In the Fishbowl

Yesterday, I woke up and I was reminded that we were going to eat out. This is a fairly rare occasion for me, for more than one reason. My stomach had felt a bit queasy from the get-go, but I figured that it would either pass or I'd power through it. Well, I didn't quite realise that we'd be taking a detour first to take my brother to his friend's house. I got in the car, uncertain of how I'd feel, and before long started to feel like I was going to throw up. I started to get lightheaded and breathing techniques weren't doing a thing for either problem. I then started to sweat profusely and felt utterly miserable. I wasn't sure if I was going to suddenly throw up bile, acid, and any other thing that might've been in my gut, or if I'd be able to power through. Well, after what seemed like an excruciatingly long drive to my brother's friend's house, he got out and we headed toward the restaurant.

Now, mind you, this isn't your quiet, dim-light, fancy sort of restaurant; this is a bright, loud, crowded burger joint that we were going to. On the way there, the 'voice of reason' in my head that I've taken to calling Natalie, kept on reassuring me that I might just have a bug, or it might be withdrawal from getting off my bipolar meds, but my 'normal,' fearful part of my mind kept on wandering immediately to PANIC. It must be anxiety, I'd incessantly think to myself. And then good ol' Natalie will reassure me, 'If it is anxiety, you need to calm yourself down,' and reason, 'but don't go to the worst case scenario, because then it'll become anxiety for sure.' Well, I managed to mentally talk my way through, if nothing else, the nausea until we finally stopped because we arrived at the restaurant. After a pause, I took in a breath and got out of the car.

As soon as we walked through those doors, voices were loud, staff were yelling order numbers for pick-up, and amongst themselves just so they could hear each other, the music was awful (classic rock, I think), the lights were bright, which was worse since there were a lot of white tiles, and as we approached the register, I was almost bursting out in tears. My brain told me to fight through it, but my body wanted to fly out of their; so much for the 'fight-or-flight' response. I felt like I was gasping for air, but I wasn't sure I was more afraid of - panicking in front of a bunch of people, or the environment in which I was in. On one hand, I just wanted to curl up and cry, and on the other hand, I was petrified of making a scene. So... I took my years of practice, and held it in as best as I could. Once we got to the table, I started closing my eyes, blocking the bright lights with my hands over my eyebrow ridge, and trying and trying just to calm myself down. After I got a nice, hearty burger in me, and what seemed like a bucketful of fries, my nausea finally started to subside, but the rest was hardly fading away. I kept on thinking to myself how it felt like being a fish inside a fishbowl with a bunch of terrorising children thumping their fingers on the outside. Every voice seemed louder, every light seemed brighter, every feeling felt more sensitive...

When we left, I wasn't exactly reluctant to pass back through those front doors. I felt almost like I was going to pass out, like my heart was going to explode, and once again like I was going to throw up, but this time not because I was nauseous. Strangely, I was somewhat relieved when we stopped at Walmart. I'm not so anxious at Walmart, which seems to go against all social phobia mis-logic. However, there are a few factors involved, some more conscious, others more subconscious: it's bigger and has fewer people per square foot, it's not nearly as loud, people tend to keep to themselves, and just about everyone who goes to Walmart looks like they've given up on life, with messy hair, sweats, lack of make-up, and so on, making me look... almost good! Also, I've probably been to Walmart more than I've been any one place outside of my house.

Still, I was sweating, lightheaded, and antsy until... well... okay, it may not have completely gone away, yet. It's on and off, mostly when I think about all this, so particularly the whole time I've been writing this. I had almost forgotten what it was like to have this kind of anxiety. Usually, I'm just anxious about the possibility of being anxious, and am so avoidant that I avoid full-on panic mode. Well, I faced panic mode for the first time in a while, and it was not pleasant. So unpleasant, in fact, that I've almost considered never walking out the front door again... The treatment of anxieties often includes exposing yourself to what makes you anxious, little at a time, and recollect how you survived that experience, so you must be able to survive more! Well, this kind of had the opposite effect. Probably not nearly as gradual as would be used in treatment, which often causes the opposite. No, instead... I went through it, came out alive, and decided that I never want to experience that again. It'll happen again, I can be sure, but my avoidant personality will kick in in over-drive and I'll start hiding behind a barricade between me and the anxiety until the anxiety crushes me in my own barricade.

'Natalie' was probably the only thing that kept me from actually fainting, from actually making a scene, and from actually running out of... well, any given place like a madman. My brain has a tendency to develop defence mechanisms just about any time a distressing situation occurs, and the more distressing, the more radical the defence mechanism. Well, apparently my mind decided that I need a little 'voice of reason' in my head to try and keep me at least relatively afloat. I named her Natalie because I imagine the voice as the voice of the character Natalie from the show Perception, where she essentially serves the same purpose to the schizophrenic protagonist, Dr. Daniel Pierce. Unlike Daniel's Natalie, however, mine isn't a conjuration of the subconscious, nor is it a hallucination. It's more like a rational 'voice' within myself to try and negate the more frantic, irrational thoughts that tend to dominate my mind. And it helps me to be able to distinguish my rational side from my irrational side; how better to do that than to a) use a woman's voice versus my own, and b) base the voice on a character who serves the exact same purpose on my favorite still-running T.V. show?

When my irrational thoughts are less of a problem, Natalie tends to fade away, but when my irrational thoughts start to skyrocket, she tends to calmly and collectedly kick into action. Having hypothetical or imagined conversations in my mind is not unusual for me, but it is unusual for the conversations to be both very oppositional and productive. Usually, the conversations I have in my head are rooted in fear, trying to present many hypothetical conversations that might occur in the future with another person - sort of planning how to respond. 99.999999999999999% of the time, the hypothetical conversation never actually occurs in real life, and is moot. Another reason that I have conversations in my head is to try and sort out curiosities and thoughts in my mind, which is a lot easier when I imagine someone else, usually with a different vantage point, to interact with. Lastly, I've rationalised, partly with the help of Natalie, that the conversations were probably originally meant to replace my hallucinated 'voices'/'personalities' after getting on antipsychotics. I have immense trouble imagining images, moving or still, or just about anything abstract, so I instead think almost every single thing that goes through my head as streams of words, most often with my voice - as I hear it - as if I were saying the thoughts aloud. I'm not sure if this is even remotely unusual or not, but I would imagine that people can imagine things at least relatively more efficiently than through thinking the spoken word. Usually people can think of a concept in a flash, even if vague, without needing to even translate it into coherent sentences, but I'm not very good at that. If I can't say it aloud, I pretty much can't think it. I also can't seem to think or read words faster than I could speak them.

So, the next time that I feel like I'm in a fishbowl, being harassed by a bunch of evil little children poking at the glass, hopefully Natalie will be their to try and dissuade me of the irrational thoughts, to calm me down, and to get me through it. Since I'm utterly conscious of her being me, and vice versa (almost too aware), it's not like I'm 'depending' on another person or thing, as would usually be the case. Nope, it's just me trying to help me. Oh, and that also reminds me: if you're reading this and you tap on fishbowls with creatures in them... you probably shouldn't do that. It's not very nice.