Ben Norris

Mental panic attacks are the scarier version for me because they seem to come from nowhere. Often, my mind starts buzzing and filling up, even resembling the ESPN app multicast feature. Multiple streams are playing simultaneously, but only one has audio.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series on what mental illness feels like for me. Read the introduction and associated disclaimers here.

As I wrote before, I differentiate mental panic attacks from the more common variety I experience, physical panic attacks. In a physical panic attack, I am usually triggered as a result of intense emotions, and I can feel it building to some extent, or at least notice warning signs. Mental panic attacks seem to strike out of the blue, and thus are more uncertain and terrifying to me.

First episode

Even though I described them as being like an ESPN multicast in the introduction, it is not always this case for me. The first mental panic attack I experienced occurred while out on a walk with no headphones. I had been walking on a regular basis throughout the summer and fall last year, and one morning at the end of October, I was having trouble with my AirPods, so I just went walking without anything to listen to. As I neared the one mile point, I started to think that I needed to talk with my psychiatrist because my medications were not working out well. I am still not sure where my mind went, but I had the distinct thought, “I am not ok.” I decided to turn around and get straight home, even though I had planned for my walk to be longer.

Even later that morning, I could not remember the content of what was playing in my mind. I got to the point where the voices were shouting, and I felt completely overwhelmed. I wished that I had brought my headphones so that I would not be alone with my thoughts. I began to sing church hymns to myself as I walked, and one verse in particular stuck with me:

When dark clouds of trouble hang o’er us
And threaten our peace to destroy,
There is hope smiling brightly before us,
And we know that deliv’rance is nigh.
We doubt not the Lord nor his goodness.
We’ve proved him in days that are past.

We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet

I sang that over and over to myself until I got home and immediately crawled back in bed. My wife asked if I was ok, and my response was, “Not really.” She then asked if I could tell her about it, to which I replied, “Not yet.” She gave me a couple minutes and then told me she was scared and asked if I had gotten hurt or if I was having suicidal thoughts. I told her “No” and she just curled up to me and held me so I could fall asleep. A few hours later, she came back down and asked if I would let her in, and I was able to tell her about what had happened.

Multicast mode

One of my next mental panic attacks happened a couple months ago. I got up early one morning, and was getting ready to go to the temple. I could not find the right clothes, and started to get stressed and sat down in our closet. This is from my journal that day:

After a couple minutes, I reached up and grabbed my robe, turned out the light, and used it as a pillow to lay down for a bit. As I was laying there, I found that my mind started going like crazy. I had a few different trains of thought going loudly at the same time, and started picturing them like the ESPN app with multiple games at once. I started with two going on, and progressed to four happening all simultaneously. In the app, you can choose which one has audio at any time, but you can watch them all at once. That’s exactly how it felt. Then I heard some of the kids get up, and felt the stress that inevitably comes from them starting to get after each other. Luckily, I feel asleep.

Looking ahead

There are some similarities for me between physical and mental panic attacks. In both cases, I get to a point where I am overwhelmed by the sensations and cannot continue normally. They both exhaust me to the point where I need some recovery. They are both terrifying because I lose control of part of my body. And fortunately, the frequency of both is decreasing as I learn to manage my OCD more effectively.

I prefer to watch a single game at a time, whether in the ESPN app, or among the thought trains of my mind. That is not always my reality, and I am learning to not be so afraid when things do not go as I expect or intend. Moving forward, I may continue to experience mental panic attacks, but my goal is to step into them instead of recoiling and assuming the fetal position. Much of life is hard and scary, including my own mind at times. I am beginning to accept that.

The best analogy I have found for physical panic attacks is the Obscurus discovered by Newt Scamander. It sits dormant inside of me, ready to burst out and wreak havoc and destruction at any time.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series on what mental illness feels like for me. Read the introduction and associated disclaimers here.

I have had a number of panic attacks over the past few months. There are two different flavors, or types, that I have experienced. I will cover the second type, mental panic attacks, in a later post. I think of first type as physical panic attacks. During one of those, I become physically debilitated, and essentially lose control of my faculties for a time. These are usually short in duration, typically one to three minutes or so, and then the recovery can be anywhere from half an hour to an hour.

