It is a tough task indeed to define the “first time”.  Looking back now I can spot traces of it throughout my entire life, hints, subtle whiffs of smoke.  I find in me now though a need to call something the beginning.  The beginning of what though?  Surely my very birth into the world was the beginning.  I guess its not the first discernable symptom I want now,for I could endlessly retrace my steps, scrutinizing every benign childhood worry and anxiety for signs, and most likely I’d find many, for, as I’ve said,it is my natural state.  It has always been a very real part of me. No, it’s not really the initial surfacing of symptoms I want now.  It’s something else indeed.  What I want now is the first time it gripped me beyond my control, the first time it took hold of me and sent me scrambling in all directions, the first time it was out of control.  This is where I will draw a line in the sand.  This is the point where the manageable became unmanageable, where the normal ebb and flow suddenly spiked in one direction…off the charts. This is where I passed from the realm of standard behavior into the realm of irregular for it’s in the first real “freak out” that we know we are very different than the mass of those around us.  Yes, this loss of control must mark its entrance.

            And where was I when this happened? Well, I was in college.  I shared an apartment with two other young men and I was very much concerned with being a twenty one year old male, and little else.  As it would happen, I found myself experiencing a moderately bad chest cold.  Don’t get me wrong, it was nothing particularly horrible and most assuredly something I’d experienced before, with the standard set of symptoms.  I had a stuffed up nose, felt a little feverish, and had a general sense of heaviness in the chest.  It was all just the sort of thing a few days rest, some extra water, and some vitamin C would rapidly take care of.  After all, I was a very healthy young adult; I would be fine. But there occurred something more at this point, something new – at least new in this sort of intensity. Really, there were several distinct things that occurred.

            First,there was a sudden and unexplainable feeling of becoming very distant from the sensations of my body.  I felt removed from the world around me. This loss of immediacy is difficult to explain to someone who’s never felt it.  Do you know what I mean,friend?  My first instinct is to describe it as a numbness, but its really not.  Any feeling of being numb is not about the loss of actual sensation but about a sudden space existing between the sensations and you as the viewer of these sensations.  Igently poked the skin on my arm and, as usual, I felt the finger tip, the pressure, even the change in temperature, but it was like I was viewing if from inside of a thick cloud.  Even Looking out through my eyes seemed suddenly distant and strange.  Unexpectedly aware of my own eyelashes I couldn’t stop noticing them in my frame of view.  Imagine a movie screen if you will.  One moment you are absorbed in the actual movie, experiencing the events and scenes, and then suddenly you notice the five rows of chairs in front of you between you and the actor’s world.  You suddenly can’t stop being aware of the expanse of concrete floor between these chairs and the screen, or even the texture of the screen itself, woven fabric stretched taught, almost imperceptible,but once seen, impossible to ignore. From this strange new internal distance, everything felt very dreamlike,inordinately surreal and strange. 

This bizarre and unexpected divorced from reality did not come peacefully either.  Though dreamlike, it was not dreamy.  It very much came with the feeling of being on the very brink of unconsciousness…or perhaps madness.  Released from its normalcy the world suddenly seemed capable of springing to life in grand hallucination.  Don’t get me wrong, there were no hallucinations.  The inputs from my senses remained static and predictable but my mind had suddenly become extra prone to presenting unsettling possibilities.  What if this “cloud” never lifted?  How would I be able to function at school?  How would I be able to study, learn,move from class to class, interact with girls…how would I be able to do any of it from behind this curtain?  And How would I hide my condition from others?  How could I keep them from knowing?  All these thoughts sprung forth in rapid succession with illogical urgency. Beyond an inappropriate concern for being able live my normal life, there came the very real fear of the nature of this condition.  What was happening to me anyhow?

