Fear Part II: You Fucking Pussy

[naamah_darling]

The other day I talked about what it's like to have a panic attack, how they feel.

I'd like to thank everyone who commented, either to say that they have panic attacks, and that reading what I wrote helped them to understand they are not alone, or to those precious folks who wrote to say that they don't have them, and now they can understand it a little better. Thank you. I can't respond to every comment, though I am trying, but I want to let you know that everything has been most appreciated.

Today you get how it feels to be a person who has them. What it's like to live with them. Subtle difference.

The way a lot of people think about folks who have this particular problem just plain fucking sucks.

You people who have anxiety attacks, or who suffer from depression or cyclothymia or bipolar disorder or ADD or whatever will know what I mean when I say that "Just get over it!" is literally the shittiest remedy ever for whatever potent cocktail of brain chemistry and personal psychology and past history is fucking you up.

And yet, that is precisely what society at large seems to think we should do. Suck it up.

Let's start by dismantling this a piece at a time. At its very base, this idea presupposes some pretty ridiculous things. Let's start with the first one: that panic attacks can be prevented if you just "think positive."

This utterance carries with it an entire army of false and harmful implications.

If we assume that the following statement is true:

• Panic attacks can be prevented by positive thinking.
  
  Then any or all of the following may be true as well:
  
• If panic attacks can be prevented by positive thinking in one instance, then they could always be prevented by positive thinking in any instance.
  
• People who can't shake them are weak-willed and simply cannot think positive enough.
  
• If someone suffers from a panic disorder, that's their fault for not being able to get over it.
  
• They need to try harder to overcome it.
  
• Since they can be overcome by positive thinking, panic attacks are not a physical problem; they aren't related to brain chemistry at all. It's all in your head.
  
• Since panic attacks are not a physical problem, and only happen to weak-willed people, they are not a serious problem.
  
• Since they are not a serious problem, people who have panic attacks do not deserve our consideration.
  
• Since panic attacks can be overcome by positive thinking, those who have them are obligated to overcome them in order to avoid inconveniencing "normal" people, or in order to avoid appearing "too different."
  
• Those who make demands anyway are "too sensitive" at best, or are at worst "selfish" and only using their "disorder" to get what they want.
  
  There's all sorts of other hurtful bullshit to go with this jaundiced view, but you get the idea:
  
  That's right. It's not a serious problem, you fucking pussy. Now get over yourself and join the human race! All those people who are bipolar or have panic attacks or PTSD or major depression or whatever, they're just faking to get attention like the big bedwetting whinerbaby sisswads they are. There's nothing really wrong with them.
  
  That's right.
  
  There's nothing wrong.
  
  I've had it said to my fucking face.
  
  Usually, I get the friendlier version. "This isn't really you!" or "It's just not like you at all!"
  
  Yes it is. It is exactly fucking like me. It is a PART of me. Just because it's not positive, because it makes people uncomfortable, does not mean I can -- or should -- disown it. Buying into the "it's all in your head, just get over it" line of reasoning, ignoring that this is a fundamental feature of my mental landscape, doesn't help; it makes it ten times harder to function. It makes me the guilty party, it puts me at fault. And I will not accept that. I'm responsible for my own behavior. I am not responsible for the fucked-up shit my body does to me. I exert as much control over it as it is possible for me to exert. I cannot do more than that.
  
  We are not all weak-willed people, those of us who live with this condition. We run the gamut. No doubt some of the afflicted are spineless gits. The same could be said of hairdressers, or Republicans, or college students, or the Portuguese. We don't have a monopoly on spinelessness.
  
  Many of those who have panic disorders, the majority in my experience, are actually very intense, forceful people with vibrant personalities and well-formed, intelligent opinions. They have insightful, well-trained minds, and often exhibit a great deal of self-awareness and self-control. They are very strong people. A lot of them, you'd never know they have panic attacks at all. Not unless they told you, which they probably won't, since they have been conditioned by the congenital assholes among us to never show "weakness."
  
  But it's not weakness.
  
  Many of us have had to become stronger people simply to live with the constant sword of Damocles that hangs over our every waking hour. It is incredibly difficult to make yourself do things that you know will result in a panic attack, and yet, many of us do precisely that. I had to learn to drive again, and sit in a movie theater, and visit my family, and talk on the phone, and speak politely to doctors. Those things still bother me sometimes, but it's usually only a four on a scale of one to "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!"
  
  It is not our fault for not being able to "get over it." Yes, there are ways to lessen the impact of the attack once it begins, and there are ways to prevent them. Most everybody who has panic attacks eventually learns effective ways to deal with them, can even learn to head them off at the pass. That's the good news (and believe me, it's really good news).
  
  The bad news is that for many of us, they will never go away completely. We can lessen the effects, but cannot prevent the attacks totally. From time to time, we'll go through periods where we have them more often. We can cut them off before they get really going, but we still feel the initial stages of the cycle, and those are plenty unpleasant on their own.
  
  Given that the origins of panic disorder are so complicated and manifold that modern medicine can't really get a fix on what causes it (if there even is a single factor, which there likely is not), it is both cruel and foolish to expect sufferers to "get over it."
  
  The best evidence we have is that a predisposition is hardwired into us before birth, and in some individuals that predisposition expresses either naturally, in the case of someone like me who has "always" been anxious, or after some traumatic event, in the case of those who develop it later. It is a combination of how our brains process everyday information, learned threat recognition, and the wicked strong chemicals that act on the brain and gut, all of which act on one another, causing our panic response to go haywire.
  
  And even when we have learned to deal with it, it can still come back and hit us again. Just because you have really great defenses doesn't mean your castle won't be ever be attacked by Mongols. It just means you have really great defenses. And the thing about Mongols is that no matter how many you fight off, there's always more.
  
  So, in closing, a note to those who believe that a suffering person can "think positive" to bring themselves out of a chemical misadventure, or a mistake in brain wiring: I have some diabetic friends and some epileptic friends and some bipolar friends and some friends with thyroid disorders who would like to speak with you about mind over matter.
  
  Visualization, meditation, are powerful tools. Just because something worked for you, or for someone else, does not mean it is a cure-all or a panacea. The alicorn to this poison simply does not exist, and we're left to sweat it out every damn day until we get a handle on it or die trying.
  
  So show some fucking respect, okay? We do the best we can, and telling us to "buck up" doesn't make us feel better or more cheerful.
  
  It just makes us feel worse: alone and scared, and forced to live among people who aren't like us and who don't care about us.
  
  It also makes us want to punch you in the face.
  
  Thank you and goodnight.