silently and back to me

Patrick Stewart and I were participating in a charity auction. We both had our TNG uniforms to put on the block, and a room filled with over a thousand people was waiting for us to bring them onto the stage … but I couldn’t find mine. I searched a seemingly infinite number of closets in a hotel room that seemed to change size and configuration, thwarting my increasingly harried efforts to find it.

Then I was on the street in front of a different hotel. I needed to check out, but my suitcase was locked inside my room, and I didn’t have a key. I climbed a precarious fire escape and made my way across a cavernous lobby atrium — looking and feeling like something out of Angel Heart — to finally get inside the room.

When I got into the hotel room, I realized that I had to change out of my clothes. I didn’t know why, but I knew that it was incredibly important that I do it. I began to change my clothes, but when I took off my shirt, it revealed another shirt beneath it. When I took off that shirt, it happened again.

I had to check out of this hotel room, or I was going to miss my flight to Australia, but before I could leave, I had to take a shower. But I couldn’t take a shower until I changed out of my clothes, and the clock was ticking down. I began to panic.

I opened my eyes and saw my bedroom dimly lit by the faintest grey light of dawn through my blinds. My heart was pounding, my body was covered in sweat. Cold terror washed over me as I woke up, and I realized that I was in the middle of a panic attack.

This used to happen to me on an almost nightly basis, but it hasn’t happened for years, until this week. This week, it’s happened every night. I’m starting to dread going to sleep, creating what I think is a self-fulfilling prophecy, an orobouros of anticipation and terror.

I breathed as deeply and calmly as I could, willing my heart to calm down. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. I repeated, in my head. Just stress dreams. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.

I’m not okay.

By any objective measure, I don’t have a good reason to feel stressed or worried or even mildly upset about anything, but my brain is broken and it does this to me when I least expect it. Like it’s waiting for to me work long and intense days, so I’m tired and weak when I climb into bed, so it can launch a sneak attack when I’m least able to defend against it.

My heart settled down. I realized that I hadn’t had any feeling in my hands, when feeling began to return to them. I sighed heavily, and frowned. This isn’t fair. I should be able to go to sleep without fearing what is waiting for me when I get there. I was frustrated. I was a little angry. I was really, really exhausted, even though I’d been in bed and sleeping for close to eight hours.

I was filled with a mixture of adrenaline and dread, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. Though I didn’t technically need to be up and out of bed for another hour, I angrily kicked off the covers, and got out of bed.

This isn’t fair, I thought. This isn’t fair.

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144 thoughts on “silently and back to me”

  2. Totally not fair. It might be a good time for some talk therapy, to find out if there’s some underlying stress that is triggering this anxiety. Knowing only the public side of your life, it might be anxiety about the launch of Titansgrave. You’ve been thinking about it for a long time, you’ve worked hard on it, and now you’re almost ready to release it for judgment. (To the internet, no less.) That would trigger some anxiety in most people. And when folks with Depression get going, we really get going.

    Also, try thinking about calming things as you fall asleep. Your adorable pets, Anne’s puns, burritos…

  3. Mr. Wheaton, I’m autistic. And while many of us do not, I absolutely do seem to conform to the “Spock” stereotype in that I tend to see things logically, in very black and white terms. I always figured anxiety is not logical. Therefore there is no reason to be afraid, because illogical things are not worth fearing.

    And then, someone close to me had a severe crisis. To the point of voluntarily checking themselves into a facility. There was nothing I could do to help, nothing I could say, and no way to fix it with my trusty weapon. The thing I use to protect myself from life was suddenly useless.

    I’ve since read everything I can get my hands on about anxiety and panic attacks. And while I won’t be able to fully understand unless it begins to happen to me, I want to come as close as possible. Because it isn’t fair, you’re absolutely right; it’s cruelly unfair that good, kind people like yourself and my loved one have to be haunted by this Thing that’s impervious to reason and sense.

