Identifying and Dealing with Anxiety and Emotional Shock During the Pandemic from someone with C-PTSD

Some tips on identifying and dealing with Anxiety and Emotional Shock

During the COVID-19 Pandemic

From Someone with C-PTSD

I’ve spent pretty much my whole life with, at minimum, a low-level feeling of being under threat. Feeling like something, someone, somehow – is about to attack. On bad days, that sinister feeling ramps up to an overwhelming sense of imminent disaster.

The strange thing about being a survivor of child abuse with C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Syndrome Disorder) right now is that, on the one hand, you’re going to be triggered way more than usual.I know that from just the past week or so of escalation of the virus in the media and around the world.

Example: Just this past week, I was going along, seemingly fine, getting my office work done (from home) and I started to struggle to breathe. I ignored it for a bit, kept working. I started to feel dizzy. Okay … time for some intervention, I realized. I started to bring out a few of the laundry-list of techniques that I’ve learned over the past 6 years that I’ve been engaged with healing my trauma. The first few didn’t really work. I ended up in full blown “Flight” mode (As in, Fight / Flight / Freeze) – pacing back and forth around our little apartment, rushing out onto the patio, back inside again. In my head started the doom loop about how I couldn’t breathe because it was COVID-19 and I was going to die.

And yet … I’d had exactly those symptoms before. In fact, for about a year and a half these attacks happened quite regularly. So I managed to hold on to that tiny part of my brain that remembered and could match up the symptoms, then and now. When I made that connection, I engaged a series of Acupressure points on myself that had worked in the past. And viola! I could breathe again!

And think again.

So wait, what was the pro-side? After 6 years, I’ve finally started to learn some techniques to help mitigate panic, anxiety, and emotional shock, and – perhaps more importantly, I’ve started to learn how to track my body and mind, so that I can tell when it’s happening.

So that’s why I thought I’d share. Because with the world-changing events going on around us, the depth of the uncertainty about what’s to come, I know that a lot of others out there, even those without C-PTSD or PTSD, will be feeling intense anxiety and even emotional shock.

First, a few ways to identify if you’re headed into a full blown anxiety attack, emotional shock, or perhaps if you’ve been triggered into your own trauma. Here are a few things to watch yourself for to try to catch yourself before you’ve fallen too deep down that rabbit hole:

1.     Fear, anxiety, panic attacks. This includes a whole range of symptoms. Overwhelming sense of dread or terror, going blank, irritability, feeling jumpy. Physical symptoms can include heart palpitations, upset stomach, headache, dizziness, shortness of breath, shaking, insomnia.

2.     Brain fog. You can’t think straight, can’t concentrate, lose focus easily.

3.     Dissociation. This is the process of disconnecting from your own thoughts, feelings, memories, identity, and even your body. You could even get a sensation of floating, or like you are watching your own life as if it were a movie, or like you’re a ghost watching the world (this is a further form of Dissociation called Derealization/Depersonalisation, which I am quite familiar with).

4.     Physical side effects. I mentioned some in #1 – but essentially this is because your body has been triggered to go into fight or flight mode. This releases adrenaline and a whole host of other hormones. In addition to the list above, also add things like random aches and pains to the list.

5.     Exhaustion/Fatigue. This tends to come with more long term symptoms – but even in the short term in can take hold. This can be because of insomnia, but a general sense of unrelenting fatigue without having a reason is a key sign of trauma.

6.     Your emotions are all over the map. One minute you feel amazingly powerful, happy, positive, the next like a small child about to be punished. Cycles of shame can arise, as well as blame, anger, and guilt.

7.     Old patterns raise their ugly heads. Old habits that we’ve managed to come to terms with may come back: from negative thinking patterns to addictive behaviors.

8.     Depression and hopelessness.

9.     Inability to feel compassion for yourself or for others.

So … if you’re tracking yourself and noticing some of these arising. Or even just that nagging pit of the stomach feeling of anxiousness – what can help?

Before you can start to address the emotions and the overwhelm, it’s important to get yourself out of shock, back into your body and to fully engage your brain. When we are triggered into Fight/Flight/Freeze, a large part of our brains actually go off-line and so we lose access to logic and compassion. It’s important to reboot, get the different sides of the brain talking to each other again, in order to start to address the trauma.

