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Text of the page (random words):
c or scared of heights they d provided some great photo opportunities in past years and it seemed like a good solid part of our holiday itinerary it never occurred to me to worry about it and then and then when we went to book tickets in advance they made us read a list of all the things that we could expect during the tour regarding the steepness of the 300 steps the narrowness of the stone staircase and passageways the heights plus the level of fitness and the sensible footwear required and we had to sign to say we were ok with all of that which i was and then and then we had to wait several days for the event itself to come around oh the sweet irony of our room name before the anxiety or if you re familiar with the analogy before the funfair goldfish arrived if i d read that list ten minutes before beginning the tour i might not have been quite so alert to the possibilities for concern but there s nothing like the luxury of all that time to think to reall y set anxiety in motion is there it s probably the same list they ve shown us all the other times said james sensibly and nothing ever happened then he went on trying to reassure me and maybe it was maybe every other time i d just skim read those potentially troubling phrases dismissed them signed it and gone straight on the tour without a second thought but ahh this time time was the enemy seeds of anxiety time plus the manure dumped from an over thinking brain quite the strong and anxious seedling growing in my chest or to use the goldfish analogy at this point someone was surrounded by the smell of diesel powered generators and boiling hot dogs wasting all their spare change on trying to hook a duck and win a fish no one had yet thrust a goldfish at me but the moment was growing ever closer on the day itself sitting waiting for the guides to arrive my breathing had already begun to speed up i began to feel slightly dizzy a bit nauseous and maybe like my digestive system might play me up i want to repeat here that there doesn t need to be a specific cause for the anxiety i was not sitting there thinking i was going to get trapped in the narrow corridors or fall from the height rather like a scaly little fish in liquid in a thin bulging plastic bag anxiety is often far more slippery than that i was just anxious not of or about anything in particular i just was and then the tour began during the anxiety goldfish so there we were a group of around 15 heading straight up the first set of stone stairs where several things conspired together to make me uncomfortable it was warm it wa s july in a narrow staircase packed with bodies exerting themselves travelling upwards just like the heat it was narrow like not much wider than some people s shoulders narrow which i could probably have coped with except it was a spiral the tightly coiling twist meant that the steps tapered away into nothing at the centre so while you could easily set down your left foot the right foot had to be careful it actually made contact with a flat surface or you d slip and all that spiralling became dizzy making the women in my family are not blessed with the strongest of necks and looking up to grab the hand rope there was no rail and look down to check where my feet were going tightened my neck muscles making me dizzier still it was steep and speedy the guides were setting such a fast pace it would ve put even the most overly achieving personal trainer to shame there was literally no time to stop to catch your breath and finally to quote tom petty there ain t no easy way out at times i couldn t keep up and tried to slow down but the guide at the bottom was setting the pace for the people behind me leaving no way to drop back and let people overtake the staircase was only wide enough for one person so there was absolutely no way down without making the entire party back up all the way down too and who wants to be that person oh hi there social anxiety fancy meeting you here have you come along to take photos of the view too none of this on its own would be insurmountable but all of it slung together and did i mention it was warm and like a work out and relentless and verrry verrrry swirrrrrllllllyyyyyy spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyyy james was ahead of me i often glimpsed the soles of his shoes dip out of sight around the spiral while i tried to slow my pace meanwhile behind me or rather below me a stranger had their head at my feet or worse and boom there i was wonkily storming up an ancient spiral staircase filled strangers while trying to carry a funfair goldfish seriously if you still don t know what this means you need to read my other post by the time we reached the first stopping point i was struggling emotionally more than physically but hey physically too let s not leave out that particular treat i had the whole party going on so we already know i m a bit head spinny and my legs are heavy and my lungs are asking why julie whyyyy but now the hollow of my spine was slick with sweat my forehead a curtain of droplets to be swept away by a tissue and there was a tightening in my guts and anxious readers you know the kind of tightening i mean the kind where you re not 100 sure how it all might pan out like maybe you might just burp or your stomach will grumble and then you ll feel some relief or maybe it ll be vomit or a fart or worse who knows and when you know where a stranger s head is going to be in a few minutes once you re back on that staircase well it doesn t bear thinking about by now we were in an open space where we could pause to breathe and recuperate while the tour guides told us something about the automated bell ringing system and used their laser pointers to indicate areas of architectural interest but my body was demanding more of my attention and you know how in tom and jerry when the humans talk and all you hear is that wah wah wah sound well that so ignoring the tour altogether i began stripping off off came my jacket rolled up my sleeves and let me tell you if there d been a dignified way to whip off the leggings from under my skirt while trying to juggle these immediate physical needs get cool breathe with the overarching emotional goal of calming the fuck down there was a constant battle rumbling in my mind how much of this discomfort is due to the anxiety and how much to the sheer exertion it was probably a filthy mix of both but if i focused on the idea it was most likely just the exercise i could prevent the anxiety from escalating far better to attribute the wobbly legs to all those bloody steps than to some inexplicable fear and then despite all the attempts at rationalisation i started planning my exit strategy what would i say when would i say it so yes hi yes so yes lovely brickwork up there and h those ancient beams but i can t do this any longer i can t go further up i can t go at that pace something might come out of me who knows from where don t make me you re not the boss of me let me out let me ooooooouuuuuutttttt or words to that effect but on second thoughts ffs it s supposed to be a nice day out you wanted to do this it s a normal thing it shouldn t be this overblown you ll spoil the day for james you re a hundred or more steps up in a room with some sort of machinery if i d been listening properly i d have known more and there s no way they ll leave you to wait here until they all come back down no you ll have to be escorted out all the way you ll look feeble a