Chapter 08: My New Friend Anxiety

My family went to the beach when I was about twelve. I was a skilled swimmer, and they trusted me to be alone amid the waves of the ocean. The sea was calm and the waves were nearly imperceptible. I floated atop the waves, facing the ocean, and enjoyed the feeling of being gently bobbed up and down. If it wasn’t for the effort of staying afloat, I could have slept there. I don’t know how long I spent, because I was concentrating on finding a way to relax while keeping my head above water.

It started getting difficult to keep my balance. I realized that the waves were starting to pick up. I glanced around to see that I was about two hundred yards from the shore. As I turned to head back a wave slammed me in the head, knocking me briefly underwater. I popped back up to the surface annoyed, but otherwise unharmed. I started to swim back to the shore, and another wave lifted me in the air and slammed me underwater.

Now I was frustrated. It was difficult to control myself in the water, and I just wanted out. It felt as if the sea was intentionally trying to make things difficult for me. The moment I lifted my head above the water, another wave tossed me back under, spinning me in circles beneath the surface.

I was disoriented, and it took me a moment to figure out which was up, but I finally found it. I swam upward and got my head above water and took a deep breath, but before any air could come in, the ocean shoved a wave down my throat. I faced away from the waves to prevent it from happening again and coughed up as much water as possible trying to make room for air.

Before I could breathe, another wave flipped me into an underwater somersault. I thrashed around looking for the surface and kicked as hard as I could. I felt my body starting to ache for air and knew I needed to get some inside me immediately. As my head broke the surface, I saw another wave coming. I looked away to prevent getting a mouthful of water. As the wave crashed over me, I was forced under the surface again.

I stopped fighting.

The world was in slow motion, and it was as if ballet music played in the background. I slowly scanned above the surface and realized it was a losing battle. I relaxed and allowed my body to drift around in the gray-blue water. Looking around, I took in the rocks, the waves, and the sand.

This is how I die,

I thought to myself. I spent a second reflecting on the feeling. Somehow I expected my death to be more agonizing than this, and I never expected to die without notice or time to say goodbye.

The undertow dragged my body against the sand, and suddenly I got an idea. The one thing that the waves above couldn’t take from me was the ocean floor below. With the little force I had left, I sank my fingers into the sand and pulled myself down. I crawled like a crab on the bottom of the ocean all the way back to where the water was low enough for me to stand.

I finally stood up and breathed my first breath of air that couldn’t be stolen by the angry waves.

What had I done to them anyway?

I thought. I trudged to the beach with shoulders slumped forward, relieved to be out of that fight.

It’s fascinating to me what things cause me to feel anxious. When facing a situation of considerable pain and possible death, I was calm. Later I was in the Air Force where death was a real possibility. What would stress me out wasn’t guns, bombs, or chemical attacks. It was routine paperwork and unfavorable reviews.

As a young Airman, I took a call for someone needing to file paperwork to replace a radio transmitter. I guided them through the process and noticed my heart was racing. The call was routine and uninspiring. But as I hung up, my throat closed and I felt the fear of death. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew that I was going to die at any second. It was terrifying — unlike the peaceful feeling I got in the ocean. I went outside and got some fresh air, panting as if I was being asphyxiated. The feeling faded shortly after, and I returned to duty.

This episode started to become routine. It didn’t happen when I was teaching rifle safety or physical defense. It didn’t happen while I was getting screamed at by a superior, or when I was doing disaster drills. It would happen when nothing was going on. I would be sitting down or laying down, and without warning, the mortal fear of death would pour over me.

Previously I had visited Mental Health and learned about their various departments. Since then, I knew that I could go to them for help with anxiety, and it wouldn’t impact my job. I made an appointment, and someone met with me immediately. She asked me about my sleep routine.

“I go home and surf the internet for a while. Then I cook some dinner and watch Groundhog Day, since it’s permanently stuck in my broken VCR. I eat dinner, then I take a shower, have a cup of wine and I go to sleep.”

She explained to me that while drinking alcohol is okay, it can cause problems if you drink it close to bedtime. She said drinking initially decreases activity around the prefrontal cortex, slowing brain communication. The reduced brain activity has a sedative effect, causing you to feel drowsy. As you gently fall asleep, it may seem like the wine has worked spectacularly.

However, once you fall asleep, alcohol starts to wake you up again. First you wake up to go to the bathroom. You go back to bed and fall asleep. Then the neural inhibition effect is lifted, but you’re fatigued, so you don’t wake up. Instead, you wake up enough to leave deep sleep, but not completely. So you get less time spent in the restorative state of sleep, even though you believe you slept the whole night long.

