How a Panic Attack on I-95 Made Me Understand How the Mind Really Works
The first time I saw the crack in the matrix of my mind I was 28. It was in the seconds after experiencing the most frightening panic attack of my life. A panic attack created by the internal matrix of a world made up of thought. A never-ending story of thought and thinking. All part of that wondrous human experience of habitual thought our brain erroneously(and innocently) tries convincing us is real. That dark and murky deep end of the anxious and panicky area of our mind’s infinity pool.
It was early summer 2003. I was completing my final semester of graduate school interning at the Middle East Institute for Peace at the University of Miami. It was less than hour’s drive from my home. 58 minutes to be exact, door to door. A drive I have done a thousand of times before without issue or incident. This afternoon was different. The only difference was my level of thinking in the moment. Forty three miles from Glades road to the University of Miami with hundreds of thousands of other cars and trucks on the road beside me. I was in the center lane on I95 south four miles from the Dade/Broward county line. Traffic was light for a usually heavily traveled section of the interstate. I was listening to Radiohead’s Karma Police and tapping the top of my VW Jetta’s steering wheel keeping a steady state 65 mph. Suddenly my hands begin sweating. I feel my grip tighten on the 97 Jetta GT’s steering wheel as I sing along to Thom Yorke’s hypnotic recitation in the final stanza of Karma police:
“For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself
Phew, for a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself”
Traffic lanes triple in number from three to six. Than it happens. A speeding red and yellow tractor trailer appears out of nowhere. In my blind spot. The truck driver is gunning it. A screaming (over torqued) Detroit Diesel struggles to maintain a steady 90 mph but at 15,000 lbs. of speeding metal it creates a violent wind vortex forcing it’s mighty hand on my VW’s rack and pinion steering box, pushing my Jetta out of the lane for a horrifying second. I auto-correct (something I have done many times before) to avoid side swiping a 91 Saab 900s turbo in the lane next to me. Suddenly I cannot catch my breath. My heart feels like it is going to leap out of my chest. All I could see in front of me is a piercing white South Florida sun bouncing off the red hood of my VW. A second later my vision goes wide. I feel like I am losing control (of myself).
Losing control of my VW. I feel less than zero. I feel absolute dread. I want to be off this flat highway. I want to be off this miserable fucking road to nowhere. This miserable fucking state of Florida. I did not want to be in this car. I just wanted it all to be silent. I wanted it all to stop. I wanted my million miles a second TPS (thoughts per second) mind to shut the fuck up. I yelped to myself in fear. Was I dying? I can’t breathe. Suddenly my right foot slips off the VW’s accelerator petal and I jerk the steering wheel to the right and within a half second (without blinking) locate the stalled vehicle lane on the right shoulder of interstate. I catch a blearing car horn from a white Hyundai Elantra as it speeds past me. I must have cut off the Hyundai in my urgency to get off the roadway.
I turn the engine off. I can’t breathe. I turn on the a/c full blast and use the hand crank to roll down the Jetta’s window. I try desperately to breathe in the humid South Florida air. I burst out in a tears (then laughter) when I take my first breath of wonderful humid South Florida. I smell jasmine, coral, and just a hint of car exhaust. I realize what has just happened. “I am ok,” I say to myself. I feel the calm wash over me as I drop out of my momentary thought turbulence. It was at that moment I saw how full of shit my current sped up state of mind was. How made up it all is. The idiocy of believing any of my overreacting panic.
I am ok. I am ok even in the terror of my temporary “thought hurricane.”
17+ years (and many panic attacks later) I am still ok. I still feel the extremes of anxiety and panic now and again. Now I see it as less dangerous. It has no meaning. It is just the energy of turbulent thought causing temporary discomfort like turbulence on an aircraft. The more I allow myself to experience it the more I see it as nothing to believe is true (as uncomfortable it can be in the moment).
Anxiety never goes away. Panic never goes away. Making peace with your panic and anxiety allows you to have more peace of mind when it happens again.
For that next time:
“Phew for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself… “