Silence….
Who knew one needed it so much? A black
hole to be filled with anything and everything.
I used to
detest silence. It was a lonely, barren
place and why would anyone want to go there? It was to be avoided at all costs. Scared to
look at it – scared of what may be found.
It felt as though it may harbour many secrets, secrets that I’d rather
not know. Fearful secrets that would
hurt too much and are better left untold.
But like
a beggar in the night, eventually these feelings return, pleading to be acknowledged.
It’s the wolf under the bed that plagued
me countless nights as a little girl. If
I’d dared to look under the bed, I would have seen him with his gleaming eyes,
I just knew it. The secrets may come to
find you at 3am in the morning, wake you from your slumber – reminding you that
they haven’t gone anywhere. They would whisper
– “listen to me”…. an ice cold current piercing right through my heart. Scared of what I may encounter in my dreams,
I struggled to sleep. I did not listen
then.
Sometimes
they come to you in moments of clarity, and if you have the courage to listen,
your life changes in an instant. I have
had some of these moments. For someone
that never cries, the tears didn’t stop flowing for a week – literally. However, if you’ve played this game long
enough, you are able to gather the pieces back up together pretty quickly and
place them safely back into the Pandora’s box where they belong, breathing a
sigh of relief when things return to normal.
I was hurting but still I did not listen.
I developed
a constant clenching in my gut, demanding that I pay it attention and anxiety
became my constant companion. I had to
worry. If I didn’t, things were bound to
go wrong. I felt better if I
worried. I believed that as long as I worried
about something, then it couldn’t happen.
I kept everything under control … for years. I was the strong one. Suffer in silence was my motto.
And then as
I’m driving on the highway I start to feel a bit uncomfortable. I put the aircon on, I move into the slow
lane and limit my caffeine intake. It’s simple, just avoid what makes me uncomfortable.
One day
in Spring 2010, after a particularly fretful and stressful night with phone
calls from my dad at 01:00 am in the morning, convinced he was dying from an
asthma attack, I was driving home on the highway, ipod playing through the
earpieces and I had, what I now know, a full on panic attack. Out of the blue (well it seemed that way
then). I felt my head spinning wildly, my heart felt
as if it wanted to climb out of my chest it was beating so hard, my hands were
so clammy I thought they may slip off the steering wheel. There was a roaring noise in my ears and I had
tunnel vision. I thought I was going to pass out. My legs turned to jelly. I moved over to the slow lane as quickly as
possible, slowed the car right down and crawled on home wondering what on earth
had just happened to me. For the next two weeks the panic attacks kept coming
in waves, each one felt worse than the time before. Each time I thought it would never end. Waves of fear that threatened to drown me and
my entire existence. I thought I was losing
my mind. Suddenly something that I had
done naturally for 13 years became unbearable to do. I was so afraid that the thought of it nearly
paralysed me.
What is
going on I asked myself? It was then I
started to listen.
It had
slapped me in the face so hard that it was impossible to ignore. My world was getting smaller. It had my full attention. I was hurting, it knew that I needed healing,
it had tried to subtly, and then not-so subtly to get the message across. I just didn’t want to listen. My initial
reaction was to fight this – I’m strong, this will not crack me. In reality, I was already cracked.
What
followed was a painful journey of battling severe panic and anxiety attacks. I thought it would never end. I battled on, I put on weight, I lost
interest in social events. I was so focused on what was going on with me I
started neglecting important people in my life.
I tried
everything, exercise, traditional therapy, CBT to homoeopathy, EFT and
Kinesiology. I attended many courses, read even more books. I learnt
techniques to help me to drive again and I dealt with a lot of painful memories. I learnt that courage overcomes fear –
everytime. I pulled through. I sometimes still feel uncomfortable while
driving on the highway, but I know how to deal with these feelings inside of me
now. It doesn’t help to pretend they’re
not there and ignore or avoid them. You
need to let them out. Bottle them up and avoid at
your own peril. Eventually, they find a way to get your attention. I exercise my courage muscle at every
opportunity.
Anxiety
has been a powerful teacher in my life. It had a message to deliver; all I had to do
was listen. It wasn’t clear at first,
but eventually, the more I ventured into myself the clearer the messages came. My anxiety came from fear of just about
everything, avoidance issues, control issues, low-self esteem, trying to please
everyone, co-dependency issues, over developed sense of
responsibility and carrying the world on my shoulders. I had an exceptionally negative view on the
world – although I didn’t consider myself to be negative, I had complete victim
mentality.
Everyday
I make a little time to become silent. I
scan my body for any negativity, anxiety or concerns and I listen. You can only hear it when you become silent
and ask yourself the difficult questions.
Questions that you’ve always known the answer to but have buried deep
below the surface and then piled every piece of furniture and junk you could on
top of it and just hoped it would be forgotten about. It doesn’t work that way.
In the
silence…eventually you hear your real self that was always there…I just never had
the courage to listen and respect it.
Do you have the COURAGE to listen?
