‘Your Greatest Strength Lives Within Your Greatest Pain’
Published May 13, 2021
I often think about how I have never, not even once, taken a pharmaceutical medication to reduce my chronic symptoms of panic and anxiety.
I don’t walk around wearing an invisible badge of honor for this, as though I am better than someone who has decided to take medication; I have just never felt drawn towards it.
This is wildly surprising, given just how much pain and suffering I have navigated within the labels of generalized anxiety disorder, health anxiety, relationship anxiety, agoraphobia, and panic disorder.
-
When I arrived at the Emergency Room in July of 2020 due to the most long lasting and extreme panic attack I had ever had, the doctors said they had been seeing an influx of young and adolescent people coming in with panic attacks.
The whole world was in crisis.
It was the first panic attack that actually landed me in the Emergency Room.
I was sitting in a chair at work; suddenly unable to catch my breath, my heart rate skyrocketed and I immediately wondered if my blood sugar had plummeted.
I jumped out of my chair to have a bite of food. I could not eat, all I wanted to do was run.
Then I knew what was happening.
After years of anxiety and many panic attacks, I desperately wanted the medication this time. I wanted a pill to stop the stress hormones that were flooding my body, making me want to run from a bear.
By the time my husband and I arrived at the hospital, I had been in and out of the panic attack for about 3 hours. I had been breathing through an oxygen tank for the majority of those 3 hours and for the 45 minute drive to the hospital.
Arriving at the E.R. while rolling the oxygen tank behind me, the intake nurse says “so you can’t breathe?”
My husband does the talking.
(I asked him ahead of time not to mention that I had a history of panic attacks; as any time you walk into a hospital as a young healthy looking woman, and preface it with your pre-existing anxious condition, you run the chance of not being throughly checked out by the doctor)
By the time we had walked into the hospital, I had calmed way down.
By the time I was in the room waiting for the doctor, I felt increasingly better.
Because if I were dying, I was in the right place to be saved.
They did the usual heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen reading, then asked me a variety of questions.
They ran an ECG on my heart, it was in a normal sinus rhythm.
Luckily my heart rate and blood pressure had come down from where they had been hanging around 170 bpm and 160/110 range at the peak of the attack.
Just before this panic attack, I had an appointment scheduled for a consultation with a cardiologist because my heart palpitations and tachycardia were excessively frequent leading up to it. I thought something was seriously “wrong” or “faulty” with my heart.
I left the hospital with a 10-day prescription of hydroxyzine, a gentle anti-histamine / anti-anxiety medication.
I got the hydroxyzine filled and thought “I will take it if it happens again.”
Once I arrived home, my adrenals were depleted; adrenaline had been coursing through my body for hours.
I managed a rinse in the shower and then I laid completely still on the sofa doing my best to breathe, in fear of it happening again.
Long story short, I proceeded to have a panic attack every day, sometimes twice a day, for 3 weeks straight.
I still didn’t take the medication.
I re-started weekly tele-health sessions with my psychologist.
I started weekly sessions of Somatic Experiencing.
I started a very strict morning and evening routine of gentle breathing for 15 minutes, yoga and journaling.
I lived with both Insight Timer and the Calm app on repeat nearly 24 hours a day.
I couldn’t walk outside, I could not exercise, I could not leave my house without my husband, and if with him could only leave for short periods of time.
I could not go to the grocery store, to the farmers market, or to the end of my street.
I was afraid that if I went anywhere, my heart would stop and I would die.
I was afraid of having a panic attack.
Soon after, I was diagnosed with ‘panic disorder’ (though my psychologist does not like these types of labels) - it was an administrative diagnosis for her, but it was real for me.
Because of the daily attacks, I developed agoraphobia which is the close friend that accompanies panic disorder.
It was a dark and heavy time.
-
A few months later, my husband and I moved back to Australia.
I met someone new at a family dinner.
The general topic of anxiety came up at the table and I shared some of my experience; mentioning that I have ‘generalized anxiety’.
The guest said, “oh, I have something great for that if you want it. I myself went through severe anxiety during the onset of the pandemic & work-from-home isolation and my doctor prescribed me “xx” and I am so much better now.”
And that’s true, this person was better.
But my mind thinks, are they better just for now? Or better forever? Should I just take some medication to be better for now? Will it cut down the symptoms enough to soothe my every day life? What about all the other resolving routes I have taken that have resulted in a deep understanding of the unfelt emotions underneath my anxiety, remarkable lessening of symptoms, and I no longer fear to leave the house and walk down the street by myself?
I guess I got better, too.
-
I used to compare myself to others a lot.
Did they do it better than I did?
Should I have done something different?
The morning after I met this person, I finally decided to open a blog from Sheryl Paul that had been sitting in my inbox for 5 days titled, ‘Something is Broken, But It’s Not You.’
Sheryl Paul has been a lighthouse through the last 6 years of my life. She shares at the start of the blog:
“Let’s start here, which is one of the premises of Jungian psychology: Your greatest strength lives within your greatest pain. When you eradicate your symptoms without approaching them with curiosity and compassion, you eradicate a pathway that leads to your true power.”
“In other words, there is wisdom in your symptoms. Sometimes you need to reduce the intensity of the symptoms before you can harness the wisdom, and this is where many mainstream therapy tools are effective, but if the entire goal of therapy is to eradicate symptoms, a new set of symptoms will likely pop up someplace else until the underlying messages are received.”
These words rang so true to my soul and they brought me back to trusting myself.
The path I have chosen to learn how to navigate anxiety and heal my unresolved traumas is very unconventional.
It might seem counterintuitive to some.
It used to make me feel different and like I “should” follow the conventional path.
But deep down I didn’t want to and I still don’t want to, which is why I haven’t.
My whole self resonates more deeply with Jungian psychology.
It leaves us with the inquiry of…what will our greatest strength be once we traverse all the deep waters of great pain?
That is an individual journey and the answer will be different for all of us.
Even though painful, the waters are rich.
The experience of my pain is full of depth and life feels more real and authentic by finally letting myself feel it rather than suppressing it.
And up until this point, it all passes.
I now live a life where anxiety does not sit in the drivers seat.
I breathe and I do my best to trust the pain and what’s hidden inside of it.
Like we all know, the lotus flower grows from the murkiest muddy waters; the diamond is found after chiseling through the rocks.
These metaphors relate exactly to what arises out of the horrendous inner conflict, emotional pain and terror that is inside of the anxious or panicked person.
As Sheryl Paul continues to write:
“There’s nothing wrong with the person who struggles with anxiety in any form. Yes, the symptoms are excruciating, and by no means do I wish for people to suffer in their symptoms while their lives become increasing smaller. But when we learn to listen to the wisdom embedded in the symptoms and respond accordingly our lives enlarge and enhance in unimaginable ways, and we step closer into our true gifts, which are longing to meet the world. Every person’s genius is wrapped up in their pain, and it’s only when we move toward this pain with curiosity and compassion that we can live out our gifts and allow them to touch the world.”
It’s remarkable to sit here now, in a state of so much more love, freedom, inner peace and ease.
I am so grateful for every ounce of pain and every trauma, for it all brought me my transformation; and without it, I would not be right where I am now, sharing my gifts, helping others feel the same.
