Welcome to Bat Poo Crazy, episode one of my social anxiety and panic disorder story.
Where we’ve been
So far we haven’t been anywhere. This is episode one.
Where we’re going
Three quarters of my lifetime has been driven by efforts to avoid panic attacks and anxiety provoking situations. I’m one of an estimated 300 million people around the world who suffer from an anxiety disorder.
These episodes of Bat Poo Crazy lay out what I have learned from years and years of panic and anxiety disorder, and most encouragingly, how I have arrived at a decently functional place in my life.
My story includes a heavy element of advice for people working to be writers.
For one, I have been a writer most of my adult life.
For two, accurately or not, it seems anxiety, and its twin, depression, might be more common among creative people. Sometimes I think these syndromes are the universe’s price for the gift of creativity.
If my story can help and encourage, what’s not to like? As with any story, there’s an urge to start at the beginning. Episode One is mostly a little about me and how I got to this point.
Let’s start with:
My hero’s journey
My life, maybe yours too, parallels the classic fiction / movie plotting device often referred to as the hero’s journey.
Roll film. Open on me as a reasonably happy, rather motivated sixth grade kid. Boom! The challenge of my story hits in the form of a series of out of the blue panic attacks.
The plot further thickens as I begin structuring my life around avoiding things I think might trigger further attacks. I didn’t have any wish to die, but fearing I would lose control and stab myself, I avoided knives.
Worried that I might throw up on my date, I didn’t date. Fearing any losing of control, I would fret for days before a social situation, even those that I would follow through and, in the aftermath, find I actually had had a good time.
Despite all that, I managed some milestones: graduating from college (I was able to live at home), getting married (I randomly met a very supportive person), raising a child. (Once he was born, raising him just had to be done. No matter how I felt.)
But, over the years I missed a lot of opportunities. Starting with Boy Scout camp, then high school cross country team trip from Indiana to run in Colorado, job opportunities, promotions, the fulfilment of what might have been my calling to be a leader, senior prom.
Ah, I’m guessing I don’t get much sympathy for the lost prom. But our after prom was probably the only after prom ever played by Alice Cooper. Yes the singer of Dead Babies fame. I am sorry I had to miss that.
The all is lost point of my plot climaxed a couple of years ago, when, for the first time in my life, I got seriously depressed about my lifetime of avoidance. A few days I spent most of the day in bed.
Then, as happens in fiction, at least in happy-ending fiction, I had:
My ah hah moment
Seemingly overnight after decades of self-help books, visualization exercises, and counseling I realized all those therapy things were not getting me where I wanted to be. I was treading water. I was functioning but making little progress towards normalcy.
That ah hah solution was painfully simple. Stop running away. Of course, if it were that simple, I would have gotten over the first panic attacks as soon as they happened. In fact, if it really were that simple no one would ever suffer from psychosocial avoidance behavior.
But for me, that aha moment was the beginning of the climax of a classic story plot device where the victim finally stands up to the bully. More about this as we go along.
It was my sensitive, writerly personality that probably aided and abetted my anxiety. Interestingly, it might have been the same personality that got me out. At least, according to:
Kurt Vonnegut’s take on writers and mental health
Recall that Vonnegut was the author of, among other things, Slaughter House Five, which is probably still required reading 55 years after its publication and 15 years after his death.
He thought that being a writer was a decent place when facing mental health challenges.
Quoting here: “Writers get a nice break in one way, at least: They can treat their mental illnesses every day.”
I say, take that doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, plumbers, ministers, etc. Apparently you only sporadically get to commune with your inner demons.
So let’s start with:
Who am I? Who are you?
Repeat after me. “I am a writer.”
What’s your gut reaction to that sentence? Your choices are:
- Damn straight!
- Yea. Well…Ok, sure.
- Maybe.
- Shh. Maybe, but don’t tell anyone.
- I’m not feeling it.
Let’s see what I can do to get myself, and you too, up to choice number 1.
I strongly believe that most anyone interested in being a writer can eventually achieve the damn straight state of feeling. But some of us may have to address some other challenges, including:
Imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome sounds a bit self-explanatory. But, slow learner that I am, I came across the best definition only a couple of years ago in Buzzfeed advice for starting a podcast:
“Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you’re in over your head, everybody knows it, and it’s just a matter of time before they expose you as a fraud.
“You might be experiencing this if you find yourself saying things like: “Why am I even starting a podcast?” “Wouldn’t somebody else be better at this?” “I’m going to look like an idiot when I publish this…
“There are already two other podcasts on the same topic, and they’re going to think I copied them.”
Every one of those self beatings have haunted my thoughts. And, of course, you can see that imposter syndrome isn’t just an issue for podcasters. You can easily substitute any form of communication or artwork.
Why am I even starting a novel? Why am I even trying to write this magazine article? Why am I even trying to build a blog? Why would anyone want to see my paintings?
We sensitive people get pretty good at beating ourselves up. And, even if we aren’t, we always have to deal with the perceptions of the crowd jeering us from the stadium cheap seats. You know the:
Snarky people that don’t help
The implication behind snarky people’s comments seems to be if you’re not a household name, you aren’t a real writer. Granted that could just be my oversensitive interpretation. But I’ve noticed there are people I meet who project an air of “Oh, you’re a writer. That’s nice.”
Like they want to pat me on the head and say, “Sort of a rich man’s wife’s kind of hobby isn’t it? How difficult can it be? You get to sit on your butt all day.” Shortly we’ll talk about standing up and flipping off all those boo birds. But now, one more self-imposed brake on my career:
Fear of success? Or fear of failure?