    I guess my long-winded point is that I wish you strength, and want you to know that people are learning. That at least if you can’t fix the chemicals that are doing this, society is slowly fixing itself, one person at a time. And I hope that provides some crumb of comfort.

  4. This almost exactly describes how I used to experience panic attacks. I was afraid to go to sleep because I knew I wouldn’t wake up, but so exhausted I had to sleep, and they would hit randomly. I bolted out of a college class once because I panicked for no apparent reason as the professor lectured about dinosaurs and archaeology. It was SO embarrassing.

    Once I saw an endocrinologist who diagnosed me with hypothyroidism and put me on thyroid medication, I stopped having them.

    20 years, panic attack free.

  5. Hi Wil,

    You’re right … it isn’t fair … and that realization can be the beginning of you finally (and I do mean finally) taking control of whether or not this ever happens again.

    20 years ago, I was lying in bed one night when I was racked with stabbing gut pain. Having had ulcers and chronic heart burn for years, THIS pain was new and it was horrible. Stabbing and nauseating. I felt the unfairness of it all. Nothing I could see about myself, mentally or physically warranted this experience. I thought to myself that this was wrong. This was … unacceptable. This had to stop. This had to stop. “This has to stop … This has to stop …”

    And then, quite suddenly and completely … it stopped. And it never came back.

    I’ve since learned to do this with tooth aches, my ulcer (15 years gone now without help from the medical field), chronic knee failures, panic attacks, asthma …

    We do control what happens in our bodies much more than we give ourselves permission to accept. When I allowed myself to accept the possibility that I should … I might … I DO have control over what happens in my body … everything began to change.

    In the final analysis, what happens inside us is up to us, and not some random mix of invisible forces. But we must first assert our ownership of what we experience. As long as we pawn our experiences off on any outside force, WE give away control of what happens to us. We randomize and victimize ourselves.

    The moment I became convinced that MY personal conviction that “this sort of things simply must never happen to me again … because I said so” … was the moment I began to gain greater and greater control of my physical and mental existence. Such realizations as yours are hugely crucial … but slightly less crucial than what we choose to do with them.

    All the best in everything,

    Justin

  6. sounds like my day .. i do hope u feel better ..i am learning now to deal with my stress levels and ptsd .. very intensive therapy and i think its working great so far .. baby steps .. truly hope it gets better for u .. 🙂 blessings ..

  8. Dude, that sucks.

    This doesn’t happen to me, so I have no frame of reference and I don’t “know just how you feel”, but you have my sympathy.

    That sounds awful. I hope it gets better soon.We all love you

  9. You are so very brave to be open about your personal challenges! You may not realize that the description of your experience brings clarity to someone suffering similar issues, who does not understand what’s happening. By sharing your struggles, another person does not feel so isolated and fearful.

    I truly hope that you are allowed some peace in your mind and your sleep. It’s NOT fair that these aspects of your life mar an otherwise joyful existence. I will pray for you, dear Wil.

  10. I sympathize, Wil. That sounds terrible. And terribly frustrating. And you’re right, it isn’t fair.

    Have you ever tried meditation? Particularly right before going to bed? Just 20 minutes, sitting in a low-light environment, doing nothing but paying attention to your breathing and trying to allow your brain to settle and not think about anything in particular has worked wonders for me.

    I hope your brain gives you some peace soon.

  11. Well that sounds terrifying. I don’t have panic attacks, but dear friends of mine do and I feel so terrible for them and helpless because I do not know how to help them. I hope you get some truly restful sleep soon, and thank you for sharing.

  12. Have you considered a sleep test? I remember you blogged before about Anne waking you up because you were sleeping on your back and snoring. Hypoxia can definitely cause a nighttime panic attack. Just a thought.