“People presume that quality sleep is about the amount of hours spent sleeping, but it’s not. It’s about avoiding brain or muscle activation prior to sleeping.”

She handed me a paper. It was a list of substances and activities that prevent high-quality sleep. Among them were caffeine, alcohol, puzzles, television, games, and computer screens. On the other side was a list of actions and foods that promoted sleep. I remember seeing Chamomile tea, dimming the lights, peaceful sounds, and reading.

I hate it

. Was my initial reaction.

According to this, I have to stop doing everything that I like and start doing boring things that I don’t like

.

“So, I can’t drink coffee anymore?” I asked

She answered, “studies have shown coffee tends to have a half-life of six to eight hours. You can drink it, but it can inhibit restorative sleep if you drink it in the afternoon.”

“Ah! Six hours! So if I go to sleep at midnight, I can drink coffee up to six o’clock?”

She smiled. “Ideally, you want your last cup of coffee to be around eight hours before you go to bed, so that you can start to wind down before sleep”

I didn’t realize it at the time, but this attitude that I was having was combative. Combative behavior is one of the factors that prevents quality sleep. Whether we’re combating the sleep or the lack of it. Some people fight sleep because they want to get more done in the day. Others fight wakefulness, wanting to get quality sleep. In both cases, the combative attitude causes brain activation. Brain activation prevents you from resting.

There are a few things to know about caffeine. It’s a vasoconstrictor, so when you drink coffee, it makes the blood vessels in your head smaller. This reduces oxygen to the brain, slowing it down. If you’re too tired, or too dehydrated and drink coffee, it won’t wake you up. Instead it will put you to sleep.

[Set up]

Do you consider sleep as essential to your psychological well-being? I’m not sure why, but I always thought it was for helping you to think clearly, or for helping you recover from injury. I figured if I had energy, I didn’t need to sleep. I was wrong. Sleep is critical for helping your brain in ways that nothing else can.

An Occupational and Environmental Medicine researcher named Tomoyuki Kawada did a fascinating study at a vehicle manufacturing plant in Japan. Twenty eight percent of the surveyed employees reported significant psychological distress. Three years later, they surveyed subjects who showed little to no signs of distress. The most significant change across the board was getting better sleep.

I don’t believe the solution to mental health issues is single-faceted. Fixing your sleep won’t fix all your problems. When I was being coached on sleep, I thought it was a waste of time. Now I realize if you have a cloudy head, it’s going to be challenging to navigate any of the other problems in your mind. It’s like when I was being tossed around like the ocean’s plaything. I couldn’t swim, because I couldn’t get my head above water.

The tools that Air Force Mental Health shared with me are divided up into two categories. The first section contains concepts that are helpful, but only seemed to nudge me a little closer to the goal. The second section is the stuff that dreams are made of — pardon the play on words. The work that they derived from Bud Winters has been so helpful that I can sleep anywhere I need to.

Make your bedroom sacred

Don’t bring anything into your bedroom except for sleep (and sex if applicable). Don’t work in it, don’t read in it. Don’t watch TV in it. When you go to bed, park your cell phone outside your room. If you want to read before bed, do it outside your room.

These ideas were weird to me, but I employed them. In the barracks, I had a single room with a toilet, sink, television, and bed in it. What I did was hang a curtain in front of the bed so that I had a “bedroom”. It made a significant difference. When I moved to the bed part, my body knew we were about to sleep — no questions asked. I follow this practice today, but not all the time, because I still get wonderful sleep without it.

Make your bedtime predictable

People around me hate this, but I try to sleep at 9pm every day. They get annoyed at how many activities I turn down. However, at 9pm it’s difficult for me to stay awake, so falling asleep comes easy. What I don’t like about this is sometimes I have to sleep at random times throughout the day, and this technique doesn’t help with that at all.

Watch your bedtime activities

Have a bedtime schedule. At six hours stop taking in caffeine. At four hours, stop physical activity and don’t eat. At two hours stop creative or entertainment activity (TV and work). You can still read a book, though. At one hour, change your clothes and prepare for bed. Get in bed during the last hour.

I continue to follow this technique today. It works as long as you know what time you’re going to have to sleep. Sometimes I have less ability to plan ahead. In those days, I pick up at the hour marker I’m at.

On to the good stuff

I’m done with the list of stuff I don’t love. The previous list is helpful, but it has only boosted my sleep by about twenty percent. The rest of the list was inspired by someone named Bud Winters. He was a coach who was hired by the United States Navy to help pilots get the rest they needed.