failure a criminal and i reckon it was this the idea of the social embarrassment that made me decide to stay the course in the end not the positive self talk not the focusing not the 1reathing but the horror of something worse than feeling like this i e feeling like this while other people spectate so i kept calm and carried on ok ok ok no that was just a little joke let me re phrase that i carried on we can say that much if nothing else after the initial anxiety began to subside in short w e climbed further up we squeezed through a corridor that was almost too narrow for me i sat opposite the bell as it bonged 12 times alas it s a level of distraction not yet readily available on the nhs as a treatment we climbed up more swirling steps to the roof where we looked out for miles across the countryside and saw the resident peregrine falcons swooping and sweeping below us i was fine with the height and thoroughly welcomed the cooling blustery breeze and then then we went down the way we came only this time non stop with more open space in front of my face if you think that going up my face was close to the steep stone steps rising directly in front and also without my bum in anyone s face always a bonus back on terra firma i felt like someone made of rubber trying to maintain their balance on a bouncy castle i felt like an astronaut meeting gravity once again i felt heavy yet breakable slow yet skittish i needed lunch a good cup of tea a hand to hold i also needed to write about what just happened it s how i deal with stuff and before i was even out of the cathedral i had the idea to turn the experience into a blog post and the first most obvious thought i had was that it would probably take the shape of a story detailing how i beat the anxiety to get through the day a kind of heart warming triumph over adversity type click bait and then and then nothing about that plan sat right with me if i had written the here s how i overcame my anxiety to enjoy a day out post it would have been kind of true but also kind of bullshit the truth is yes i did it despite being anxious but i didn t want to turn it into some half truth that glossed over the real parts of a real life story because when it comes down to it apart from the bit on the roof and seeing the birds in their element it was unpleasant and i wish it had been easier how s that for some inspirational lifestyle blog content but it s the truth so why are you telling us all this kirk what exactly is it you re trying to say well if you remember at the beginning hours ago i know i just can t write short posts sorry about that i did warn you that there was no truly happy ending here so i hope you re not too disappointed with the weary conclusion that even if you manage to feel the fear and do it anyway it doesn t mean it will feel good but what would it achieve for me to end the story at the point where i look brave and wise and like i have all the answers without telling how it left me feeling yes i stayed until the end of the tour despite wanting to leave but i got through it because it ended we moved locations sitting down to hear the bell ring helped me focus on something else the breeze on the roof top was life giving and sweat drying i didn t overcome it because i achieved some peak mindfulness although lord knows that was mixed in there somewhere or because some catchy life hack rewired my neurons in 10 minutes or because i recalled the enlightened words from some gold foiled motivational slogan i got through it because it didn t get worse not because i suddenly found 5 fresh ways to battle an anxiety attack i got through it because despite my body trying to convince me otherwise i didn t pass out die or worse still do an explosive shit in the face of a total stranger and rather than feeling elated powerful a changed woman i just felt hollowed out and like oh really this crap again i m not saying i m not pleased i stuck around but i can t say what i did made me feel strong or brave because when your mind and body are in turmoil trying to decide if you can cope with a perfectly normal situation it doesn t feel brave at all and that s ok if we wait until we re brave to do thing we might never do things and we ll miss out and we don t deserve to miss out because the idea of brave whitewashes just how hard it feels to be present while your body and mind are in mutiny because what if i d decided that actually y know what the best thing for me in that moment would be to practice some gentle self care what if the kindest thing i could have done for myself was to quietly take aside one of the guides and explain i wasn t feeling happy about the rest of the tour and could i please leave would that have made me the opposite of brave would that have made me a coward if i d spun this as a motivational tale of how you can hang on in there get through a panic attack and not miss out on interesting experiences i worry that i d be giving the idea that it s a what you should do and b suggest that it s easily done it s neither it s all hard and dirty and foggy and baffling and individual and changeable and challenging and draining i don t feel in any way valedictory about it although truth be told i m more sanguine about it now months down the line but at the time i did not feel proud of myself for keeping my head when all around me were quite possibly having no problem keeping theirs so is the moral of this story that anxiety sucks and you shouldn t even try to get through it because you ll still feel like limp turd afterwards firstly ew limp turd nice visual there dude and secondly no but also yes a little bit and no of course not and kind of glad we ve got that clear mostly i wanted to share the story here partly because i thought the line do an explosive shit in the face of a total stranger was too funny to waste but more so to say that if you too have felt like a quivering wreck for no good reason if you too have been visited by the unexpected funfair goldfish and if you too felt like why for the love of netflix you can t just function like everyone else then hey me too it s not just you it feels like it is but it isn t i wanted to talk about it because often it s the after stories you read the stories of how people came out the other side and as inspiring and optimistic as they might be it s not always realistic to think that there s a other side to come out of life s messy and circular it throws unexpected goldfish at you when you thought the funfair had left town for good years ago life doubles back and drops you down wormholes and you ll be dragged backward and forwards in your journey more times than marty mcfly rather than share a clean and tidy after story i wanted to share a messy during one not to depress anyone but to say something along the lines of you know what you can have anxiety and still do stuff it might not always be fun you might struggle you might almost fall apart in public you might sometimes feel like you might die but honestly you rarely do and don t let that put you of doing something you want to do it can t be just the bold and oblivious who get to see and things and and and and and i ve got so much more i want to say on this topic the 1000 words i ve cut out of this post for a start but i ve said far too much for one post already and those other words can go towards my manifesto for all those anxious people doing stuff which at the rate i m spewing out this stuff could easily turn into a book i m going to be using ananxiousperson...
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