            The Notion that I was teetering on the brink of insanity was insistent.  The lack of explanation as to this shift in perception seemed to imply no other source.  I sat for an hour or so, externally silent, as my roommates and I watched TV.  They may have been intently watching the images on the screen, but I was very much trapped internally, grappling with the notion I was deteriorating mentally, walkingmyself through all the reasons why this wasn’t the case, and watching my own sensations and thoughts for any further signs of decay.  No legitimate symptom presented itself however.  There was nothing I could report to a doctor or a psychiatrist that would make any sense.  I couldn’t just say “it seemed like I Was about to go crazy”…or “I was sure I was about to hallucinate”.  Instead, it was more an endless state of expectation of something horrific, of being completely spooked, but never the realization of those fears. There were even bizarre notions that further contributed to my certainty that something essentially bad was happening to me. 

For example, at one point, as I Looked around the room and continued trying to investigate the difference I was so sure existed but couldn’t completely identify, I noticed my own left arm.  Suddenly it appeared odd tome and the shape and form of it seemed removed from the rest of my body.  My skin appeared inordinately yellow for a moment and in my mind’s eye I was suddenly presented with the image of the neck and head of a large rubber chicken.  Once again, it wasn’t that I suddenly thought my arm was a rubber chicken.  It was merely that I had suddenly noticed a resemblance…the way my fingers were curled in that instant forming the vague shape of a beak, well, I suppose more like it might produce a chicken’s outline as a shadow puppet with the proper lighting behind it, than that it really looked like one. The yellowish appearance of the skin in the room’s lighting hinted at the chicken’s plucked skin.  This Brief skewed connection in my mind, one small trigger that caused a mental jump to the idea of the chicken was enough though to feed into the overall condition.  Now, it became a battle against the thoughts that sprung from this likeness. An brief examination ensued to insure my arm was normal…which it was.  Ridiculous possibilities presented themselves.  What if your arm really was a rubber chicken?  Admittedly,this was utterly preposterous.  It Was like watching a horror movie and being on the edge of your seat.  In the movie all laws of the universe are suspended.  One’s arm really could turn into a rubber chicken on film, couldn’t it?

More than anything else, it was this idea that somehow the normal expectations of what could happen had been removed.  As much as I knew none of it was real or possible, I felt myself fighting the feeling that I needed to be ready for any possibility, that any of the strange thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere, could also manifest as realities.  It was this fear itself that seemed inordinately out of control now, the extreme expectation of something horrible about to happen, the feeling of being entirely spooked and irrationally terrified…with an almost supernatural slant.

Years later, I would be presented with a definition of what I had experienced for the first time that day.  I had my first bout of a condition called “derealization”.  Here’s the definition I was given:

Sufferers of Depersonalisationor Derealization feel divorced from both the world and from their own body.Often people who experience depersonalisation claim that life "feels like a dream", things seem unreal, or hazy; some say they feel detached from their own body. Another symptom of this condition can be the constant worrying or strange thoughts that people find hard to switch off. Sufferers of DP/DRoften see this strange phenomenon as being something catastrophic, and may become obsessed with an explanation they have come up with in their mind. It is often difficult to accept that such a disturbing symptom is a result of anxiety, and the sufferer is often thinking it must be something more, or something worse.

Along with that definition I found a few others that I see now apply to this first experience so many years ago.  They are “generalized anxiety disorder” and “hypervigilance”and they go something like this:

As the name implies, generalized anxiety disorder is characterized by long-lasting anxiety that is not focused on any particular object or situation. In other words it is nonspecific free-floating. People with this disorder feel afraid of something but are unable to articulate the specific fear. They fret constantly and have a hard time controlling their worries.

Hypervigilance is an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity accompanied by an exaggerated intensity of behaviors whose purpose is to detect threats. For example, a driver who has previously been involved in a car accident may devote so much attention to road conditions and other cars on the road, that he or she does not hear accompanying passenger while driving. Hypervigilance is a state of anxiety that often (and quickly) leads to exhaustion.

As I went through all these things, sitting there in that normal little living room, the people around me sitting unaware watching some drama or comedy (I Really can’t even remember), I was utterly trapped inside myself.  The innate human ability for“hypervigilance” that most people would only employ in the face of external danger, was then inappropriately directed internally.  Normally, given a situation where I was in mortal danger,this human capacity would be utilized to detect threat and escape danger.  Ultimately it is a component of the natural fight or flight instinct. Inappropriately used though, it now spurred an endless and tiring watch of my own thoughts, ideas, sensations, perceptions, and feelings.  I was completely on edge and could not return to the external world, so engrossed as I was with my internal condition.  I scrutinized everything inside of me carefully for further developments.

