Weathering the Waves
On Antarctica and anxiety.
I do not share much in common with Sir Ernest Shackleton.
The Irish explorer was one of the first to venture to Antarctica, setting a record in 1909 by traveling farther south than anyone had previously traveled, just 97 miles away from the South Pole. He hoped to become the first to reach that destination, though Roald Amundsen beat him to it in 1911.
Shackleton then began an expedition to travel the entire continent of Antarctica in 1914, but when his ship, the Endurance, became stuck in ice, he and 27 other men began a three-year journey to get back home. Miraculously, not a single one of them perished.
The story is captured wonderfully in Alfred Lansing’s 1959 book, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. Lansing artfully details the crew’s experience, including the harrowing sailing efforts in some of the most treacherous seas on the planet. Using accounts from the crew’s diaries and interviews with survivors, Lansing describes their strife with the sea as such:
“it is a battle against a tireless enemy in which man never actually wins; the most that he can hope for is not to be defeated.”
I do not like cold weather. I am perfectly content to sit on the beach or take a boat to water that will only remain in liquid form. I have yet to battle the sea and I have no interest in ever doing so.
But I do know what it feels like in a battle that feels unwinnable, with wave after wave crashing down upon you. How hard it is to suffer under a barrage of attacks, barely catching your breath before another surge swells in your path.
My tireless enemy is anxiety, and my hope of not being defeated truly arrived when I got some help.
I’ve always been a cerebral person, and I’ve always been very determined. So when I would start to think about things that might be scary or unknown, my default practice was to focus on that thing and think about it from every angle, never giving up until I thought I had a solution. I felt like I needed to know what I would say in various potential scenarios, and more than that, I felt like I needed to know how I would feel.
I was not a Boy Scout, but I wanted to be prepared for anything, and I thought by forcing myself to feel those emotions, I would be better equipped to deal with the emotions if and when the situation happened.
So I would grieve for lives not yet lost. Resent actions not yet taken. Regret decisions not yet made. Fear a reality that may never be.
I would think these thoughts over and over and over again, obsessively thinking about situations that had even a remote chance of occurring, which, as you can expect, was a significant source of my worry. I recognized this as irrational, but inevitably my mind would wander back to focus on those thoughts. This was my normal.
Complicating matters was the fact I hadn’t had a solid night’s sleep in quite some time, creating a chicken-or-the-egg argument with anxiety and insomnia. There was no “aha” moment when I realized it was untenable, no specific event I can point to as a nadir. It was simply a gradual erosion, like a slow stream that wears on a rock until, eventually, a channel is formed. Before I knew it, water was gushing through that channel, flooding everything in its way.
Looking for a therapist to help with anxiety was, ironically, quite an anxiety-inducing process. Online searches return dozens of licensed professionals with various specialties, but ultimately, you’re relying on their carefully crafted bios to determine who is best equipped to help you.
Jackie is a Certified Professional Counselor with a degree from Midwestern University. She has experience with Various Mental Illnesses and uses an individualized approach to help her clients reach their goals.
Starting the search, I had no idea what I needed. I didn’t know what type of skillset would be best for me, or if I could rely on the skillsets as described. What if I choose someone and it doesn’t work out? What if I only learn that it won’t work out after waiting weeks to get an appointment? What if I have weeks and weeks of unproductive appointments and then realize I need to try someone new? What if it never works out? Is the fact that I was asking all of these questions driving home the point that I needed help?
Eventually, I found a therapist who was accepting new clients and could schedule an appointment only a week away.
It’s an interesting sensation, knowing you’re about to reveal the inner workings of your mind to a stranger. I’m not the most private person or anything, but it was extremely uncomfortable to explain how my anxiety was causing me to lose control of my emotions. How my thought patterns would bring on waves of tears and visceral pangs of mental anguish. How my compromised state made me feel like I was failing as a husband and a father.
How I’ve always been a stubborn person who could think his way through problems, and the fact that I was struggling to do so now brought on even more anxiety.
So I talked about how I’d been feeling and how I’d been dealing with how I was feeling. After my therapist listened, she said, “What you’re describing is Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).”
OCD can manifest for different people in different ways. Many may think about it in terms of germophobia, or needing to execute specific tasks in a specific order, but it can be much more expansive, and for me, the compulsion is about my thoughts. That is, I feel compelled to continue fixating on different thoughts.
In an incredibly on-brand development, my mental illness is mostly me thinking too much about too much stuff.
Consider the idea of an intrusive or unpleasant thought. If we compare that to a burglar, for example, most people would respond to that intrusive thought by chasing it away with a bat, calling the authorities, and the like. Me? I would offer my most comfortable chair, hand over a soft blanket, and ask if I can pick up groceries or extra cash.
My brain was betraying me, convincing me that the best way to get rid of an intrusive thought was to explore it. To consider it. To solve it. As it turns out, not all things are puzzles in need of solving. As my therapist put it:
“You don’t need to know everything that might happen.”
As obvious of a statement as that is, it was also a completely foreign concept in my mind.
You mean, I can just, like, not think about things like that?
I started weekly therapy sessions just over four months ago. I began to learn tools and tricks for better handling these thoughts and feelings, and I was prescribed a medication to help reduce the occurrence of those intrusive thoughts. I’ve built time into my schedule to focus on self-care, whether that means reflecting on the good things from my day, reading, exercising, or writing. I’ve learned about things like non-judgmental awareness and radical acceptance. I’m not very good at the latter, and that’s okay, evidence I’m improving at the former. I’ve embraced the concept of mindfulness, even if I don’t always succeed in achieving it.
Getting better is not a linear process - I’ve had plenty of bad days mixed in with the good. But I am getting better, not only because I’ve been making progress, but because I know I’m not alone in this.
I recognize that I have a tremendous support system around me. My family has been predictably loving, my wife even more patient than I could have asked for. And my coworkers have allowed me to be me, even when the me I was wasn’t all that enjoyable to be around. I can’t imagine having to put on a mask day after day, and I’m beyond grateful I work with people who have such compassion for others.
One of the lessons I’ve held most tightly during this journey is that I deserve to not feel like I’m stuck with a certain situation or thought - that I deserve better. And if you relate to any of this, I hope you know that you, too, deserve to feel better.
I recently got to a point where I was comfortable switching to having therapy every other week. It felt like a big win. Mere hours later, seemingly out of nowhere, my heart raced. My face felt flushed. My muscles tensed. A surge of anxiety rushed through my body without warning.
I paused. Steadied myself. Breathed. The wave eventually passed. Another is certainly to come at some point, but for the first time in a long time, I’m confident that I’ll be able to weather it.
Thank you for sharing your journey! I'm glad you were able to find the help you deserve!