Pursuing Happiness - Part 2 - I discover the dark secret hiding in my brain

It wasn’t until my junior year of undergrad that things got really scary. I had always been “high strung” and got sick easily but now I was stressed to the max and practically bed-ridden. I was getting sick all the time and in many different ways. I was always nauseous. No matter what I would eat, the stomach pains were always in the background. At the best there was mild discomfort and at the worst I was doubled over in pain, crying my eyes out. The doctors ran tests and nothing came up so they sent me back home with a box of prilosec. Then the chest pains started. My breathing was always labored. My chest heavy. One night I woke up with stabbing pains in my chest, radiating down my left arm. “Something is wrong with my heart” I thought “How can this be? I’m 20.” I checked the internet. It said that I was loosing precious seconds and should get to a hospital immediately to avoid permanent brain damage. My boyfriend at the time called 911. The line was busy. He hung up and called the campus EMT’s. They responded and we were rushed to the ER. Tests were inconclusive and I was sent back home.
 

Still, what really scared me were the mental symptoms. I remember walking through a grocery store one day and being suddenly overcome by the strangest sensation. My head began to throb and my vision blurred. Lights became overwhelming. Everything sounded like static. The whole world was suddenly crushing in. I was disoriented and confused. My teeth were numb. The task of picking out groceries was suddenly an impossibility. I made my way out of the store slowly and then sat in the car until my mental balance equalized. I spent the rest of the day nursing a migraine in bed. 

And that was my reality for a while. Every attempt I made to live my life was met with sudden unexplainable sickness. Every muscle in my body was painfully knotted and sore. Back-rubs were little help, giving momentary relief before my shoulders snapped back up to my ears. I was constantly missing class. I stopped spending time with friends. I was basically living in bed and occasionally making it out for food or class. I knew something had to change, but I didn’t know how to change it. The doctors hadn’t come up with anything, so  I started googling symptoms. Brain tumor? Heart problems? A strange parasite living in my stomach? I had no idea what might be causing my uncontrollable symptoms but the options alone filled me with dread. No matter the outcome, something was definitely wrong. I wanted to know what it was. I wanted to fix it, but the answers eluded me.

I don’t remember how many days I spent searching before I finally stumbled upon a description of GAD - Generalized Anxiety Disorder. As I scrolled down the list of symptoms, I felt realization creeping across my awareness. On a list of twenty or so unrelated symptoms, I had about seventeen. I knew this was it. This was what I had been going through. This was what I had been going through my whole life. I read as much as I could that night. It was like reading my fortune. And my fortune said “This is a chronic illness. You will feel like this forever.”
 

The medical webpages coldly informed me that the chemicals in brain were off-balance. I was broken. I had likely been born that way. In fact, it was deep in genetic history to be overly anxious. I later confirmed this when I discovered relatives on both sides of my family with anxiety disorders. I had gotten a double dose.

Most people discover their anxiety disorders in their early 20’s. It’s not clear whether it’s a biological timer or if it simply coincides with the first stresses of adulthood. Either way, I was right on time. I was studying for grad school and desperately trying to keep a high GPA. The stress factor was high.

Still, I felt unfairly judged by these descriptions. I wasn’t obsessing over everything that went wrong. I was quite satisfied with my life (minus the sickness) I was just busy. I just stressed. My brain was always going, always circling, but it wasn’t circling around any issues in particular, it was just running on overdrive.

I read further to understand what I was experiencing. The impersonal pages explained that most people have a flight or fight reaction in response to situations of high stress. If a lion jumps out of the bushes at you, a flood of chemicals will pour into your brain, giving you the magic ingredients you need to quickly begin your escape (although in the lion case you may be out of luck). If life throws enough at you that you are experiencing extreme stress for an extended period (say.. a loved one dies and you are mourning) then you will likely experience the symptoms of extreme anxiety - difficulty breathing, headaches, nausea, insomnia, muscle tension, exhaustion, edginess - to name a few.