These techniques can help with the reboot:

1.     Cook’s Hook Up. It’s a technique where you cross one ankle over the other, then one arm over the other, twist like a pretzel, and do deep breathing. You can find tutorials online. This helps get your left and right brain talking to each other again and also helps reroute disruptive energy in the body.

2.     Ice. This is more for when things get a bit extreme, but it works. Put some ice on your forehead or the back of your neck. It kind of helps reset your brain into the here and now, getting it out of a shock or trauma loop.

3.     Intense smells. Like ice, it’s a way to cut through the noise. Essential oils are great for this. Lavender is really calming – but Peppermint can be great for clearing out the fog.

4.     Tapping. This can be just one finger on each hand, or your feet, or your hands on your knees. Tap back and forth, left-right, left-right. Again, getting your brain to connect left to right.

5.     Touch parts of your body and name them. Hold your foot, say “This is my foot”. Touch your left shoulder, “This is my left shoulder.” Sometimes it’s good to do this a few times, or to tap or squeeze the body part. You’re bringing your attention to that place, re-entering your body.

6.     Box breathing. There are so many different varieties of breathing techniques that are useful. Box breathing is using a 4/4/4/4 pattern: in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold out 4, repeat. Count as you breathe. Feel the air in your lungs.

7.     Heart Math. This is a great technique that allows us to reconnect with our heart center. Look up more details on line. The basics are: first, focus on the area where your heart is, basically center of your chest. Just focus for a bit. Then, start to breath in and out and imagine that your breaths are going into and coming out of your heart. Do that for several breaths. Next, think of someone or something you love. Try to feel the sensation of that feeling in your heart as you continue the heart breathing.

8.     Swallow water. I know this sounds a bit strange, but it is weirdly efficient. Basically just take a small sip of water, cool/cold is usually better because you can feel it more easily. Feel the water travel down your throat, all the way into your stomach. Give yourself space between sips to notice your throat, your body, your reactions. You know you’ve got it when you notice that your body makes a small involuntary sigh after a sip of water.

9.     Notice colors. Pick a color, say blue – now notice everything in the room, the car, the store, the area, that is blue. When you find something blue, say the world blue in your head or out loud.

10.  Acupressure points. Here are some great points for dealing with anxiety (taken from a pdf I got online called “Self-Care for Anxiety – Tips from Chinese Medicine”. These are the ones that helped me with my recent panic attack. I do them in the order shown, but I don't think that that is necessary.

When you’re stuck in shock, triggered, it’s easy to believe that the feelings or thoughts you have at that moment are forever. Once you are back – in your body and your mind, it becomes easier to see that all things change. All things pass. This doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t make the suffering of the world or yourself less … but believe me, it makes a difference. It’s a door.

A personal lesson about fear ….

I haven’t posted a blog since just before the election. Right afterward I had lots of ideas for blogs, including one about fear. I wanted to post a poem by Joy Harjo called “I Give You Back.” It’s a poem I have loved for a long time. On the Wednesday following the election the poem deeply moved and inspired me to work past my initial grief and fear about the election results.

But I didn’t post that article. Or the three or four others I considered in the following weeks. A month later here I am. So why didn’t I post? What happened? Well … fear.

Fear is one of the great inventions of the human evolutionary process. Fear alerts us to danger, both physical and emotional, and can prompt us to respond in a way that will save our lives, triggering the “Fight or Flight” response.

Fear is usually real and valid. For immigrants, women, Muslims, and many others who Trump and his cabal of cronies maligned during the campaign, that fear is devastatingly real. For the working class that Trump promised to raise up that fear is likely to become real very soon. (He has already betrayed them with appointments like Andrew Puzder, CEO of Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s – who has come out as opposed to raising the minimum wage, against overtime pay, and against paid sick time, as well as being anti-union -- as Secretary of Labor.)

Like so many women out there who have been the object of sexual predation (in my early childhood and again in high school), I watched Trump’s campaign in horror. His arrogant dismissal of women, his school-boy name-calling, his body-shaming, his use of the age old “she had her period” (though much more disgustingly stated) to try and reduce the valid questions of a journalist to so much feminine irrationalism – these examples of his misogyny were only made more urgent by the numerous women who came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.  

