Turning Toward the Triggers

I sat in the doctor’s office with sweat beading on my face. I struggled to get the words out. Panic attack. Wedding. Sweating. In the bathroom. The doctor looked at me with equal parts compassion and confusion as I tried to get my point across. My neck and face were flushed. I was using a tissue to dab the sweat away.

I see, she said, and then proceeded to gently tell me that I had bits of tissue stuck to my face. My hands rushed to feel for the little pieces of paper the sweat was holding hostage on my cheeks and forehead. I’d been trying to describe the increasingly significant social anxiety I’d experienced recently. Last year, at our friends’ wedding, I’d rushed to the bathroom within the first few minutes of arriving at the venue. My breath shallow, I felt myself almost floating, and I stood in the stall trying to find some calm. The people! The heat! The noise! It was all too much.

The doctor understood. I described how some types of events, though infrequent in my social calendar, are overwhelming to the point of non-function. And the problem was, I had a wedding coming up. A trip to Ontario in the fall for Cairo’s childhood friend who was getting married. I just couldn’t face another bathroom panic attack. I needed help.

I’ve always strived to be a relaxed sort of person. A person who goes with the flow, feels comfortable most of the time, can laugh and sing and dance anywhere. A person who can seamlessly shift into a new environment or fit in with a new group of people. But I’m not that person. I never have been.

This feeling of panic isn’t something new for me. I’ve been like this since I was little. Six-year-old me had to call my mum every day at lunch so she could assure me she’d be there after school to take me home. I wanted to sleep over at friends’ houses. I wanted to go to the birthday parties. But there was a stiffness inside of me that caused me to freeze when I got there.

When I was in grade 3, my brothers and I took a school bus home. It was a forty-five-minute drive from our school to the stop where our mum would wait for us to arrive. One day, the bus broke down before it left the school. My friends and my brothers were thrilled! More time to play in the school yard! I crumpled into a pile of tears and anxiety. What would happen?! How in the world would we get home?! My mind travelling as if these logistical considerations were in some way the responsibility of eight-year-old me.

Months ago, when my husband told me we’d been invited to this next wedding in Ontario, I told him I wasn’t going. I couldn’t. It was too much. Too stressful. It just didn’t feel reasonable. The dogs, work, time booked off to see my family. I tried to convince him in every way I knew how. And at the same time, I wanted to support him as he does me, and I knew that my being there meant a lot to him. He wanted me to connect with his friends and his family. It was important to him. I understood this, and still, I was conflicted.

In high school, I started seeing a psychologist for the anxiety that had long plagued me. I went on medication. I learned new skills and techniques. I talked about the things that caused my anxiety to surge. When I dropped out of university after my first semester because the anxiety was overwhelming, I worked on it more. I didn’t want fear to rule my life. And gradually, little by little, I grew stronger, and life felt easier. I went back to university and got three degrees before I declared myself done. 

A move to the Yukon seemed as though it would be the ultimate anxiety soother. Peace. Quiet. Nature. And, despite my early misgivings at this sudden change in my life, this has proved true. The north gives me a new understanding of myself. A confidence. There is safety in my routine, my habits and my surroundings. Things are predictable and all the things that frightened me nearly seven years ago when I learned we would be moving, have become my comfort zone.

I guess I was kind of angry with myself when I started to notice more anxiety. I thought I was beyond it. It was the old me. A relic. One that the move to the Yukon had erased. I hadn’t realised that the removal of my triggers was just that: a removal of triggers. I only felt better if my surroundings and experiences and relationships did not change. I was surviving by avoiding.

Last December, I started seeing a therapist. I see her two to four times a month. There have been days and weeks where I’ve felt like saying, I’m good, I feel fine, I don’t need this, but I’ve stuck with it in an effort to find ways to do and be in the best I can. So, maybe you can imagine that when I came to her with my predicament: a trip to Ontario (a long way away), in the summer (sweaty-hot), for a wedding (lots of people), I thought she’d tell me it was reasonable that I not go. She didn’t. She pushed me to consider saying yes to the trip, suggesting I use the months leading up to it to develop strategies and techniques that would make the trip, the heat, and the event more manageable. She challenged me to show up for my husband, for my friends, and for myself in a good way.

The wedding was last month, and I was there. I was awkward and I was sweaty and I didn’t really dance, but I went, and I am glad I did. It was beautiful. We spent the week leading up to the wedding with friends on Lake Huron. We laughed, we ate, we watched the sunset; we walked and biked and swam. I wondered, more than once, why I’d been so worried about coming, what it was that made me so scared. I was very glad I was there.

I stood beside my husband and his friends at that wedding and I felt good, but I know I’m still not the easy-going, go-with-the-flow, perpetually relaxed person I dream of being. I probably never will be. But it’s okay. Because I also know that confronting what scares me is the only way to get stronger and braver. I did it. I went to the wedding. And it was good. So I will do my best to remember this beautiful wedding the next time I am faced with something that looks insurmountable.