As I have worked through the beginning of treatment at the OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center, I have found out that I do not meet the criteria for panic disorder. That means that my panic attacks are a function of my OCD, which also means that as I work on managing my OCD, I have a good chance that my panic attacks will decrease in frequency and severity.

In the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, we were introduced to the Obscurus creature, and its host, the Obscurial. When I watched the movie, I was struck by the similarities between Credence losing control of his Obscurus, and my experience of a physical panic attack. Physical panic attacks have always come as a result of a heightened and flooded emotional state. Often, I am dropped to the ground, even forcibly, so that I end up with bruises on my arms and knees. My breathing becomes rapid and shallow, and sometimes I am left screaming. I am usually overcome with a physical sensation of pressure and tightness. I clutch my arms and squeeze and feel as if I am holding on for dear life. When it passes, I am left completely weak, in mind and body. I feel totally exhausted.

On the Harry Potter Fandom site, we read:

An Obscurus was the manifestation of the repressed energy of a magical child (known as an Obscurial). Described as a “dark” and “parasitic” force, an Obscurus was created when the child in question consciously attempted to repress their talent or were forced to do so through physical or psychological abuse. This energy could manifest itself as a separate entity that can erupt in violent, destructive fury.

This further solidified the connection for me. The energy inside me that bursts out during a panic attack feels just like a separate, violent, destructive entity. I often feel like I am repressing it and pushing it back down inside me. The more I fear it, the more power it has over me.

Unfortunately, most of my panic attacks have occurred at home with my family. I have made sense of this as I learn what triggers them, and come to a greater understanding of the distortions in my brain surrounding my family. I often feel a deep sense of failure when I do not live up to my unrealistic and idealistic expectations of myself. I project a lot of disappointment on others toward myself, especially on my wife. This means that at times, I can be a difficult person to live with. In a household of six children, there are ample opportunities for patience to be stretched thin, and for me to make choices that are not in line with perfect parenting. This is particularly challenging when those choices can lead me to an emotional outburst and physical panic attack.

I do not know what the future of the Fantastic Beasts movies holds, and how things will go with Credence. I would like to think that he will learn how to control his Obscurus more so that he is able to live his life. That is how I see myself moving forward as well.

There will always (at least it feels like always at this point) be an undercurrent of risk that the beast inside of me could awaken and leave me writhing on the floor. But as I get to know it better, it loses some of its potency. And as I learn to manage my OCD more effectively, hopefully I will experience fewer and fewer attacks.

📖 Steal Like an Artist

By Austin Kleon

When depression is weighing me down, I feel like I am staring down the dark pit Rey faces on the island of Ahch-To.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series on what mental illness feels like for me. Read the introduction and associated disclaimers here.

Early in my experience with mental illness in the summer of 2018, I was trying to explain how I was feeling to my wife. I had the idea to show her a clip from Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The first time Rey learned from Luke Skywalker about the Force, she saw various aspects of the island, and the balance that existed. She saw the pit on the island, and sensed the great darkness it represented. For a few seconds, her perspective was poised over the pit, looking down into the depths as it looked larger and larger.

My diagnosis does not include clinical depression. So when I speak of my experience with depression, it is in the context of depression associated with OCD and anxiety. Many mental illnesses are related—feeling anxious leads you to a mental state that is discouraging and feels depressive.

With that disclaimer, I will state that I have felt the crushing effects of depression. There have been many days since I started to grapple with these issues that I have felt that I was floating in the air above that dark pit, ready to plunge down at any moment.

Most of the time that I recognize the pit in my mind, it is accompanied with feelings of hopelessness. When I am staring down into the darkness, it feels like it will never end. My mind revolves around the darkness, and starts telling me that there is no light at the end, and I will never escape these feelings. Those are dark days.

In the movie, the scene climaxes with a huge fountain of water spurting up through the pit like a geyser and Rey collapsing on the rocks. This seems like it would be the perfect end to one of my depressive episodes. No matter what, I know that I am going to be exhausted, and left gasping for air, either physically or mentally. But to have the sweet cleansing rush of water course through the last bits of my mind feels like the best possible outcome.

This cleansing purge is not always what comes to me at the end of a depressive episode. When it does come, it is often in the form of writing. I am able to process the overwhelming thoughts and feelings I am having through getting them out on the page. As I write, and read what I have written, I am able to identify destructive patterns and distorted thoughts that I can confront with compassion and truth. The reality is that things are rarely as bleak as my mind sees them. And nearly always they are more nuanced. I have a tendency to see everything in black and white, and the more that I can see in between two extremes, the healthier my mind can be.