Bud Winters was a track and field coach who helped people to run faster by relaxing. He would time a runner on a hundred meter dash and they would come in at say three seconds. Then he would time them again to ensure he had a solid baseline. Finally he would tell them to only run at eighty percent of their capacity.

When they were done, he’d ask how they believed they did. They would say something like three point four seconds. Normally they would have run in around two point eight seconds. Their time would improve, even though they were not trying as hard.

The United States Navy hired him to help prevent loss of pilots. They would shoot down friendly pilots, or make avoidable mistakes when tired. The problem is that they would fly fast planes, kill or be killed, then land and have to rest. During the time they were supposed to be resting, there would be combat and explosions going on around them. They may have slept, but often they didn’t get rest.

The solution that the Air Force Mental Health department shared with me was based on his work, and it was mind blowing.

Put your fears to bed

Try something right now. Pick any surface (really, anything). The floor, a counter, a couch, or sitting in a chair. Now close your eyes and try to sleep, being aware of your thoughts. Give yourself a few seconds or minutes and then reflect on what went through your mind.

The chances are as you were trying to sleep you were worried. Worried about what you were going to eat or wear tomorrow, or if you were going to fall out of the chair. Perhaps you were concerned about school or a deadline at work. When I sleep, my biggest fear is that I’m going to miss my alarm in the morning.

First grab two sheets of paper. On the first sheet write a list of everything you’re afraid you’ll forget. Things you need to buy at the store or bring to work. Whatever you don’t want to forget. Look over the list and say to yourself “it will be here when I wake up.”

On the second sheet of paper, write a list of fears and regrets. Something that often keeps me awake is thinking about what I wish I had said, or what I will say tomorrow. Write it all down and say “I can work on this when I wake up.” The truth is if you sleep without thinking about it, you will get ample rest and be more effective at dealing with it when you wake up.

Now that you have your lists, set an alarm, and look at the alarm. If possible, touch it with your finger. Say “my alarm is set.” I do not recommend setting more than one alarm. I’ve tried it, and it tends to make me sleep worse. Trust the first alarm. Visualize what you’re going to do when it rings. Picture yourself sitting up, smiling, and getting out of bed.

Now you have permission to sleep. You have the ability to leave all your worries and intrusive thoughts at the side of the bed for when you wake up. They may still bug you, but you can tell them “I’ll deal with it when I wake up.” My favorite is the alarm. I smile knowing that I don’t have to worry about over sleeping.

Relax

The final step is to lay down in bed and breathe deeply for a few seconds. Then relax your face. Relax your mouth, your forehead, your cheeks and your eyes. Feel your shoulders sink into the bed. Acknowledge where your waist meets the bed. Let your legs go limp.

Now visualize yourself in a motionless activity. Some people picture themselves in a canoe. The motion of the waves doesn’t count. What you want to do is imagine you aren’t doing the moving (i.e. riding a bike). Today my wife imagines herself laying on the beach, but I imagine myself on top of a pine covered mountain. Use your five primary senses. Imagine what you see, hear, smell, and feel. If possible, think about what you taste.

Sometimes while you’re in your imaginary space, a thought will come to you, “YOU DIDN’T PAY THE ELECTRIC BILL”. These intrusive thoughts will keep you from sleeping only if you allow them to. Simply go back to your visualization and leave the thought be.

If you don’t want to write everything down first, you can do another technique they taught me in the Air Force. Less people like this one, but it can still help in a pinch. Go through the relaxation phase, and as intrusive thoughts come into your mind, picture yourself putting them in a bottle and placing them on a shelf. They’re not your enemy, and you can pick them up when you’re done.

My wife often gets angry at sounds that interrupt her sleep. The sounds don’t actually keep her awake as much as she believes they do. With proper relaxation technique, you acknowledge the sound, then go back to your relaxation. Instead, she gets angry. “The neighbors shouldn’t be playing their music that loud! Don’t they know people are sleeping! I would never do that to someone. Perhaps I should call the police. How can I make them stop?” These thoughts are what yank her out of relaxation and make her have to fall asleep all over again.

If you fight with intrusive sounds, then try your best to not fight them. If you follow the relaxation technique, you can sleep anywhere during anything and get quality rest. It took me one to two weeks of practice, but after mastery I could sleep sitting up in an office with people talking. I could sleep on an active runway with planes going around me. Not in a dangerous way — we had deployment operations where we had to sleep on the runway prior to getting on a plane.

The takeaway here is that most people fight their rest and then wonder why they can’t rest. If you make up your mind to get rest, it will come a lot easier.

