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Anxiety About Anxiety

8 years ago1,398 words

I fainted during one of my exams last week. How embarrassing!

It wasn't even a difficult exam, which makes it all the more embarrassing. I certainly didn't pass out due to the content.

This isn't the first time this has happened, but it's been years since the last, so it happening again has made me reflect quite a bit about regression; about how we can think we've grown and overcome things only for them to hit us out of the blue, as if reminding us we'll never truly change.

I fainted occasionally as a child, usually - I assume - due to malnutrition or something similar; I wasn't able to eat every day. Poverty and neglect and all that. Fun times. So I was familiar with the sensations from an early age.

I first passed out during an exam probably about a decade ago, during my final year of school. I was in an advanced maths class - so advanced there were only like six of us in it - though as we were assumed to be intelligent and self-motivated, none of the homework was compulsory. As such, I often didn't do it; I was too busy focusing on teaching myself how to make games and compose music. When exam time came, though, I saw the exam in front of me and thought "I don't know how to do any of these questions". I'd never had any external pressure on me to get good grades - my parents never cared - but the thought that I might *fail* caused what I've always thought of as my first panic attack. My head felt like it was going to explode, and I had to put my hand up to get taken out of the room, to the toilets, where I remember waking up on the cold floor wondering what was going on. I was told I was pale as a ghost; my lips were blue.

Before that, I'd been anxious, I assume, but it was only after that that 'Anxiety' became this dark spectre that followed me everywhere, prevented me from leaving the house. The thought of going to sit in a classroom, exam hall, cinema, or anywhere else was torture; I couldn't sit still, I felt like another attack was going to happen. I suppose that's when my life as a hermit properly started. My identity as one trapped by my own mind.

It was the start of a journey to better understand what was going on with me. I knew essentially nothing about psychology back then; I didn't know about generalised anxiety disorder or panic attacks or breathing exercises or mindfulness or anything like that. I spent the next several years slowly learning about and embracing those things, chipping away at the anxiety a bit at a time, to the point where I felt happy - proud of myself - for having quelled the panic attacks completely. "I used to have panic attacks, until I learned how to prevent them", became my personal story.

But then I passed out again just a few days ago. Or I mean I recognised the physical sensations and asked to leave the room, though I don't remember doing so; just stumbling and waking up on the floor, looking up at people and asking "where on Earth am I?"

It was a strange and fascinating thing, actually. I'd always expected that passing out would be a brief moment of blackness, but for me it wasn't; I awoke from a pleasant dream that seemed quite long, though I don't remember the content. I don't know what to make of that.

The same thing happened the last time I fainted, actually. That was when I was told the thing in my brain wasn't a cyst; it was a tumour. I was sitting in a chair in front of a screen showing a scan of my head, and the next minute I was looking up from the floor at the friendly neurosurgeon. Such an odd experience.

But why did it happen? In that case it was shock, of course. I'd basically just been told life-changing information. Though my mind didn't think panicked thoughts, on some deeper level I obviously processed that as reboot-worthy information.

In the exam, though... I'm not entirely sure. I think it was just the culmination of many factors that have been building up gradually for a long time now. Spending Christmas alone, going weeks without human contact, the bleakness of my present and future, being single ad never meeting people, thinking constantly about suicide. The brain tumour. Being in the exam hall, surrounded by nervous people, unable to get up and leave, feeling completely trapped... I noticed the anxiety beginning, then started panicking about what might happen if it got worse, so it got worse, and I panicked about that, and it just led to a spiral downwards into shutdown mode.

It's embarrassing. I ended up not finishing the (really very easy) exam (I'll have to retry it in March), and sitting outside the exam hall while people slowly trickled out and pretty much ignored me (even though there was nobody else there and I apparently looked deathly pale). My friend was very comforting and supportive afterwards - I'm so grateful to her for that, as I'm not used to having this in my life, physically at least - but I just feel bad about disrupting her exam experience when she already feels quite anxious about them. I'm sure she did well anyway though. She's very clever, and it was an easy exam.

That happened on Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday, I had further exams, in the same exam hall. I was terrified about this. Not because of the content; last year, I won an award for doing best in exams overall out of the 300 or so people on my course, and I was the only one to get 100% in one of them (the same topic as the one I fainted in, amusingly). But once you've experienced a traumatic event in a certain place, your mind binds that experience to that setting, and all the feelings flow back if you're re-exposed to it. It's like being in a car crash, then being expected to travel by car the next day.

I was actually offered the 'opportunity' to take the exam in a smaller room with only a handful of other students; a kindness on the part of the academic staff for those whose various handicaps prevent them from taking the same path as the normal majority. I considered taking it...

But I knew that the choices we make define the story we tell about ourselves. If I'd done that, I would be the sort of person who - when faced with a challenge - takes the easier path, avoids what might hurt or go wrong. I'd be an invalid; someone too fragile to handle the world others live in. If however I'd faced my fears, if I'd returned to the place I'd suffered and come out without harm, that'd be a success story; I'd be someone who braves my inner demons and grows from doing so.

I took the latter option, and the exams went surprisingly fine. I was incredibly anxious during the Thursday one, and even moreso that evening and Friday morning (I barely slept that night); I've not been that anxious in years. But after I'd ridden the initial wave of dread in the Friday exam and realised I could do this, I could use the techniques I'd learned over the years to show to myself I had grown and changed and learned, I felt calm. Good, even! Surely due to the adrenaline flowing through me and all that - the cause of the anxiety in the first place - but also due to the cognitive realisation that I took a terrifying challenge and came out stronger afterwards.

I still feel embarrassed about fainting. But in a weird way, I'm glad it happened. Put some things into perspective. Made more vivid the fact that I've not been coping lately, and that my friend actually does care about me. Certainly a wake-up slap.

Exams are over now, so I'll be resuming my life as a better-late-than-never student with a new set of Psychology modules on Monday. Perhaps there'll be changes in my life this semester. I'll be curious to see.