The most important thing for me to remember is that any episodes, or even days, in which I am staring down the pit will come to an end. The darkness does not last forever. If you find yourself floating above a fictitious island, looking down in a dark pit, remind yourself that this, too, shall pass.

Anxiety for me is like the arc reactor, as shown in Iron Man 2. At times, it pulses and the energy it emits ebbs and flows. But it is always spreading poison throughout my body.

Note: This is part of an ongoing series on what mental illness feels like for me. Read the introduction and associated disclaimers here.

As I wrote about in my coming out story, I only became aware that I was affected by mental illness in the summer of 2018. One of the first physical symptoms that I noticed was a burning in my chest. I remember so clearly the day when I realized it was present. My wife had arranged for us to have a nice date together, and we went to the carnival for the night. We had a lovely evening. I had started therapy by that point, and when I realized that there was a sensation in my chest, I felt almost betrayed by it. My thinking was that because I was in therapy and I was working to make things better, I shouldn’t be feeling this now. It felt like I was doing worse than before starting therapy. I chuckled at myself with my wife, and came to the conclusion that the feeling had been in my chest for a long time, but I had learned to ignore it. I felt worse now because I was finally becoming aware of how I was actually feeling.

Since that time, I have noticed the same burning sensation come and go. In religious terms, sometimes you hear of a “burning in the bosom” which is not what I was experiencing. I struggled for a long time to find the right analogy to help me to understand the feeling I was having. Finally, I watched Iron Man 2 again, and saw the early arc reactor. In the movie, this is the device that gives Iron Man his power, but it is also killing him as he uses it because it is spreading poison throughout his body. It hit me that this was nearly the exact way in which I experienced anxiety. The analogy breaks down if taken too far, with the most glaring discrepancy being that I do not believe I derive my power from my anxiety.

Having a mental image to associate with the feeling that was sitting in my chest made it a little less scary. Instead of having a small monster inside my chest writhing and clawing to get out, there was just a small, powerful disc of energy. The disc would glow and pulsate at times, and the feeling would be stronger, and at other times it would lie dormant. But since I noticed it that day in the carnival, there has not been a single day without it.

The poisonous aspect resonated with me as well. When the arc reactor is powered up and emitting energy the most strongly, it is causing physical harm and side effects. The same thing happens for me. When my anxiety flares up, it often has immediate physical symptoms. I will write more about the most of extreme of those separately in How physical panic attacks feel. But long before the panic strikes, my body is noticeably affected. My heart starts to race, and my breath gets more shallow, as if my chest is not capable of expanding fully. My judgment begins to be impaired, and my temper shortens. Sounds startle me much more easily. Patience wanes, and I feel as if I am losing some control of my executive functions. In many ways, this is easy to understand or explain, especially after listing a number of the symptoms. This is what happens when your brain gets in a fight-or-flight mindset, which is exactly what is happening. I am being flooded with adrenaline, and responding to threats that I perceive.

Learning to live with this anxiety reactor is remarkably similar to Tony Stark’s work. Left unchecked, this is going to cause serious damage to me and my life. In Tony’s case, he had to invent a completely new element to create another model of the arc reactor. I am unlikely to build a centrifuge in my basement and synthesize an element, but I am finding ways to adjust the arc reactor with which I will keep living. One of the reasons that my brain goes into fight-or-flight is that I have often taken steps to soothe my brain and address the threat, which strengthens the perceived reality of the threat. I am learning to notice the pulsing of the arc reactor, and instead of firing up my hand cannons, just breathe and acknowledge it.

Essentially, I am seeking to downgrade the model. I want a less powerful arc reactor. I do not think that I will ever be completely without one. But I am hopeful that I will learn to live with it more peacefully and calmly.

🧘🏻‍♂️ What a great perspective. This feels even more important to remember when many of the difficulties come from yourself. Even those are meant to help you grow. From my Daily Calm.

An exploration of the phenomenon of considering a topic for the purpose of answering someone else’s question instead of just learning for yourself.

Links

💮 Coming out (tl;dr Hi, I’m Ben, and I have OCD. 👋)

What is OCD?

The OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT)

Black and white thinking (Splitting)

A series with an inside look at the effects of mental illness and the way that I have made sense of it in my life.

Introduction/disclaimers

For a couple months, I have wanted to write about my mental health, and the different disorders or symptoms that I have faced. I continue to improve, and am currently working in an intensive outpatient program for my OCD. In a glorious cycle, as I become better at facing my mental illness, I am able to be more objective and detached about my experience, which helps me face and handle it better. So, while I do hope that sharing my experience can be helpful for others to recognize what they may be facing, this is primarily a selfish series in which I want to better understand myself and what I’m going through.

This is further a selfish series because I want to capture the current state of my thoughts around mental health. I can already feel myself bending and changing in my treatment. I know that I will progress and see things, including myself, differently as I move forward. Writing my experiences now preserves this fragile part of my mind, just like a before picture. I do not know if this is a series I will revisit in the future, but I already want to read it again in six months when I am a different person.

My mind requires me to issue a few disclaimers. I am not a mental health care professional. Essentially, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I may mix up terminology. I will almost certainly speak about disorders and symptoms incorrectly. I come to this as a fellow traveler on the road to discovery, seeking merely to share my observations of the journey, not as a sage atop the mountain of mastery and understanding. I do not speak definitively on any of these topics. Instead, I speak highly subjectively of my experience with them. If this is triggering for you, leave it. If it is offensive to you because of how wrong I am, I apologize. Try your best to let it go. If it is helpful to you, find a way to pay it forward and extend care and compassion to people in your life. I take no responsibility for what you will do with what I say. I simply seek to share my story.

Articles

• What anxiety feels like
• What depression feels like
• What physical panic attacks feel like
• What mental panic attacks feel like
• What OCD feels like
• What intrusive thoughts feel like

Conclusion

Writing this series has been a wonderful experience for me. I have found the process to be therapeutic as I confront different dark realities of my mind and shine light on them. It has also been helpful to get concrete examples to better understand what I am experiencing. When I notice certain feelings in my body, I can now recognize them more easliy. As they have become more familiar, they have lost some of their danger and mystique.

I mentioned in my microblog post that this has been my best writing. As I alluded to, I mean that in a couple senses of the word. First, I feel the most proud at having written this series. It was deep and meaningful to me, and I felt vulnerable in sharing these private thoughts and experiences, and I celebrate that. This is the kind of writing I want to do more of. Second, this was immensely helpful to me to process and concretize my perceptions. I understand myself better, and feel a little more self-compassion.

Everyone has been or will be touched by mental illness. My hope is that we can have a more open and honest conversation about our experiences. Only in this way can we encourage the people we love (including ourselves!) to get the help that we so desperately need. I am so grateful for the support structure I am blessed to enjoy, particularly for my wife. And I hope that I can help others and pay forward some of what I have received.

📖 From the Earth to the Moon

By Jules Verne

🧘🏻‍♂️ What a beautiful thing to say to myself. I found that at the end of my meditation, my compassion and love for others had strengthened through offering those to myself. From my Daily Calm.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This summarizes the past few months for me. One constant step of discomfort followed by another, all in the service of regaining my life and being able to be present. From my Daily Calm.

📖 🎧 Wolverine: The Long Night

(Podcast)

🧘🏻‍♂️ This can be a real challenge. Ironically, it feels easiest when I lean in to my thoughts as feelings instead of trying to push them away. From my Daily Calm

There is something so healing about being around new life emerging. Definitely needed today.

❄️ 🥶 I am so ready for the snow to be done…

After coming to grips with the fact that I have a mental illness, I realized that I am part of the secret society of mental health sufferers.

It is sad and ironic that one of the pernicious lies of mental illness is that you are alone and different from everyone else. While there is some truth to being different than most (or maybe just some!) people, you are far from alone. There are so many other people that grapple with the same kinds of issues.

I have been humbled and touched by the response to my post a few weeks ago announcing my own struggles with mental health, Coming out. So many people reached out with kind words and compassion. But even more than that, many people responded by sharing some of their own struggles with mental health.

I think it is fair to say at this point that everyone has been touched by mental health issues, either directly or through a loved one.

