But I am going to talk about panic tonight. Come on, it’s Therapy Thursday, you knew we would be diving deep.

In therapy today, I talked about my proclivity for panic. Not just in the large and obvious way, like the anxiety attack I had last week in Creative Writing. But in many little ways every day all the time.

The example I used was a recent incident in which I momentarily could not find my wallet. And I mean momentarily. I found it within two seconds, and yet, in that short time, I began to panic.

No pause to consider, no cognitive delay, no grace period. For those two seconds, panic rose within my heart. And there was nothing I could do about it. It happened too fast to trap cognitively. Sure, if the situation had persisted, I probably would have gotten a grip on myself and started to think about where I had it last and so forth, but the fact that my mind defaults to panic so easily really worries me.

I mean, even if I had, indeed, got hold of myself and searched rationally, another part of my mind would have been freaking out and leaping to the conclusion and actually planning out what I would do if it really was gone forever.

All that in two freaking seconds.

So what is behind all this latent panic? Why am I so easy to freak out? How comes I panic with such alarming speed?

Part of the equation, I think, is my old and familiar problem with blocked energy. My mind produces a lot of nervous energy. Mentally, I am practically hyperactive. But the depression (and, to a lesser extent, my poor physical health) blocks most of that energy before it can be expressed. Thus, I go around in a hypercharged state, like I am full of static electricity just waiting to discharge at the slightest opportunity.

So it discharges via miniature panic attacks. Probably through depression as well. It’s a sad state of affairs all around.

Another factor in the panic equation is that other standby, my lack of a fundamental feeling of safety. I’m still a scared little animal inside most of the time, and that makes it impossible to ever fully relax and leave that panicky state. A very, very deep part of me is always terrified and paranoid and feels like if it ever relaxes enough to let down its guard, it (and me) will die.

That’s what happens when your life makes it clear to you that there is absolutely nobody there for you at far too young an age. My parents weren’t there for me… if I brought them a problem they dismissed it without thought because they preferred to pretend they only had three kids. Reminding them I existed was bad enough, but for me to actually want anything from them? Now that’s just too much.

And the school sure as hell wasn’t there for me. All the time I was being tormented, no teacher ever lifted a finger to prevent it or even address it. They just could not be bothered. They thought I deserved it.

So when that happened I lost any sense of safety I ever had. I entered school with a wound in that area from being sexually assaulted when I was not even kindergarten age, but school sealed the deal. I was alone, abandoned, and worthless.

That’s not something that is easy to recover from, especially when it happens at such a young age.

So, deep down, I am panicky. I do a reasonably good job of hiding it because on the surface, I am a calm, reasonable, and sometimes even cheerful person.

But deep in the ocean, a storm is raging. And it never stops.

But maybe I am going about this whole thing wrong. Maybe instead of worrying about my mini-panics, I should embrace them. Embrace the fact that I am a highly emotional person who feels things very strongly and that the important thing is not to stay calm but to let my emotions express themselves to their fullest.

It would mean going in the opposite direction of my usual rationalist, calm, reasonable, in-control instincts, but that’s probably more of a recommendation than a condemnation. All that rationality and reasonableness might help me see the world more clearly than others, but it doesn’t make me happy. In fact, today in therapy I referred to it as a “rationalist gulag”.

It’s like this prison that I can’t escape because I can’t find a flaw in its reasoning. And that’s the trap right there. It’s attacking the problem with the wrong tools entirely.

The only way I will escape the cage is if I break its rules and refuse to be defined by them any more. I want to make it okay to be unreasonable, and emotional, and even childish sometimes.

I really admire some people’s ability to simply act out of raw emotion without doubting themselves. Sure, they might not be being reasonable, helpful, or even a good person. But they have the courage of their own emotions and do not spend life curled up in a ball trying to sniff their own navels and choking on the fumes of their own decay.

God damned I’m emo.

So maybe I just need to accept myself, hysteria and all, and learn to love everything that I am instead of trying to control every little thing about myself in order to force myself into an artificial mold of some impossible ideal person.

Maybe all I really need is to be human and live my life. Follow my emotions sometimes. Do what feels right.

It is hard for a hardcore rational materialist like myself to interface with my deeper self. I don’t have easy access to the religious/mystical circuit of my brain. I was never taught to use it.

But somehow, I will find a way to, as my therapist put it, talk to my emotions in the language of emotions without constantly trying to interpret myself.

Maybe I’m not actually all the complicated.

Maybe I just have to be me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.