. You see, that little part of my brain that likes to shake things up is obsessed with him. He is the sun which my anxiety orbits. When we first got him, my brain fretted about allergies. And bites. And fleas. I cleaned like a demon, interrogated my children over every sneeze or sniff, and generally worked myself up in to a state of such anxiety that my shoulders took up residency around my ears. After several months, when no one was savaged to death or ended up in ICU with an asthma attack, these scenarios bored my brain, and it let them go. I had a few brief weeks of happy respite. Then, the dog got a tummy bug.
The tummy bug meant he barked for four hours straight through the night. The whole house was kept awake. It took me several hours of barking to realise what the problem was. And barking is one of those noises that goes right through you, makes sleep impossible and can drive you to tears. The dog needs to go out, he barks. These things happen, right? A sick animal, trying to obey the rules, keeps his humans awake for a night. No biggie, huh? But you see, now my brain has a new script. Now it can latch on to the possibility of the dog waking up and barking, thus making sure no one gets any sleep. And maybe, maybe, he'll start doing it every night, whispers my mischievous brain. Maybe it'll become a habit. And then everyone in the family will blame me, because it's my fault we have a dog in the first place. And then I'll have to rehome the dog, and it will break my heart because I love the dog. Except when he's keeping me awake all night. Which he might do. Tonight. To reinforce this idea, he has done it twice more. Once, his nemesis (the hoover) attacked him in his sleep (fell over in the cupboard). He woke up in a panic, barked, and settled again as soon as the offending nemesis was banished to the hallway. On the other occasion, he ate rather too much yorkshire pudding (don't ask) and politely barked to be let out so he could vomit spectacularly under the trampoline. After evacuating the offending pudding, he trotted back indoors and curled up on his bed and slept the remainder of the night. Unlike me. Who lay awake anticipating more barking, and repeating the evil brain script. King's panic rat curled up on top of me, and slept like a baby.
This script has been repeated, and is now ingrained. As the sun goes down, the panic rat begins it's scratchy, snuffling ascent in my chest. I know what's happening, I know why, and I know that it's illogical. So why can't I just...stop it? Huh. I have no idea. I can distract myself. I can trick my brain in to thinking other things. But underneath, the well worn groove of 'The dog will bark...you will be woken up...everyone will be angry with you...the dog will have to go...' plays on. It's like my brain has hiccups, and keeps jogging the needle back to the start of the same old song.
Experience tells me that at some point, this particular bout of hiccups will end. I know this because there have been other suns for my anxiety to orbit. These intrusive thoughts have a certain lifespan, and then they lose their power. At least, they always have in the past. But while in the grip of it, it is hard to see the wood for the trees. Being this tense is exhausting. Worrying about such trivialities feels so utterly self indulgent. But I just can't switch it off.
So I salute Stephen King and his panic rat. Because he has that one image totally and utterly nailed.
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