Today I Am the Hawk

At 6:45am, fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to ring, my eyes shot wide open as if no rest had taken place. The reason? Dread. I began my day today with dread. Worse, I ended the night before with dread, which seeped into my dreams, molding them into nightmares which lead to a morning starting off with the very dread I’d been, well, dreading! Insidiousness is the nature of dread, so I have no quarrel with nature. However, I do think this morning I awoke to a quarrel happening within myself.

I’d been nervous the day before about an impending medical test, a nerve conduction study that was scheduled for the next day. Medical tests always make me nervous because the uncertainty, not knowing if I’ll feel pain or not knowing what might be revealed about my health both frighten me. Uncertainty creates a chaotic energy within me, one based in self-doubt. As I’ve gone through the healing process I’ve softened. The armor I used for so many years as protection for survival has been peeled away, and so has my primary set of coping mechanisms. I’m still learning flexibility and what it feels like to be comfortable with feeling safe in my own body. When it comes down to it, I don’t trust in my own ability to self-soothe and self-preserve without my abrasive, burred armor.

I spent all morning ruminating on menial tasks and questions to detract from my acute awareness: do the kids have their snacks? What about their snow gear? Have I put out the clothes and masks? Where are their backpacks, anyway? In fussing over the little things, I’d hoped I could outrun the feeling of impending doom. Yet, even in the car on the way to the appointment listening to music and singing I hadn’t outrun a thing - I’d only delayed the inevitable.

After I arrived I parked the car, walked down a long, shady alley, and took the elevator in the small, glass landing at the side of the building to the second floor. I started to feel keyed-up, out of sorts. As the elevator dinged and the door opened, I darted out and looked for a restroom. I found it, did my business, and looked in the mirror. Now, I was nauseated and pale. I opened the door, took a deep breath, and walked to the reception desk. After chatting with the receptionist, I gave her the necessary information and took a seat in the sparse waiting area. I was the only person in the large, open space.

Pulling out my phone, I sat impatiently scrambling for something, anything to slow me down. After a few minutes of reading mindless content on social media, I felt breathless. The nausea had become overwhelming. I pulled out my pulse oxometer and read my resting heart rate: 99. My normal resting heart rate is between 52 and 65. I began to spiral, worrying about everything that crossed my mind. The nausea was overwhelming. My wrists were clenched tight. My teeth ached under the immense pressure of crushing them together unconsciously. Then, it dawned on me. I was having a panic attack.

The panic overwhelmed me, taking command of my frontal-lobe functions. Before I even became aware of it, I’d shifted into fight or flight mode. Every fiber of my being wanted to flee or fight or at the very least tear all of my own flesh from the bone just to make the squirming feeling inside dissipate. Years of practicing the freeze mechanism kept me still, quiet as my body feelings consumed me. Waves of nausea crashed over me like I was newly-pregnant experiencing sharp episodes of morning sickness. Thoughts collided with one another as my head swam with terror and uncertainty. The rhythm of my heart quickened, causing even more anxiety about what was to come next. Distraction was what I had always been taught to do in these moments, but it rarely worked. Then, suddenly, my own voice popped into my head, ‘Breathe. Breathe like you’ve learned, like you’ve been practicing.’

For over eighteen months I had been exploring healing the body in many non-conventional modalities. I’d seen countless doctors, specialists in the fields of my many elusive ailments and none of them could give me any answers except for two: 1) The issues were likely somatic and 2) I am overly aware of my own physiology (a nice way of saying highly sensitive). Feeling defeated and abandoned by modern medicine, I spent many months exploring alternative healing modalities. In this deep exploration, I learned quite a bit about the power of breath. It’s been proven in a slew of scientific studies that a shift in intentional focus in breathing calms the vagus nerve and makes it almost impossible for the body to remain in a fight-or-flight response. Luckily, I remembered this information in my moment of panic.

Breathe, I repeated to myself internally. BREATHE.

Suddenly, against all of my instinctive, self-preservative impulses, I closed my eyes and breathed. In 1-2-3-4-5, out 1-2-3-4-5. In 1-2-3-4-5, out 1-2-3-4-5. Again. And again.

The nausea would overwhelm me for a moment and I would break my breathing to acknowledge my discomfort, then quickly return to my methodical breathing. At first, I was discouraged. The physical symptoms persisted and my discomfort continued. Remember, it can take two to three minutes for the body to calm, I re-assured myself. Through my reluctance, I persisted in breathing. At about the three minute mark, my body began to show signs of relaxing. My muscles started to go limp - first in my shoulders, then my arms and wrists. My back, feet, legs, and abdomen followed. I kept breathing until the nausea subsided and my heart rate slowed. I had breathed my way through the panic. For the first time ever, I hadn’t just stopped the panic attack, I’d relaxed my body into a state of harmony. Normally, it would take fifteen minutes minimum to ride the wave of the panic and at the end, I’d be completely depleted, exhausted physically and emotionally for hours afterward. Today, I’d actually transcended the wave through uniting my body, mind, and spirit. Today it took three minutes of breathing to achieve harmony with no side effects at the end. Three minutes.

Just as I was beginning to feel proud about my accomplishment, my thoughts caught my attention with the one negative of the entire situation: what if it all happened again? Impending doom started to rise up within once again, knowing, certain that if I had to face another panic attack I’d just - just what? Breathe through it? - the voice I’d heard before interrupted. The voice had a good point. Suddenly, a sense of calm flowed through me. For the first time in a long, long time I chose to believe in my own ability to self-soothe. I finally felt like no matter what, I would be alright. A few moments later, the doctor arrived and took me back for testing, and I felt strangely, unfamiliarly, okay.

The test took about 30 minutes in total and required electric shocks to be sent down both of my arms, and also required five needles to be poked into each arm while I flexed each muscle group. It was surprisingly tolerable. The worst part was the anxiety attack just prior to the test.

Walking out of the building, I felt refreshed basking in my own courage to remain vulnerable and trust myself. It’s rare that I allow myself a pat on the back, but today I did. Today, I committed to congratulating myself more often in these seemingly small but impactful moments. I saw my husband waiting for me, as I’d asked him if he’d detour to my appointment on his way to work. Frequently I won’t ask for people to show up for me anymore because I’m afraid that they won’t come, but I decided to brave the act of being disappointed and more importantly, facing my own aversion to extending compassion to someone when they say no while simultaneously holding space for my own hurt feelings. Today I asked and today I received. Seeing my husband’s fresh face next to my car on my approach raised my spirit even higher. Just his willingness to show up for me when I asked him too in my time of need healed old wounds. I hugged him, kissed him, thanked him profusely, shared the results of my test with him, and we parted ways. All the way home all I could feel was joy.

At home, I grabbed a yogurt and danced a giddy jig, still proud of standing in my values, and I noticed a beautiful, magnificent hawk on the ground in the underbrush. Regal and majestic, the hawk tore into the carcass of a squirrel. Today, I feel like the hawk. But, one day, I know my day as the squirrel will come. When that day arrives, I now know that not only will I survive, but I will thrive in the knowing.

Things to Remember:

• You can always breathe.

• You’ve done this before, you’ve been here before, and you’ve been fine every time.

• Pain is not an indicator of anything wrong.

• I am proud of you.

• I love you.

• You are going to be okay.