For those of us with GAD that flight or fight reaction is switched on all the time. Anxiety producing chemicals - which might give us the edge in limited quantity - are pouring into our system constantly. It always feels like we are in a desperate situation. It doesn’t always seem like this mentally, but it does physically, and this is the extremely confusing part.

I didn’t know how to feel about my self-diagnosis (which was later reaffirmed by my doctor). I spent a lot of time staring at the screen and sobbing uncontrollably. On one hand, I was extremely relieved. GAD was not terminal, although it could create secondary problems that were. I no longer worried that my heart was on the verge of stopping, or that a secretive tumor had burrowed itself into my spinal cord. I had an answer. I had something to work on. There were treatments I could try. 

Still, the word “chronic” rattled around my brain imposingly. This was something I would have to deal with forever. It wasn’t going away. It was a part of my biology.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I stayed up and researched my options. There were a few things I could try on my own - exercise, giving up caffeine, taking up meditation - but the real hope was in medication. The problem wasn’t my lifestyle, it was the chemical imbalance in my brain. I printed out my list of symptoms and the next day I made an appointment to see the doctor. I was going to fix my brain.

Pursuing Happiness - Part 1 - My Anxious Origins- Emily as a Toddler

I’m pretty sure I was born anxious, but I don’t remember back that far. 

My mother gushes with enthusiasm when she describes me as a small child. I was her baby. I was quiet and tiny and always clinging to her. I was polite and knew how to introduce myself and shake hands. I was great at setting the table. The stories about me are told from a distinctly adult point of view. The details are on how my action made the adults feel, but I am wondering what it was that I felt. 

Hmmm... am I flipping off the camera in this picture?

I have bits and pieces of memory from the time. I remember being on an airplane and trying to distract myself from the pain in my ears by playing with My-Little-Ponies. I remember pushing a little girl off my small trampoline into a play kitchen set and then looking up at my mother wide-eyed and innocent as I explained that the other girl didn’t understand trampoline safety procedures. I remember feeling older than everybody my age (and many above my age). It felt like I knew what I was doing. I was aware... and that made me nervous about all the things that could go wrong. Being nervous made me shy, which made me quiet, which made me sneaky. The sneakiness made me a lier and the lying turned me into a performer. I have bits and pieces but getting into the head of myself as a child is not as easy as it seems. The threads of time and continuity are stretched thin. I can piece together memories and pull out character traits, but it’s more difficult to say what I was thinking or how I was feeling. 

What was going on in the mind of the spritely four year old child I see on the family video? 

She looks up at the camera suspiciously, seeming uninclined to perform. My mothers voice comes in loudly “Emily... say hello to your grandparents”. The little girl squints at the camera and raises her eyebrows. She is not impressed. She attempts to ignore the situation, wandering over to the couch and fiddling with some paper. 

“Emily... sing a song for us.” Emily sighs heavily before giving in, making clear her distaste for the request, but as she sings a glint comes into her eye. If she is going to perform, she will do it well. She seems pleased with her performance and more likely to cooperate. 

My mothers voice begins questioning again. “What do you think of George Bush?” The tiny girl rolls her eyes. The words come out in a frustrated burst. “I don’t think anything about George Bush!” She seems aggravated by the question. She does not seem to know why the question bothers her but she is certain it is a trick. 

My mother tries a different tactic. “Do you look like your mommy?” she asks. The response is quick, practiced and indignant “I don’t look like my mommy, she just looks like me!” There is laughing off camera. The little girl scrunches up her face with irritation. She does not like being bothered. She does like being tricked. And she is certain that all of this a set up. Yet again, the adults in her life are trying to farm cuteness out of her. She seems torn between performing and being spiteful. In the end she picks both. 