  13. I used to have anxiety attacks when attending college and I didn’t even know what they were or what was going on, but when I went to bed to fall asleep I would have these attacks every night.
    I never thought of myself as a worrier and I certainly never would describe myself as stressed out. But, different people react to stress differently as I’ve learned and realized.
    When I thought of someone as a worrier/stressed out person I would imagine someone who was pulling their hair out, sweating, anxious, wringing their hands, characteristics like these. I never thought that there were internal worriers/stressed out people who never knew they were stressed at all. And that’s exactly who I am, and it took me a long time to realize that and for others to tell me this.
    People can be stressed and not even know it until only your body reacts to it. It sounds like that’s what you’re going through, you don’t think you’re a worrier or stressed out, but your body is telling you differently.

  14. Sending love and sympathy. It is so frustrating when your otherwise awesome creative brain starts making up horribly detailed panic dreams. Wishing you peaceful sleep.

  15. Wil,

    I’ve been reading and hugely appreciating your frank discussion of anxiety and depression for some time. I have both too, and have been diagnosed with adult ADHD-I and PMD. I have suffered anxiety attacks, nightmares, depressive episodes and all that fun stuff since I was a child.

    My therapist started me on this whole new track a couple of months ago when she mentioned that a lot of adult ADHD turns out to be undiagnosed trauma. I’m now reading this book called “The Trauma Spectrum, Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency” by a neurologist named Robert Scaer who essentially posits that trauma has a much wider range of effects than generally understood – as broad-ranging as IBS, anxiety, and whiplash.

    It’s really exciting because it’s given me a view of my diagnoses as trauma-related PTSD-like symptoms triggered by trauma-programmed neuronal pathways that I have the power to rewrite.

    The possibility that I could actually eventually be cured of some of this stuff brings me more hope than I’ve ever had. I lost a soulmate because of my challenges. This is no way to be.

    Anyway, the point is that maybe you’re experiencing some of the same stuff and reading this book might bring insight into the origins of some of what’s going on for you.

    I have a workbook queued once I’m done reading this, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all of us in this rickety, leak-ridden boat find resources, support, and comfort.

  16. Wil, as a brain injury survivor, I occasionally suffer from panic attacks, along with other brain injury ‘moments’. The best advice I can suggest for you, along with the caveat that our particular situations are different, is to go do something else for a while. Even as little as ten minutes of thinking about/concentrating on something else can make a huge difference to your mental state.
    I’ve passed this suggestion along to others in the support group I go to, and it does help those who try it.
    Wishing you well, Wil.

  19. A few years after I left radio, I started having similar dreams, but not regularly. I couldn’t find the music to play, or think of anything to say, and there was dead air. Dead air –> taboo!

    Our dreams often represent our fears. This is a lack of confidence (in my case) dream; that fear that maybe you can’t do it anymore. But it is irrational. Dreams come from the irrational and emotional side of our brain, while the rational side is impaired during sleep.

    I watched you Star Trek, and many times lately on Big Bang. You still have the mojo. Sleep well.

  20. This happens to us all now and then. I think it’s just our psyches way of dealing with the stresses of the day(s). In my experience the best way to deal with it is to simply move on and try to find something positive to occupy our time, something we truly enjoy doing. Perhaps this can help one to “re-center” ourselves. As it has been said: “This too shall pass…”

    Peace and strength.

    Jim

  21. Wil:
    My wife has had panic attacks. I understand how debilitating they can be. She participated in a research project at Stanford University which tried to help prevent the attacks by detecting when they’re starting to happen and training new responses that prevent the panic from escalating. The only effort this involves is some simple breathing exercises when the symptoms begin, in the theory that the body trains itself to panic by changing its breathing patterns – shortness of breath leads to altered CO2 levels in the blood, leads to panic, and altered CO2 levels are easy to change by simply breathing differently.
    I don’t know if this would interest any of the readers here or not, but it has worked in her case. I believe it’s the topic of a graduate thesis, but I don’t have the details handy; a little research might find the doctor’s papers.