It was then, that there was a shift in focus.  As I mulled over my situation, desperately searching internally for an explanation to what was happening to me, I became sure there was no possible explanation other than the chest cold that had just preceded these events.  What else could possibly be the cause?  I was,after all, actually sick.  Perhaps I was more feverish than I had first thought.  And, if these bizarre new symptoms were related to a bacterial infection, didn’t that imply a disease far more serious than I had assumed?  Finally my mind had found a notion that made some amount of sense…and, as a result, this new general anxiety found something substantial to cling to.  It had what it needed, a real and tangible symptom to present to some professional for a diagnosis.  The marriage of this free-floating anxiety with a symptom I Had faith in, that I really believed existed, was enough to send me spiraling into action.  Up until that point,everything had occurred internally. There had been people in the room with me the whole time up until thatpoint, people who knew nothing of what was transpiring, who thought I merely had a cold, that I felt a tad under the weather.  They had no idea something so much more was occurring inside of me.  Once this mental sickness noticed my physical illness however and the two were connected in possibility,then the people around me quickly became aware something was amiss as well.

After twenty minutes of pacing and complaining about not being able to breath well, I Decided to call my father.  I got him on the phone and explained I really didn’t feel well, that I didn’t know if I had a fever, and that my chest cold seemed to be progressing out of control.  I said I thought I needed to see a doctor.  He agreed to come get me.  At that point, thirty more minutes went by as I became more and more agitated.  I started to wonder where he was.  The heaviness of my chest became more and more pronouncement in my mind and it seemed like I was short of breath.  I started taking quick gulps of air in an effort to insure that I had oxygen.

After Another 10 minutes, I began to outright panic.  My father was still nowhere to be found.  I couldn’t wait any longer.  I needed help badly.  There wasn’t much time left.  My breathing was becoming more and more labored.  Something had to be done.  I then called my brother and in a panicked state I told him I needed to go to the hospital.  He was somewhat shocked by my state but said he would be right over.  My brother turned out to be much quicker than my father and it wasn’t long before I saw his car pull up as I looked out the window.  At this point I was feeling dizzy and lightheaded.  There was no doubt about it now.  There was no denying my symptoms.  I felt like I was going to passout.  I couldn’t get enough air.  I was slowly suffocating.  It must be a massive bacterial assault on my lungs, perhaps even filling them quickly with fluid.   Time was of the essence.

Then She said something to me that I found hysterical.  She grabbed my hands and forced me to look at her and simply said, “you’re hyperventilating.”  I Was taken aback.  What?  What sort of nonsense is this?

“Here,look at your hands,” she added. Stunned I followed her gaze downward to my own hands only to suddenly realize they were curled into palsied looking semi-fists.  “See,” she said, “that’s why your hands are like that.  “You’re not letting any oxygen into your system.”

Itoccurs to me now though, dear friend, that I have brought with me in thisreview a lot of the concepts and knowledge I gained much later on in mystruggles and I feel the need to caution you in your interpretation of my storythus far.  While I have indeedinterjected definitions and meaning into what I experienced, talked of“derealization” and a free floating general anxiety, it wasn’t like that whenit happened.  Yes, one can lookback, armed with medical terms, and categorize the thoughts and feelings, butof course, at the time I had none of these.  As such, I want to make sure you clearly understand what itwas like at the time as well.  Iwant to you to see that there are multiple ways to view the same event.  There is one event, which went likethis:  for whatever reason, Isuddenly experienced my first bout of Anxiety Disorder, causing me to feelsuddenly removed from my own body and environment.  This shift in perception greatly alarmed me and, as I triedto pinpoint the source of this change, I slipped into hypervigilance of my ownsensations and perceptions.  Alsoexperiencing a sudden  unexplainedgeneral anxiety, I became convinced there was an impending doom about to takeme.  Desperately scanning myinternal world I latched onto the only real symptom I could find, the minorstuffiness and heaviness of the mild chest cold I had, and I then attributedall of the things I was experiencing internally to those symptoms.  By doing this, my general anxietylatched onto the cold and made me feel that I was in mortal danger.  I tried my best then to do what Ithought was right, to continue to get oxygen into my body, but it turns out Iwas mistaken and was really breathing too shallowly and causing what iscommonly called “hyperventilation”. Once I understood I shouldn’t be purposefully breathing like that, andonce I got medical confirmation that I was not in mortal danger from my cold,everything returned to normal and I went home and went to sleep, only to awakethe next day with it all seeming like a really bad dream.

