Chapter Ten:

Disaster in Japan

     Talking about extreme anxiety is not the most enjoyable of things. Experiencing it isn't either. But extreme anxiety does happen, and it happened to me in the past, a lot, and still does happen, but, thankfully, now, with far less frequency- (but it still happens). I can’t change these occurrences. I guess one could say that anxiety is life, Just like everything else that happens in life is also “life,”and that “life” is oftentimes not at all enjoyable. 

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     An interesting concept that I feel needs to be addressed is that of the “dark parts” of our minds. When one experiences thoughts of a particularly violent nature, or thoughts of a particularly graphic sexual nature, those thoughts can pose major problems for many individuals (particularly those with OCD) because of the nature of the thoughts themselves and the “sensitivity” surrounding the topics. This is a huge problem for most people with OCD. This was my experience, for a great deal of time, over the years.

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     Some people live their lives, dilligently avoiding any kind of discourse that could ever, even remotely, be connected to anything of sexual or violent content or subject matter. Many people are extremely uncomfortable with these kind of topics. So, what happens if a person, perhaps 10 or 11 years old, is bombarded by intrusive thoughts of graphic sexual and or graphic violent nature and their family and friends are not open to, or approachable to talk about these things?

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 This is where the rubber meets the road! 

 

 This was the reality for me (and still is the reality for millions of people, all over the world).  An entire series of books could be written solely on this topic alone! Mental Illness and emotional distress often deals with thought- subject matters that are either graphically sexual or violent in subject matter, and that makes the topics far more difficult to talk about. And so, an issue of great importance is actually “Approachability….”  Admittedly, there is the popular idea of late, that we have to “normalize” these topics and just come out and talk about it  (#Bell let’s talk),..., but let’s be honest here..., we have a very long way to go.

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     In January 1995, I had a long and (very) grueling experience with panic and extreme anxiety. I said earlier that it was my “first experience” with OCD as an “adult” and I would like to clarify what I mean by that. From that point on in 1995, the obsessions began to appear and then stay longer- ….  This is how it all began…:

 

     I was sitting at my desk studying Japanese, in Japan, and it was about the 5th of January, 1995, and everything had been going quite well. I was still with my second host family, and I was still studying during the majority of my time. One day, I was studying Japanese as usual, when I thought of a secret that I had told a friend of mine back in Prince Albert. I had the thought: “What if my friend, to whom I had told my secret, had chosen to tell everybody I knew and now I was the laughing stock of my high school peer group!” With just the thinking of this thought, I began to feel the feelings of extreme fear, building up in different parts of my body. It was like the adrenaline switch was just suddenly activated and I felt my heart speeding up, my stomach getting queasy, and jolts of adrenaline and anxiety darting throughout my entire body. I now know that it wasn’t caused by anything that I did, but rather, solely by my thoughts. You see, by simply thinking certain things, the fight or flight response can be activated in people with OCD and anxiety. It was the sudden onset of panic out of the blue,..., and with it came a deep, terrifying dread, that the rest of my entire conscious time in the remainder of my natural life might be subject to it!

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       From that point on, during my stay in Japan, I couldn't shake the thought of two things: the first was the idea of the (imaginary) problem of my friend divulging my secret, and the second, was my (seemingly) bizarre reaction, of panic, to the first!  Another very Important aspect is that it really wasn’t very rational,at all, a fact that, in and of itself, caused still greater panic! How was I going to achieve everything I had planned if I was in a state of panic about irrational things? I was totally desperate, and it all seemed to have sprung onto me without any warning!

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     I tried walking around the neighborhood, and thinking it all through. A couple of hours later, still stuck on the thoughts, and riddled with crippling angst,  I returned to my bedroom and wrote all of the thoughts down. After I wrote them down I crumpled up the “thought-paper" and threw it, dejectedly, in the small white metal waste garbage can on the floor of my bedroom. No sooner had the thought-paper landed in the garbage can, when I thought with a terrible panic:

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      “What if somebody, (somehow, ) reads the paper with my thoughts on it,....”  even though the paper was written in English, and I was in the country of Japan! Now, terror inducing thoughts were flowing very fluidly and rapidly,  and those thoughts were creating instantaneous turmoil,.... It was like a chain reaction of thought and panic,..., thought and panic,...Thought, Panic, Panic! Thought!! and—- I felt completely powerless and utterly terrified. 

 

I thought to myself:

 

“What if somebody in Japan…

                                                 digs through the trash, 

                                                                                        finds my note, 

goes to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan…,

                                      and ….

tells EVERYBODY!!! 

 

    These thoughts were totally irrational, and yet, they had me in a stranglehold of panic. Desperately, I decided to burn the paper in the waste paper basket, so that no one could ever find out...anything related to this shameful display! I went and got some matches from the buddhist altar downstairs, (subtly, of course, making sure nobody noticed,...) and then I hurried back, with my heart pounding in my chest, up the stairs, into my bedroom, and, with jelly-like arms, I thrust open the balcony door and grabbed the trash can, clutching it desperately, and took it outside, carefully surveying the dark surroundings below and scanned the surrounding houses for prying eyes, but there seemed to be none,...Next, I nervously lit a match, and started the damned “thought-paper” on fire and I stood out on my balcony, hoping desperately that no one, including my host family, would notice me, (how would I ever explain what I was doing???!) out on the balcony in the middle of  winter, in the middle of Japan, burning the paper that held my bizarre fears about a secret and a town that no one even knew or cared existed…. Several tiny pieces of burnt and shriveled paper with ornately-glowing, fiery-orange embers, rose up and out of the waste paper basket, floating up toward the winter’s clear starry night sky….

