Anxiety and Recovery

I was in the hospital – for the fourth time in less than a year – when I read Bernie Siegel’s book, “How to Live Between Office Visits.” 

There was a line that I kept opening the book to despite never dog-earring it: “People can commit suicide without ever physically harming themselves.” What he was saying was that people can give up on their authentic life for the life others expect of them. They settle for less than what makes them feel alive. It’s its own version of suicide.

We don’t always pick what we read. Sometimes it picks us.

I was in a psychiatric ward for panic attacks. They’d become so ruthless, I would spend two weeks unable to stand or eat. A panic attack is the brain’s ability to ravage the body and spirit. A panic attack is also a primal state where the brain is trying to keep the body alive.

There were panic attacks where I thought, This must be what death feels like. They were so physically and emotionally painful, it felt like I was being erased.

When I’d finally go the emergency room, doctors and nurses would look at me with a mix of clinical analysis and pity: A shot of Ativan, a discussion on whether I needed bigger psychiatric care, and a discharge. Rinse and repeat.

Then the panic attacks became so frequent that I began to get sectioned. For those unaware of a section, it’s an involuntary hospitalization when a doctor decides you’re a risk to yourself or others. I was sectioned three times in 2018, then a fourth time at the start of 2019.

In 2018, my father had been diagnosed as terminally ill. He went into Hospice and was prescribed comfort meds. It made me wonder why we get treated with compassion only when we’re on our death beds.

The anxiety was largely correlated to my father’s illness. But unlike my father, there was an end in sight to his pain. Mine had no known end. The feedback I got from most professionals was that I was to live but to live in this state of suffering. I began to think my dad was ultimately the lucky one.

In that sense, I began to commit suicide – not physically but emotionally. I couldn’t see hope other than as a remote concept preserved for other people. I thought it was actually cruel that medical professionals were out to keep me physically alive while spiritually I was dead.

Advice for anyone going through this:

1. You’re going to fight the hospitalization, and you’re going to want it. That conflict is natural.

2. Joke about the illness. I know this will horrify many, but it’s a coping method to resuscitate yourself. I was sectioned once when I was trying to get a therapist. It was upsetting, but it was also funny. It’s like being told your car needs an oil change when you’re getting the oil change. 

3. You need to advocate for yourself. Like any illness, you need to speak up about your care. The doctors, with all their pedigree, don’t know everything. They especially don’t know everything about you.

4.. If you’re dealing with a mental health worker you sense is like a bad date trying to feel you up, run like hell. I didn’t and I paid greatly.

5. You can come back from death. You can slowly rebuild the erosion of yourself. You question the lies you were living. You’re alive again.