Yesbeloved, that is one version of the story.  But, now let’s remove all the medical jargon.  Let’s remove how I can view the eventnow.  Let’s talk about what reallyhappened.  Let’s talk about what itfelt like, what I really experienced. For I didn’t experience “derealization”, did I?  No, I experienced the very real fearthat my arm was about to jerk into motion, all rubber chicken insanity.  There is quite a difference between thetwo, isn’t there?  Here’s whatreally happened…to me.  On that day, at that time, here’s what really was. Right now I don’t want the medical explanation.  I want the story.  This is the story of my actualexperience:  out of nowhere I wasattacked.  An entity, somethinghorrific, descended on me, changing everything I could see, hear, smell, tasteand feel.  Every scary idea that mymind could present was suddenly possible. There was something there with me, something wicked, something that wasabout to burst through the thin veil of reality.  It was more than just possible that my arm could become arubber chicken, it was more than just a disturbing image I created formyself.  It wasn’t just athought…it was a threat.  The factthat it didn’t happen, meant nothing. It could have.  Somethingwas threatening me.  That’s why Ifelt so afraid, so sure that I was about to die…because I was being told thatwas the case.  This feeling ofbeing separated from my body and mind wasn’t just a feeling either.  I was separated.  And, in the separation there wassuddenly the awareness of a hostile presence internally.  The rubber chicken idea wasn’t just abad mental coincidence.  It wasintentional.  It was meant to scareme.  It was put forth as a means toagitate me.  It waspurposeful.  My thoughts andfeelings, which were suddenly distant from me, were also being subverted andused against me.  There was dualcontrol…by me…and something else.

Iexperienced the very tangible feeling that during the event I was being setup.  That I was tricked, somehowpresented with the thoughts and ideas that I would find most frightening.  Even the hyperventilating was thesame.  I had been tricked intothinking I couldn’t properly breathe. I had been presented with the faulty plan of taking over my ownbreathing, of performing it in quick short gasps.  Somehow I had fallen for this sick gag, allowed myself to bemade a total fool, to errantly play the buffoon.  My shame and humiliation had been planned.  It was the desired outcome.  Yes, when they told me I washyperventilating, I laughed at myself. I laughed at how silly it all was. I laughed…but there was a vague sense of something else laughing aswell.  Not so much with me, but atme.  I was so very positive that Iwas about to die.  It seemed sounlike me to think like that, to be like that, to behave like that.

Doyou see how both stories exist? How both versions are true within their own realms?  In the external world, all of thedefinitions fit and hold true.  Inthe external world, all of the reactions are explainable, all of the possibletreatments valid.  But, theexternal world is not the primary realm in which this event occurred, isit?  The internal version is verydifferent and I now feel it is quite a mistake to confuse the two.  The internal version is true aswell.  If you really consider it,the internal version may well be more real than the external.  The internal version is experiential,its what really happened.  Theexternal version is all ideas and notions.  Its an explanation…but not the actual experience.  If you are like me, dear reader, youmay have delved into the external explanations quite a bit in your life,perhaps become quite successful in managing the true experiences as a result,of controlling your reactions to episodes, of learning tricks to divert theevents.  Of course, there’smedications as well that may help. The more one examines the science, the more one can control and effectthe outcome internally, yes?  But,what if there was another way? Instead of searching the external realm, let us instead search theinternal realm.  Is there a way outthat is internal?  What if therewere places to look internally that would have the same effect?  What if nothing external needed to bedone at all in order to transform these internal experiences?  Are you interested enough?  Or perhaps it is more appropriate toask “are you brave enough”?

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