    1. I was thinking something similar. As we age, some people develop sleep apnia, that is the body holds it breath while you sleep. This creates the CO2 shortage mentioned above, which triggers even more strange dreams which causes you to continue to hold your breath. The solution is the dreaded CPAP machine which forces you to continue breathing, thus keeping your O2 levels up. I know its tough acknowledging your aging, but CPAP worked for me.

  22. hey wil, sorry to hear you’re dealing with stupid anxiety. anxiety is the worst. re: your response to the tumblr ask about social media, just wanted to say that i miss your posts here, and i would have been commenting more if i knew it meant something to you. usually i see there’s already a sea of comments and figure mine would just get lost in the fray. anyway, hope the anxiety subsides soon!

  24. I’ve been really struggling with depression over the past year and a bit. You’re writing about your depression has really meant the world to me. I’ve never been a big commenter, but this post really resonated with me. I have big problems with insomnia and with nightmares when I do sleep. I know that “This isn’t fair” feeling. That feeling like the times when I really need restful sleep I’m so much more likely to have crap sleep, scary sleep, and wake up feeling even worse.
    Right now I’m finally making my first steps to connect with a doctor to really try to break this depression’s hold on me. You made a huge difference in my feeling like it was okay to ask for help.
    So, thank you. Just thank you.

  25. Check with your doctor and your therapist IMMEDIATELY! There may be more to this than meets the eye, so do NOT try to deal with this alone! Please, please, Wil, get some help for this, before it has even the slightest chance to get any worse!

  27. Yeah, those panic attacks can sneak up on you like a puma in the night, can’t they? Oof. Terrible things, those. You think you have it under control and then you get that one thing that you didn’t expect or see coming and WHAM! You got them again. I hate that feeling of powerlessness, so thank you Wil for your honesty and your writing that helps those of us who are in the same boat feel less alone in our powerlessness.

  28. I’m sorry you are having a rough time sleeping. I hope you find a way to get some sleep without the panic attacks and sooner rather than later.

  29. I write this after a sleepless night, having had insomnia for the past two months in a very bad way. You have a support system, just raise your hand and ask for help you will get more than you expect.

  30. I’ve never had panic attacks. But as someone who has suffered from insomnia semi-regularly for over 30 years, I can totally agree that your brain deciding to prevent you from getting a good night’s sleep for no obvious reason beyond ‘because it can’ is completely unfair and completely sucks.

  31. Wil, You are right, it is unfair that you have to go though this. I hope you will be able to find what you need to help you with it. Be it a cat video on you tube or just someone to talk to, whatever you seek, I hope it is available to you. I can not imagine how stressful it would be to have this happen on consecutive nights, I have experienced one, maybe two of these nights in my past and would not wish it upon anyone. I will say it is ok to have the emotions brought on by these episodes, it is ok to be mad at the situation. But please do not be mad at yourself, be mad at it, be mad at it with someone else, and know that you may not be ok right now, but you are awesome.

    be well my friend,

    T.J.

  32. Not fair at all. I am sorry you are having to go through this. It is awful, fearing to go to sleep. (((hug))) I am thinking of you and hope you get some restful sleep soon.

  33. Every time I see posts like these, especially from someone like you, it reminds me that I’m not alone in this. We’re not alone in this. You’re not alone in this. I wish desperately that I could make it stop for all of us, but all we can do it try to push through and survive.

    Thank you as always for being so willing to be honest about this. I know personally that I’m not alone in my fight, but not everyone is so fortunate. Thank you for standing up and speaking for us and giving the lonely ones hope. You, sir, are amazing.

  34. totally not fair. i have been in the same boat with my anxiety lately. after being in control for a good long time, it is now appearing at the most unfortunate times. i have started back with my therapist and that has helped. hugs to you and remember you are not alone even though you may feel that way sometimes. xo

  35. Thank you so much for your honest and beautiful writing on anxiety and depression. It has helped me enormously to find accounts of brilliant, kind, smart individuals that suffer in the same way I do. Anxiety and mental illness are so isolating, thanks for being a light in the darkness to so many, including me.

