By: Olivia White
Features Editor
Last week on a Thursday afternoon, I found myself fervently fretting in solitude within the sterile white confines of the women’s swim team locker room, a destination I had not planned to arrive at but was somehow directed to find by my then frazzled brain. I shared the space with one other person for about ten minutes, resenting her presence for disrupting the panic attack I had hoped to have in private and telepathically urging her departure. Unfortunately, telepathy is not one of my strong suits and I waited impatiently for her to finally shuffle out of the room after what seemed like eons of gratuitous hair brushing and mirror checking. In moments of panic, every small frustration is exacerbated.
Today, I could not explain why, exactly, my heart was beating like a frightened rodent’s as I aimlessly wandered anywhere in order to get away from my dorm and the jeans that had recently become a size too small. It’s difficult to put into words the rush of panic that suddenly started in my head and washed over my body like an “Ice Bucket Challenge” sneak attack. I cannot justify my silent hostility toward my fellow women’s swim team locker room patron. Though I cannot rationalize the anxiety and the physical reaction it ignited, I know that, at the time, it was unstoppable, highly influential, and seemingly completely necessary. While passing by other students on my trek across campus, I couldn’t help but realize how lonely it was to be trapped by the thoughts demanding attention in my head.
About 3.1% of the adult American population suffers from general anxiety disorder, with 2.7% also suffering from panic disorder. What is perceived by some as the over dramatization of a situation is actually a debilitating and disruptive problem that cannot be solved by simply “getting over” the stressor at hand. It incites admittedly irrational behavior, and sometimes hysteria, that is impossible to control in the moment. When the cortisol and adrenaline start pumping, one is rendered defenseless against his or her own thoughts and must suffer the consequences until the symptoms subside on their own, or through some sort of panic-reducing therapy.
Sometimes, the best cure for a panic attack is to allow oneself a few (or more) healthy sobs and accept that one’s world has come to a momentary halt. This halt deserves acknowledgement, signified by puffy eyes and a substantial collection of used tissues. Other times, one must simply get moving, and allow endorphins to combat the overdose of stress hormones coursing through his or her system. One may try to battle the irrationality with a bit of level-headedness by reminding his or herself that, aside from the freak out, he or she is okay and will continue to be okay after the storm has passed. Recently, I had found that putting things in perspective, while challenging, can be very effective. Sometimes, this requires a bit of commiseration, something I learned post-panic in a more familiar place (that also happened to be a locker room).
After convincing myself that that puffiness under my eyes could probably be excused for allergies or lack of sleep or something equally credible, I ducked into the field hockey locker room, early for practice and planning to collect myself before any of my teammates arrived. Once again, I found I wasn’t alone. Exasperation and embarrassment threatened to definitively contradict the “allergies” cover and expose me for the anxiously neurotic dramatist I surely had to be. I was feeling pretty pathetic, until I glanced across the room at a teammate who seemed to be experiencing her own silent distress. Without probing as to the cause of her own puffy eyes, I felt less insecure about expressing my own anxieties. As it turns out, she had been experiencing her own temporary “freak out”, induced by an overload of schoolwork. While neither of us, or our teammates who quietly offered words of sympathy and empathy, could solve each others problems, the simple notion that one does not have to suffer their anxieties, fears, or panicky moments alone is comforting. The previously mentioned percentages, though numeric figures, represent millions of anxiously anguishing people. I am not equating the devastation of anxiety and panic disorder to that of heart disease or breast cancer, but I am stating that much of its distress derives from the perception that one is alone in his or her panic. But one does not have to hide in the solitary confinement of a (locker) room where he or she feels trapped by the panic that has driven him or her to isolation. Next time your jeans don’t fit, you’ve failed a mid-term, gone through a particularly difficult break-up, or are feeling out of place, look across the room or the quad or wherever other people are currently located. As my mother has eloquently put it in times when I’ve felt particularly lonely, “everybody has their shit.” We don’t have to deal with it alone. I have found success in solidarity.