My ferocious grimace 

When my mother questions the young me about her friends, the child slyly informs her that she has none. Everybody yells at her. While the little girl eventually concedes that her long time best friend Kate is a friend, she says that she is the only one. Everybody else yells at her. I am intrigued watching this. I remember being “yelled” at. I was a sensitive child and referred to any chiding in that way. People were telling me what to do and I didn’t like it. What is clear to me as I watch the video is that this young version of me is trying to mess up the video. She knows at the least that her mother is trying to extract something adorable from her, and she is set on delivering something else. 

When my mother asks if the girl’s father is her friend, she complains that he too yells at her. Then, a look of mischief appears on her tiny face. She tilts her head and looks up at the camera as she concocts a story in which her dad (not the family dog) was actually the one who recently peed on the carpet. When my mother laughs and says “Noooo... that was the dog.” She smiles and shrugs. The mischief does not leave her face. 

It is a noteworthy fact that the tape was never sent out. 

...not happy

When I think back, I remember being a child who was always in her head. I was shy. I was nervous. I was afraid to talk and even more afraid to talk about myself. Still, even at that point, I had developed a mask for performance. I had learned that sometimes you needed to pretend in order to get by. Sometimes the adults wouldn’t stop pestering you until you had given them a show. When I think back to my childhood, I remember worrying about a lot of things. But to be honest, I didn’t have much to worry about. I had parents who loved and cared for me. I had food, shelter, friends and family. But, even then, I was anxious. What I would learn so many years later is the truth about why. 

Happy Guilt - Rethinking The Ethics Of Our Own Happiness

I think it’s hard not to feel guilty about being happy, or even trying to get happier. The deep roots of our colonial predecessors still infuse our culture with an attitude of self-sacrifice for the greater good. There is something icky about spending large amounts of your time and energy working on... you. 

At the same time we are bombarded with messages of individuality. We are told that happiness is our right. We are constantly tempted by advertisers to dig in and indulge our whims. Be yourself. Find your bliss. We are all encouraged to take plenty of “me time”. 

Of course this only enflames the subtle but ever-present guilt lurking behind the flashing lights of contemporary america. When it comes to the moment of indulgence, don’t be surprised to find the disapproving ghosts of “what everyone will think” glaring at you from a corner. “We aren’t really supposed to indulge” we find ourselves thinking. We want happiness but it wouldn’t really be fair if we had it when so many go without. That’s not to say that we stop seeking it. We are humans, and seeking happiness may be hardwired in but when we do, so many of us feel guilt. 

For me, this became most difficult when I began to build community, particularly the small community of two with my fiance which will soon become a marriage. Suddenly I was not just me. I was working on a team. And when you work on a team, you understand that everything you do or fail to do has an impact on the team as a whole. Now my decision to spend the day writing angsty folk music in the backyard has a cost. I will not be spending that time cooking dinner, cleaning the house, creating shared income, or interacting to strengthen our bond. Now, instead of working on us, I’m just working on me. It feels selfish and that’s hard to ignore. 

Lucky for consciences everywhere, a bizarre but interesting trend is going on in happiness research right now. Instead of looking at what brings happiness, researchers are focusing on what happiness can bring. As it turns out being happy can help you to improve in many aspects of life including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health. These directional studies indicate that happiness is not just a reaction to success, it is actually a condition which creates success. Being happy is thus not just useful to you, it is useful to everyone around you. 

With this news we are suddenly struck with the reality that being happy isn’t all about us. Being happy means that we are better at our jobs. We are better friends, better lovers, and better community members. We are contributing to something far greater than just ourselves, we are contributing to happiness of everyone. If there is one thing I’ve learned from all my dabblings in happiness studies it that happiness spreads happiness. Radiate the happiness you’ve gained to everyone around you. Watch that radiate out to everyone else. 

When you light a candle, you don’t stare at the flame and wonder at it’s selfishness for hoarding all that light and energy in one concentrated spot. Rather, you focus on what the light brings, seeing that many more things are now possible. 

Happiness is quite similar. Don’t feel guilty when you have it, just use it for something good. It’s not a new message, but it’s one we need to remember if we are going to survive this stressed out modern world.