The iceberg

As I said, I noticed an eighty percent improvement by controlling my mind prior to sleep. However, the whole package is worthwhile. Please consider that the eighty percent improvement is largely for falling asleep. If you fall asleep, but your mind is still struggling due to chemicals like caffeine or alcohol, then you may not heal as much during your sleep. The majority of an iceberg is hidden under the surface of the water. Similarly, the benefits of sleep hygiene may be invisible to you because they occur after you fall asleep.

The mental health clinic taught me all the relaxation and sleep therapy in a single day. However, they had me come back for several more appointments to learn about some other issues related to stress. Two of them have made a major impact on my life. They said “don’t should on yourself.” It was a play on profanity, which I didn’t care for, but it was by far one of the most beneficial things I’ve learned.

It reminds me of the time some friends and I decided to spend a day at a Lake house. We put the $1,000 fee together and rented a house. I was pretty impressed as I pulled up to the house. It had a large yard, and a 4 car garage. Inside there was a jacuzzi, a den, and a game-room. It had been a long drive, so I ducked into the restroom as soon as I got there. I noticed the toilet had a sign on it that said:

NOTICE: Do not place paper in the toilet. It will clog, and there is a 24-hour waiting period for service.

I thought

ok… I guess there’s bad drainage or something here at the lake

. I washed my hands and the washcloth had a paper over it explaining that this was the only washcloth, so don’t use it on makeup or dirt. If they’d have told me they only supply one hand towel, I’d have brought my own. I grabbed my things from the car and hauled them up to my room. There was another sign waiting for me on the bed.

BEFORE YOU LEAVE

• Strip the beds and the pillows
• Place all the linens inside a pillowcase
• Place the comforter and pillowcase at the foot of the bed
• Make sure you turn off the lights

This is feeling less like a vacation with every sign. It was as if someone’s mom had come through and stuck a bunch of signs everywhere. I wonder what happens if you leave the light on? I hopped into the kitchen to grab a drink, and noticed yet another sign explaining that if we didn’t take out the garbage, we would be fined. FINED!? We paid $1,000 to be here, I figure taking out the garbage would be included in the fee.

I’m not sure why they needed to put up all these signs. Perhaps there were environmental or plumbing issues. Perhaps the place has been mistreated in the past. All I know is I didn’t feel welcome there, and I wouldn’t be going back. It was a little overbearing. I didn’t even want to stay there anymore in the first place. I felt guilty the whole time I was there, and I hadn’t even broken any of the rules. I was going around asking myself if I was following all the rules instead of actually enjoying my vacation.

I did this sort of thing to myself all the time without realizing it. I had an internal dialogue I had been rehearsing for so long it seemed normal.

• I should have checked the weather before I left.
• I should buy better shoes.
• I should get more exercise.
• I should drive more carefully.

I was constantly saying “should”, and it didn’t make me feel good. They (mental health) had me write down every time I said “should” throughout the week. At the end of the week, my list was pretty long. If I were on a date, and the person across the table handed me that list of things I “should do,” I would have walked right out the door. Another way to think about it is this: If you wouldn’t give that list to someone else, why give it to yourself?

I Should Have

You have this moment, and only this moment. Now it’s gone. I hope you used it well! Ok, I kid a little, but you do. You have the moment you’re living. You don’t have the past, you can’t change the past, and the past can’t change you. The YOU that exists in the past is incapable of changing their environment. Their moment is over. That means when you say “I should have checked the weather,” you’re passing judgement on a version of yourself who is incapable of defending themself. They can hear everything you say, but they can say nothing in return. Imagine how horrible it would be to be on the other end of that conversation.

I Should

If there was a way to measure internal dialog, “I should” is worse than “I should have,” and yet we say it all the time.

I should call Mom when I get home

. You have this moment. You don’t have the moment when you get home. What if you get called back to work? What if you get home and there’s a leak you have to fix and by the end of the night you forget? You don’t have THAT moment, you have THIS moment, and in this moment you’re choosing to judge a version of yourself that hasn’t been born yet. And here’s the kicker. When you get home and you don’t call Mom, your PAST self is being judged not only for not calling Mom, but for not calling Mom when they already knew that they should. It’s double-jeopardy.

How does it feel? You probably think that you feel bad, and THEN you say “I should call Mom”, and that’s where your reflection ends, but it’s not where your feelings end. When you say “I should call Mom”, you don’t suddenly feel better. Instead you feel like you’re sitting at the table on a date with a bossy version of yourself. You have one more thing to worry about. Saying you “should have” done something is unproductive, and saying you “should” only produces anxiety. While it might seem like you’re just making plans in your head, in reality you’re placing judgement on a version of yourself who has no representation in the court of your mind.