 

    “Just like my mind and my sanity,” I thought, in a kind of terrified and dejectedly shameful daze….  

 

     I didn’t want to tell anyone about the contents of my mind, or my anxious emotional state. There I was, on my big exchange to Japan, my big chance to get a jump on my life, and make hay while the sun shines, now scared out of my wits,... worrying about something absolutely ridiculous!! I tried to “just calm down” but I was having little success,... no matter what I thought to reassure myself, I kept thinking- “still my secret might be out,”  And I would be, once again– anxious!

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     I went to bed that night, completely and totally exhausted. It had been the worst day of my life. Naturally, I hoped that I would wake up the next morning and that I would no longer think about the issue, but the next morning, of course, the first thing I thought of was …the issue. The thought-paper, the burning, the panic and discombobulation of the previous day cane flooding back and once again I felt overtaken by panic and fear. “Come on Jess,” I told myself, “you gotta fight.” I got out of bed and went and took a shower. I wanted nothing more badly than relief from the feelings of anxiety and the dread of not knowing if the thoughts and feelings would ever go away. That was the third prong of panic. I had a fear that I would never feel relaxed again, (this is common with all of my obsessive thoughts and I have read it is common with other people’s obsessions as well) and that I might spend the rest of my life like this (in this state of distress), and obviously that I might lose my valuable time in Japan to this panic and anxiety and then, the rest of my life’s valuable time, after that. It reminded me of the other worries I had felt over the years, the physical sensations and feelings were exactly the same.

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     I thought of every possible solution to my imaginary dilemma and each time, my mind came up with a response on why I couldn’t do that. I could call my friend, but then he might decide to disclose my secret because I gave him the idea by asking him about it! I was paranoid. That is the truth. I was paranoid and anxious. I wrestled with the thoughts and the anxiety for the next few weeks and gradually, I reluctantly decided to attribute my mental state to pushing myself too hard and that I needed to slow down and enjoy life more. I didn’t want to even consider the possibility that I was different from the average person, that I had some sort of condition or abnormal psychological trait or condition but it was an obvious possibility that I struggled to not think of…. I stopped studying so seriously. I told myself I had the rest of my life to learn Japanese. I continued studying Japanese, but I reduced my intensity of study. I contemplated going home early but I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about the anxiety I was feeling and I shuddered to think how my friends and family would take the news that I had decided to leave my exchange half-way through….

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     I switched host families in March. The third host family was very nice again. I thanked God for that. I finally told that family about my irrational worry, (but I left out the degree of distress that it had been causing me, out of shame and embarrassment), and when I did tell them, I felt a great deal of relief. I continued my youth exchange year, but secretly, I thought about and went over the issues everyday. I hated it. The fact that I had those thoughts and feelings really bothered me. I  wondered how I would be able to finish or even start University if I was feeling those level of distress. I didn’t know the answer.

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     I was on my fourth and final host family when, one evening, I came in from a walk and my host mother told me that there had been a phone call from Canada. I listened carefully to what she told me and I had a hunch that the call had been from my Grandpa George’s house. I was right, the call had come from there,... my dad answered the phone and told me that my Grandpa had just suffered a massive heart attack and died at the hospital. He immediately told me that my Grandpa would want me to finish my full year of the exchange, but I knew, with all my heart, that I wanted to leave Japan and go home as soon as humanly possible. I was so ready to go home and feel normal again, to feel safe and secure once more and rid myself of the feelings of doubt and despair and angst that I had been living with since January. I was heartbroken about my grandpa, but I was happy that I would be returning home. I felt guilty for that too…. 

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        Emergency phone calls were made between my host families who came together and helped me get to the Narita airport within the next few days. I boarded the airplane in Narita,and breathed a sigh of relief and flew back across the ocean to Canada. The whole time I was thinking about everything that had happened, trying to understand it, contemplating to whom, and how much of the story I would tell. I wasn’t proud of my ten and one-half months in Japan, at all…. In many ways, I felt it had been a complete and total (catastrophic) failure! I felt and remembered the fear, shame, and panic. I was worried about worrying. The future was an ominously troubling concept, and I struggled to face my new and disconcerting worries about my very own mind and what was to become of me and all of my plans and ambitions. Going to Japan in 1994, I had been so confident, and so strong, mentally, and emotionally, but my experience on January 5th, 1995 had taken all of that confidence and stability and cut it into tiny little pieces, and I couldn’t stop myself from looking back on that day and the days immediately after, and I was caught almost in a trance-like cycle, thinking about it all, everyday, struggling to understand and be free, and unable, no matter how hard I tried, to find any answers or untangle myself from the maze of panic and that trance-like cycle was like a noose that grew tighter around my neck with each passing day….