Its not that I was living under some kind of delusion that sexism was done and over with in American culture. Far from it. And its not that I think every person who voted for Trump is a malignant misogynist. But those voters were able to overlook his sexism and sexual predation when they voted for him. As happens so often in our culture those voters “let it slide”. This is the same thing that happens on college campuses where date rapists get off with a slap on the wrist, or in corporate or military culture where years of sexual harassment and assault go unpunished.

The election of Trump was a signal that some very large portion of the population are tacitly okay with misogyny, just as it shows a large part of the population are tacitly okay with racism and xenophobia. Not that that should be a surprise either … the lack of any real action on the epidemic of police killings of black people which led to the “Black Lives Matter” movement should be proof enough that just because the United States elected a black president in 2008, we aren’t living in a “post-racial” society.

And so back to fear ... There is one more, lesser known “F” that is often triggered by fear. In addition to “fight” and “flight” – there is also “freeze.” Its another one of those hardwired, gut-level, animal responses. Think of the wild rabbit in the brush – freezing in its tracks as you walk by on a trail.

For me personally, freeze has always been my brand of fear response. It started for me as a very young child, as a victim of sexual and emotional abuse.  If I freeze, if I become small enough, quiet enough, if I’m good enough … It’s the reaction tied, for me, with dissociation (which in psychology is the detachment from physical and emotional experience) – a pattern that has continued throughout my life. The ongoing freeze-fear often kept me distanced from friends, lovers, family, from physical and emotional joy. This numbness led me to self-harm in high school, and later led me into a multi-year low-level depression that I wasn’t even able to identify until I was on the other side of it. This fear has kept me from expressing myself, being authentic, from writing, and from engaging with the world for decades. I don’t share any of this for any other reason than to stand in solidarity with every other person on the planet who lives with fear. One way or another, that’s pretty much all 7 billion of us.

I share this because my response in the days following Trump’s election was initially a vow to engage with my fear, rather than let it rule my life. It’s a work in progress. This fear still lives inside me. This fear kept me from writing or posting this article until now (and I am shaking as I press the “post” button). And that is what people in power, people trying to exploit our fears, rely on. They want our fears to spin us out into attacking each other, into immobilizing us, into preventing us from banding together. Our fear helps them maintain control.

So here is the thing about fear … it is always a signal to pay attention. Whether it’s a politician threatening a Muslim registry and a wall – or a gut-level fear of being fully present and telling our story -- fear wants us to pay attention and see what’s really going on. It took me decades to start actually paying attention to the daily signals of fear in my body – to believe in that physical response and begin to investigate it.

So, here we go, finally – a poem from Joy Harjo about engaging with fear. She posted the poem on her Facebook page in July of this year with a preface and an offer to share it far and wide:

“Because of the fear monster infecting this country, I have been asked for this poem, this song. Feel free to use it, record it, and share. Please give credit. This poem came when I absolutely needed it. I was young and nearly destroyed by fear. I almost didn’t make it to twenty-three. This poem was given to me to share.” – Joy Harjo

Fear Poem, or I Give You Back

I release you, my beautiful and terrible
fear. I release you. You were my beloved
and hated twin, but now, I don’t know you
as myself. I release you with all the
pain I would know at the death of
my children.

You are not my blood anymore.

I give you back to the soldiers
who burned down my home, beheaded my children,
raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters.
I give you back to those who stole the
food from our plates when we were starving.

I release you, fear, because you hold
these scenes in front of me and I was born
with eyes that can never close.

I release you
I release you
I release you
I release you

I am not afraid to be angry.
I am not afraid to rejoice.
I am not afraid to be black.
I am not afraid to be white.
I am not afraid to be hungry.
I am not afraid to be full.
I am not afraid to be hated.
I am not afraid to be loved.

To be loved, to be loved, fear.

Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash.
You have gutted me but I gave you the knife.
You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire.

I take myself back, fear.
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice
my belly, or in my heart my heart
my heart my heart.

But come here, fear
I am alive and you are so afraid
of dying.

c. Joy Harjo, “She Had Some Horses”