Part One

Throughout most of adult life, anxiety has been my bag. Not the searing anxiety that renders the person incapable of functioning at all in the world; not the anxiety that turns someone into a control freak, despairingly trying to manage the unmanageable. No. More like an undercurrent, or a ripple on the ocean, passing constantly through experience, almost indiscernible, yet present nevertheless.

The anxiety really began to kick in during my language teaching years. This was roughly 1990 - 2004. Actually, this period falls into three distinct parts. The first two or three years provoked a good deal of anxious feeling. However much training you have, the learning of the teacher takes place in the classroom. You learn on the hoof, and through your mistakes (if you are clever enough for that). So the early stages of language teaching were characterised by the omnipresent possibility of disaster. Twenty totally baffled young adults in revolt as they see their hard-earned money, painfully passed over to the school, disappearing in a haze of confusion.

Having survived this initiation, I entered a purple patch. I knew the ropes, was familiar with much of the way of the language, had developed my own style of teaching, and was beginning to gain a reputation as a good guy to have running your class. I created my own materials, combining didactic elements with humour, which some at least of the students appreciated: it kept them from terminal boredom, if nothing else.

I could see no way out, but I stayed on too long. The third phase of my language teaching life was characterised by increased tedium and frustration. I was no longer fresh to the job. I became increasingly grouchy, and the fantastic friendly students who attended my classes in the previous years seemed to be replaced by grim, humourless beings. The vibes were no longer good. I was on a short fuse, and it sometimes spilled out in the classroom. 

I had continued with my teaching work under the assumption that, once I knew the ropes, and had the basic techniques and strategies under my belt, life would be easy and any feelings of anxiety would simply dissolve away. Mistake. It didn't seem to work like that. However well I was versed in teaching techniques and the finer details of English grammar, still every day was a new day. Every day brought fresh challenges; it was not possible to press the remote control and just let the whole show roll out effortlessly. I was by nature sensitive and conscientious, and would always strive to do my best. After over a decade of language teaching, the anxiety-ometer was hitting the roof.

Part Two

I staggered out of the doors of the London Study Centre for the last time in December 2004. Around two months later something unexpected happened. I was sitting eating my evening meal when something snapped inside me. I went straight to bed. The following morning all sensation had gone from my legs; I couldn't move them.

The voice of reason, as DH Lawrence puts it, told me I was seriously ill; I should go see the GP with suspected multiple sclerosis or similar. Another voice told me that it was OK. It was disturbing and a bit scary, but that it would pass.

It passed. Not until I had undergone a period of great unease. I would get up, and haul myself out for a walk, my wife in close attendance. After twenty minutes or so, sensation would begin to return to my legs, and I was able to walk more confidently.

I don't know what to call it. A kind of nervous collapse, maybe, the release of years of anxiety-type stress and tension. It needed to come to a head before being able to release. That's the best I can muster as explanation, anyway.

And then there were the dreams. They kicked in some time after I had left my teaching activities. At first they resembled classic anxiety dreams. I would go to teach a class. There would be large numbers of students in the room. I started OK, but then students began to get up off their seats and walk around the room. They paid no attention to me. Then some began to leave the room completely. I was helpless.

The dreams were frequent, and troubling enough for me to be reluctant to go to bed, in case I had a visitation from an unruly class at three in the morning.

It's seventeen years since I last entered a classroom in waking consciousness. The dreams have become rarer, and have changed in tone. Typically, I go to teach a class. I haven't done any teaching for years, and I probably don't have a lesson plan. Sometimes I look for the library in order to get some books to take to class, but can't find it. I am no longer anxious, however. I know that I can wing it based on previous experience and personal confidence. This is a big change.

And there's the panic.....

The phenomenon first showed itself during the come-down phase of several of the LSD trips I took during the 1970s. Eyes closed; an array of images. Suddenly there appears a large white entity. It seems filled with air, like a giant air balloon. It owns a large face, fat and wide, rather clown-like, not benevolent. All at once it charges at me. It smothers me, suffocates me, overtaking the entirety of my conscious experience. Panic. I open my eyes immediately, shake my head, trying to erase the memory and the influence of this disturbing attack.

Part Three

I swap London for Inverness, and teaching for 'outdoors retail', selling rucksacks and walking boots. In some respects I'm great; in others I teeter on the edge. Even minimum wage dudes can suffer anxiety; indeed, the retail world appears designed to induce such feelings from its employees as much as is possible.

Regular migraine; intestinal troubles; increasingly common sinus pain and pressure: all point to a conditional that ain't going away anytime soon.

In addition to the scary balloon man, another figure begins to turn up in my mind. It takes a while before I am able to identify this uninvited guest: the figure of panic in Munch's famous painting, 'The Scream'.

One day I took a mild psychedelic and went for a walk in the woods. This psychedelic is not a particularly friendly one, and I was nauseous the following day. Nevertheless, it did the trick. In my condition of dawning despair, it got me to give up and to give in. I sat down on the log of a tree and called out loud and clear to the entirety of the natural world all around: "I need help."

For me at the time, this was a big deal. Since leaving organised Buddhism, I had gone my own way. Independence was the name of the game. So this constituted quite a turnaround.

I went to see a homeopath. A few days before the appointment, the muscles in my lower back seized up, and I could barely walk. As I struggled to climb the stairs to her treatment room, she must have wondered what had washed up on her shores that morning.

Half an hour into the appointment, with me trying to hold things together and describe my condition, the white balloon guy decided to make an appearance. I began shaking, before collapsing into a flood of tears.

Part Four

You need to hit rock bottom. Thenceforth, you may begin to move on. Give up the resistance, surrender; permit yourself, after all these years, to experience fully and vividly what is actually going on. Now, and only now, can it all be properly investigated, and an exit strategy devised.

There is, it transpires, a fantasy at the bottom of the panic and anxiety which, on inspection, fails to hold water. It's all in the word 'control'. Anxiety arises from uncertainty about what's going to happen, and the fear of being unable to control it. My investigations revealed that the fear and the anxiety serve no useful purpose, beyond an initial alerting that something's up, maybe.

Life is largely uncontrollable; trying is futile. Instead of getting jumpy, just accept that stuff happens, and unexpected stuff happens, and learn to be attentive, ready at every moment for any possibility, flexible and fluid. Take as a model Neo in the Matrix; learn the art of dodging bullets.

Beyond this, but related, was the realisation that there is no-one there to actually feel panic and anxiety anyhow. These feelings are the product of a falsehood - that there is a real and fixed 'me' there who is being attacked, or threatened with imminent obliteration. Look within to find the guy who actually feels anxious, and you find there's nobody at home. 

This application of what comprises Buddhist insight, but is nowhere near limited to Buddhism, blossomed naturally and spontaneously once I had taken the leap into full experience of the phenomenon. This very act of experiencing required letting go of anxiety in the first place.

Today, I live in a better place. It is not anxiety-free, but any such feelings tend to be short-lived, and get given the treatment before they can breed into monsters. Additionally, the kundalini energy kind-of washes out such feelings; it refuses to permit their existence for very long.

May we all live free of panic, anxiety, needless worry. May we live in the glorious house of wisdom, knowing we are infinite, we are indestructible....