All of this might seem pedantic, but there IS a way to say these things without “

should“ing

on yourself. Let’s say you’re driving home and you feel like it’s important to call your mom when you get there. Instead of saying “I should call Mom,” you can say “I’d like to call Mom when I get home.” That removes all judgment from any version of yourself who doesn’t manage to call your mother. Not only that, but it induces positivity. When you’re driving home you smile thinking of what it will be like calling Mom instead of frowning worrying about calling Mom. When you call her, you’re going to feel like you’ve accomplished something instead of feeling like you met a minimum requirement.

Don’t let other people

should

on you either. If someone says that you should drive more carefully, that’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it. They can’t change what you do, and you can’t change their opinion. If they say you should drive more carefully and you feel like complying, then you can take it on as something you would like to do or something that they would like you to do. You can say to yourself “that’s true, I WOULD like to drive more carefully.” If you say “I SHOULD drive more carefully” then you’re making a LAW in your mind, and not meeting that law is failure. If you take it under advisement “they would LIKE IT if I drove more carefully,” then now it’s like an added bonus. Regardless of whether or not you choose to change your driving habits, you aren’t required to meet their expectations of you.

The last exercise I learned to manage my stress was to let things settle. One day my dad was cutting something, and the knife slipped out of his hand. He snatched at it without thinking, catching the blade in his palm. When he opened his hand, he saw the blade had gone into his hand. This is easy to do when we panic or react without thinking.

I would get stressed or angry and react without thinking. The Mental Health Clinic taught me to count to five before reacting. The number isn’t super magical. Honestly, I probably could have counted to two or three. The purpose is to give your mind time to catch up before you do something you might regret — like taking a knife to the hand.

Later applying that technique I was getting in my car and pulled my keys out of my pocket. I had about twenty one-dollar bills in my pocket and the keys pulled them out and tossed them into the air. I saw them falling in slow motion like gentle snowflakes. Normally I would have grasped at them trying to save them. Doing so would likely have caused me to drop what I was carrying and smack my head on the open car door. Instead, I counted.

ONE… I watched the bills falling down, to the ground. TWO… I counted them as they fell, getting a general idea of what I was dealing with. THREE… A gentle breeze picked them up, and I had time to notice where they went. FOUR… I gently put the other things I was carrying into my car and closed the door. FIVE… I walked across the parking lot and waited for the bills to blow to me, where I collected them.

The worst-case scenario of moving too quickly would have been stitches to my eye from slamming it into the car door. The worst-case scenario of giving myself time to think would have been losing twenty bucks. Losing the cash would have been cheaper.

Giving myself time to think before I react has helped me to better comprehend situations and give other people the benefit of the doubt. One time I was telling a friend about a lady that sold liquor to me without checking my ID. I was in the military at the time and was in uniform. “If you’re old enough to serve the country, you should be old enough to drink,” she said. “I don’t care if I lose my job over it.”

“That’s so stupid!” My friend snapped back.

I started counting.

One…

Why is he calling her stupid! She was being nice to me, and she doesn’t deserve to be treated this way!

Two…

He’s been my friend for a long time. He’s usually on my side. What happened?

Three…

Wait… What if he’s calling the rule stupid, not the person?

Four…

I think I’m going to ask for clarification.

Five… I breathed. As I got ready for the question, I still felt a little tense.

“What’s stupid?” I asked

“It’s stupid that our government asks you for your life, but won’t sell you a beer,” he replied. “Also, that they would punish her for doing something nice to you!”

“Yeah, that’s so true.” I nodded in agreement.

If I hadn’t counted, I probably would have gotten into a “stupid” argument with him. It would have been so silly, because he was on my side the whole time. Counting gave me time to think before reacting, and might have saved my friendship a black eye.

I chuckle to myself when using this rule. Once I was having a conversation with two people and fidgeting with an ink pen. I dropped the pen by accident and watched slowly as it fell to the floor. It wasn’t going to hurt anything to let it fall, so I chose to take a second before reacting. They panicked and both of them dropped to pick it up simultaneously, smacking their heads together like a cartoon. I felt sorry for them, but I laughed inside, because that could have been my head if I hadn’t counted.

Counting has helped me with many struggles. It’s not a perfect rule, but it has helped me to think more clearly and respond to others more effectively. It helps me better manage external turmoil, but the internal turmoil continued to boil. Later, I would start on some new journeys in life, which would increase the volume of the internal noise. Counting didn’t help, but I learned other things that did

help

.