At times, I almost wish we wore a special emblem like the Freemasons to be able to easily identify each other. I understand that this is a deeply private part of people’s lives, and many are not willing to share it openly. From my own experience, I have found so much healing in acknowledging my struggle and openly sharing with others. I think we often fear stigma or backlash—I certainly did for a long time myself. But I have been met with compassion and love instead, and I relish the chance to extend that to others.

I want to pause and acknowledge the privilege I enjoy. As a straight white man, I have all of society behind me to fall back on. There are so many people who suffer with mental health struggles that do not have the same resources and privileges. I can only imagine what they go through.

Whether you belong to this secret society of sufferers or not, we all need understanding and compassion. I hope that we can be more comfortable sharing our struggles with each other, and when someone is vulnerable that we respond with validation and encouragement.

🎥 Captain Marvel

👍 Seriously impressive and enjoyable. Definitely one I look forward to watching with my daughters in particular. Probably my favorite movie in a long time.

🧘🏻‍♂️ This can be challenging when it feels like the storm has been raging incessantly. But there is always hope for the future. We can’t know what it will hold. From my Daily Calm

💮 🎧 Just finished season 3 of The Hilarious World of Depression. I hope to write more about my thoughts and feelings on it soon. I am profoundly grateful for such a wonderful resource. It has been a huge help to not feel so alone as I learn to cope with mental illness.

🧘🏻‍♂️ I feel like I catch glimpses of this at times. There is a quiet, still pond that is accessible only through the sometimes strenuous toil of settling. From my Daily Calm

It’s a little surprising how easy it is to blow a huge number of hours playing Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo Switch, especially when the kids are watching. All of a sudden the day is almost gone! At least we’ve spent most of it together. 😛🎮

This felt good today. I thought I would just leave Apple’s marketing text. The award got me out of the house, even in the snow, for a walk (on the track at the gym 😉).

I earned this award inspired by International Women’s Day with my #AppleWatch. #CloseYourRings

🧘🏻‍♂️ What a wonderful day to remember and honor the important women in my life. I am so profoundly grateful. I am conscious that I am not better than, or worse than, the women I know and love. Just different. And together we are more. From my Daily Calm

💮 Started my first real day of exposure and response prevention (ERP) treatment today. Wow. It’s rough. 😖 But it was so powerful and hopeful to feel the change that came to me by the end. It’s going to be a hard road, but there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.

This never works as a parent. We can’t tell someone to do the action that represents the feeling we want them to develop.

I went out on a walk a few days ago, and overhead a scuffle between a couple small children. One of them started crying, and then the dad noticed. He yelled out, “Tell him sorry right now!” I had to chuckle to myself as I continued walking. I completely understood the dad, and how easy it is to say something so unhelpful and asinine.

Most likely, the dad wanted the offending child to actually be sorry. He wanted the child to learn that what he had done was not acceptable, and to feel remorse. If the child had actually felt remorse, an apology would have naturally followed. As parents, we recognize how silly it is to tell our children, “Feel sorry for what you just did.” It is so much easier to focus on the action rather than the feeling, and so that is where our parenting focuses.

This is similar in many ways to the phenomenon I noticed a few weeks ago, and wrote about in Living with incompetence. We often settle for focusing on what is easier to measure, and leave aside the more important, but more amorphous, root cause.

When we fall into this trap as parents, we teach our children the same behavior. They grow up learning that recognizing and feeling remorse for injuring someone else is not important, but rather the outward expression of those feelings. We don’t need to feel a certain way—we just have to act a certain way, and then we will be acceptable.

A better approach to this kind of situation is to stop any violence and then redirect our children’s attention to more positive actions. We ignore the inappropriate behavior as much as possible, and look for opportunities to reinforce positive behavior. Then later, we can have a discussion with the child when emotions have calmed. We can explain why the behavior was wrong, and the impact it has on other people. We don’t need to teach our children to feel remorse; instead we teach them empathy, and when they injure another, the remorse naturally follows.

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems attacking society, and especially our children, today is a lack of empathy. We have become utterly self-absorbed, and all events and actions are viewed in relation to their impact on us. We have lost the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and see how our behavior and actions might be affecting them.

We must first master this skill in our own lives. We have to be self-aware enough to get outside of ourselves and care more about other people. As we develop and model this behavior, we become capable of passing it on to others, especially our children. As a result, the world will be a much better place.