    1. I hate when I don’t proof read…

      I meant to say – With the comments from Anne a few days ago about your snoring waking her up, it sounds like you have some of the symptoms:

      1) Have you woken yourself up ?
      2) Have you woken a partner up ?
      3) Have you woken up someone in another room ?

  37. I have a teenage son with severe anxiety who has trouble sleeping. Hearing you describe this so vividly will certainly help me help others understand what it is like for him. Thank you for having the courage to share something like this with the world.

    My heart goes out to you and I will keep you in my thoughts.

  38. Mine are Tornadoes, and I am a kid and I have to drag all of these huge uncooperative adults into the basement but they keep wandering back out to stare at the oncoming Tornado, eating houses and trees and cars as it sweeps toward us. My heart races even just describing the dream. There is no sleep after that, unless I go sleep in the basement.

  39. My dear Will, I really appreciate all the work you do from TNG (lucky bastard you are to be part of that) to all your dedication to roleplaying and boardgames in order to increase their visibility in the Matrix (aka Internet). However I have watched your work closely these last months and I am not surprised you feel this way now. I think you should take a rest from your daily life. Take a trip to some quiet hut near a lake or something and spend there two days near nature, don´t use your phone/tablet/notebook at all during these days and don´t take any work to be done during these days, just walk and enjoy silence and the beauty of nature. I have done this a few times when I feel I´m losing my grip on reality and always worked like a charm. Best Regards and take care.
    (PD:sorry for my english)

  40. I’ve been there, waking up in the middle of a panic attack. It totally and completely sucks. I hope you feel better soon.

  41. Well, as a total stranger only given glimpses of your life through your blog (I’m not on Twitter or Tumblr or even the ubiquitous Facebook these days) you’ve had a very busy, stressful and emotional time lately. So it’s perhaps not as surprising as you think it is for your brain to be extra-cruddy broken. I’ve never suffered personally from a panic attack but my husband has them during sleep and I DO have a history with insomnia so I appreciate how fear of sleeping (or not!) bleeds in to your whole day. It’s such an important, simple thing, getting enough sleep and is proper crippling when it doesn’t happen – know that if wishes held any sway the Interwebs would have you sleeping the most blissful rest ever! Cold comfort, I know.

    P.S. Even in a discordant mental state, your writing is superb. I got all antsy just reading that post! Talented man.

  43. Hey Wil. I’m not usually a commenting type of person, but here we are… I recently started on anti-anxiety meds, to help me through some stuff, including divorce. My doctor almost put me on Lexapro, and that actually made me feel better, because then I thought I’d be a Lexa-bro, and I felt good knowing I wasn’t the only one. I’m on something different, but the sentiment is the same. I’ve been having crazy night time panic attacks lately, and having a hard time separating reality from the attack as I try to get out of the haze.
    Anyhoo. You’ve helped me a lot, I love your work, and please don’t stop the blog, unless you want to, then that’s what I want too. I read every entry. I’m sorry I haven’t shown you how much I love it.

  44. Your brain is not broken. Stress is tough and some brains need assistance with it.

  45. Thank you for sharing this, it is good to know I’m not the only one with a broken brain.

  46. I wanted to say thank you for sharing these experiences. It is hard to describe anxiety and you did an excellent job. Thank you.

    Also, I wanted to take a moment to say that while I rarely (if ever) comment, I read every blog post you write. Blogs are still relevant and I hope you continue to publish.

  47. Thank you for being so open about your anxiety, from those of us who can’t be. It helps us, and I hope sharing helps you too. Hang in there.

  48. I’ve had a major anxiety flare-up with similar stress dreams and panicked wakings for the past two weeks. It’s frustrating, because there’s no source that I can identify, just major anxiety all of the sudden about everything. I can’t figure out what has changed, but it’s totally not fair. I hope this round resolves for all of us quickly.

  50. Your writing is marvelous and beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us, even if the reason behind it isn’t quite so grand.

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