This is a really big issue. Doctor K, the therapist who triggered my aha I can pull my life together moment, was of the mind that it’s all fear of failure. It took me a bit, but his position makes sense to me now.
Turns out my failure thoughts, open or subliminal, go something like this: Writer boy, if you do achieve success, the stakes for failure just get higher. If you never publish that story, it can be as well written and successful as your imagination can make it.
But, once it’s out there, the snarks can get hold of it. And, isn’t criticism of your work actually criticism of you as a human being?
Sometimes you just grow up feeling inadequate. Perhaps, like me, you’re the family baby and your siblings were always by age several steps ahead and, coincidently, poster children for overachievement.
Don’t worry there’ll be more psychobabble in future episodes. For now, the last introductory thing I want to bring up is, gasp, what if:
Nobody wants to read my S H star T
Another influence on my writer life is a book titled Nobody wants to Read your S H * T (Hey that’s how it appears on the cover.)
I highly recommend this book. It can be purchased from Black Irish Book Store https://blackirishbooks.com/books/. You may also get it at some of the usual book seller suspects. But why not go with Black Irish, a company by and for writers and artists?
Even if you object to the wording of the title, author Steven Pressfield makes a point that I think should be taken to heart by anyone who fancies themselves a writer or otherwise creative person.
Steven’s statement will make more sense if you know he was originally an ad copywriter.
”Nobody – Not even your dog or your mother – has the slightest interest in your commercial for Rice Krispies, or Delco batteries, or Preparation H. Nor does anybody care about your one-act play, your Facebook page, or your new sesame chicken joint at Canal and Tchoupitoulas.”
“It isn’t that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.”
(BTW That T-word tongue twister is pronounced chaa·puh·too·luhs. It’s a street in New Orleans.)
Stephen is right. At first I was depressed. If nobody wants to read what I write, why write? But I realized that people, we, all of us, still want to read, or watch, or listen in order to be informed and entertained.
Consider this:
We writers should strive to stand out
Pressfield offers some solid advice about standing out. Turning the floor back to him.
“Nobody wants to read your shit. What’s the answer?
- “Streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest to understand form.
- “Apply that to all forms of writing or art or commerce.
“When you understand that nobody wants to read your shit. you develop empathy. You acquire the skill that is indispensable for all artists and entrepreneurs – the ability to switch back and forth in your imagination from your own point of view as writer / painter / seller to the point of view of reader / gallery-goer / customer.
“You learn to ask yourself with every sentence and every phrase: Is it fun, challenging, or inventive? Am I giving the reader enough? Is she bored? Is she following where I want to lead her?”
Me again: It sounds difficult, but you can develop readers and a following. I can do it. You can do it. And I have one caveat that might make audience building close to automatic, which I will explain in a future episode titled You build it, they will come – writing about aeromodeling and other hobbies.
Now a bit more introductory stuff and then on with the show.
Talk about poo
Not the fictional bear. He has an H tacked on his name. I’m talking feces, scat, BM, shit. You get the idea. I know the usual mental health phrase is bat shit crazy, but, for reasons I will explain in another future episode titled, Dad gum it. to cuss or not to cuss, I’m mostly going to use poo.
For now I’ll say my reasoning includes making my core message as compatible with as wide an audience as possible. While in recent times it does seem language-wise anything goes and there are no “bad words” anymore, apparently MS Word is offended by “shit.”
As we roll on towards the singularity where computers take over the world, I don’t want it on my permanent record that I repeatedly offended any editor bot.
Strangely, though perhaps not unexpectedly, my Google phone recently suggested shit when I ham fingered “chute,” as in parachute. Phones are so hip.
Finally, poo is simply a fun word to say. I guess it has something to do with the act of popping the lips with a little puff of air. Poo. Poop. Pop. Don’t those sounds just feel kind of good?
And now:
Crazy as in bat poo crazy. It’s a word with much baggage. I’m guessing some people who aren’t particularly offended by “shit,” may get worked up about “crazy.” Their thought is, I believe, that crazy dehumanizes people challenged by mental health issues.
And, in truth language is powerful. If calling someone crazy leads to classifying them as somehow less than functional, less than human, that’s not good.
Remember the old childhood chant of about sticks and stones breaking bones but words not hurting? What a load of S H star T.
Obviously, words can hurt. In fact, words can hurt beyond the ability of sticks and stones. A bruise on the body eventually heals. A verbal bruise to our perception of who we are can last a lifetime.
But, I’m still going to use crazy occasionally because this is my story and crazy doesn’t offend me, and at times it will be appropriate to my message.
Summary and up next
My primary goals are to help more people be more better writers and hopefully give anxiety sufferers an encouraging tale about one guy who is making progress getting anxiety to stop running his life.
As for saying more better, somewhere down the road I gots something to say about when it might be proper to be improper, language wise.
But for now, next up: Episode #2 – You and me, writers we be.
One more thing before I go away for now:
Writerly giveaway of the day
In future episodes, to make myself at least somewhat useful, I will include some piece of writerly wisdom and/or wit I have learned over the years. I am no world famous writer, but I have spent a near lifetime writing and pondering writing.
Ideas pop into my head like, well, like popcorn in a popper. Ideas that include fiction plots, non-fiction subjects, character names, place names, and more. I’m not getting any younger. I’ll never have time to get to even a fraction of them; so why not give them away?
But I got nothing today. Just a cheap promo for you to come back for future episodes.
In Closing
Remember. Avoid avoidance.