Let us imagine that you are waiting at a bus stop on a grey Tuesday afternoon. Extending this imaginative scenario, let us assume that despite having waited at this bus stop before, you are in an anxious state. From the seat you are resting on, you scan your immediate field of perception, giving special attention to places to retreat to, should your anxiety escalate. Although you are unable to visually see your home, you detect its proximity as a reassuring warmth in your body. Still waiting for the arrival of the bus, you are beginning to grow impatient. Standing up up to gain better view of incoming traffic, you experience a surge of dizziness pulse through your head. The dizziness is only abated when you see the bus approaching. You exhale slowly. When it arrives, you are relived that the bus is comparatively free of passengers. Those passengers that have boarded the bus are either gazing out the window or otherwise buried in newspapers. You take a seat and continue to breathe slowly.
The electric doors close and the bus resumes its journey. At the next stop, a flux of passengers enters the bus, one of whom sits next to you. Experiencing the person as trapping you in the seat, you tense your fist and become aware of a hostility directed toward the passenger. A transformation is beginning to take place in your experience of the world. Every heterogeneous marker that you pass—a square, a monument, a notable building—becomes further material evidence of your distance from home. Indeed, you measure space less in geometrical terms, and more in respect of how anxious your body has become. When the bus passes over a bridge, you feel the ground beneath you swell with vertiginous absence. As though you are floating in midair, you grip the person next to you tightly with the aim of rooting yourself in place. Before you have the chance to mutter an apology, you body has begun another series of involuntary reactions and spasms. You grip the collar of your shirt so tight that three of the buttons proceed to pop off in a comical fashion, landing somewhere on the floor of the bus. As the bus turns a sharp corner, you automatically fix your hand on the window, as you feel your inner organs judder violently with every turn in the bus’s course.
Beyond the bridge, the bus is now in dense crowds and traffic infested roads. It stops in the midst of congestion. The large windows open onto an endless stream of anonymous and depersonalised human beings. At times, you cannot even be sure that these material entities are indeed human, such is the intense aura of unfamiliarity permeating the enclosure of the bus. The trembling you experienced when crossing the bridge is now accompanied by oscillating and intense pangs of hunger and thirst. Sensing that you might imminently slip into unconsciousness, you wade through your bag in a frenzied state looking for a bottle of water. The respite afforded by the water is only momentary. As the bus surfaces from the traffic, it journeys through a series of alleyways. The high walls, enclosed darkness, and lack of view give you the impression of being swallowed at sea by mounting waves and thunderous clouds. All that prevents you from succumbing to a primal urge to flee is the thought of being abandoned in an unfamiliar part of the city. That you are able to maintain the course is only because you are now clutching your phone, braced to establish contact with the world of familiarity. As you grip the phone tightly in your hand, a memory comes to you.
Once, you had drifted to sleep while riding the bus and awoken to find yourself in an alien part of the city with the bus devoid of all its passengers. You remember the sinking feeling and violent panic you experienced that afternoon, the sense that you could be anywhere at anytime. Indeed, so intense was the discomfort of not being placed, that you felt yourself drown with the material reality beneath you dissolve. Lacking all means of orientation, every grain of your material body seemed to be diluted in the visceral anxiety of not knowing where you were.
Haunted by the memory and now in a state of amplified anxiety, you submit to an urge to use your phone. There, you mutter the words through trembling teeth, “On the bus…can’t breathe…feel like I’m going to die…” The voice on the other end of the call is familiar and calming. As the person begins to talk you out of an anxious state, you become aware of the incongruity of the situation, as though the reassuring tone of their voice were mutually incompatible with the alienness of the bus journey. But the two realms are now joined in the space of the bus. Hearing the trusted person remind you to breathe slowly, you absorb the calmness of their tone into your bodily being, as though you had previously forgotten to breathe and were instead relying on an external cue to activate your breathing apparatus. Slowly you begin to resume a non-anxious mode of being. Only instead of returning to a pre-anxious body, the post-anxious body you have now become is drained of energy, depleted of spirit, and in the midst of an intense migraine. Looking around the interior of the bus, the wariness you previously felt gives way to a numb exhaustion. You sink into the chair in a state of deflated gloom.
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I think it should come with a bit of a health warning however, as at a certain point in our trajectory towards recovery with panic anxiety your story could well induce a panic attack in some....I am sure that is not your intention however. Chemical imbalance can contribute to anxiety and so in turn can start a panic attack, this is fact and so I would have to differ with you there. An interesting post though Max and glad that you have been able to get a handle on your anxiety. Best wishes Vx
