davidn | The Comedy of Life

It occurred to me this morning just what incredible new depths of patheticness I am plumbing with my life at the moment. I am the only person in the world who has attempted to go on holiday, found that too stressful and gone back to work instead. Yesterday, I attended my most tragic birthday celebration ever, on the other end of a Skype call to my family-in-law who had gone to the trouble of organizing a cake for me with the Scottish flag on it, from a Mexican-run bakery called The Taste of Denmark.

But talking to them made me feel slightly better, and I feel that at least having a plan to fix this is a start. I am sort of adverse to medication, not in a Christian Scientist/Delphi kind of way, but... well, I remember when I was in third year of university the first years who moved up all sounded like so many chapters from a self-help book and were on medication for things that I would have thought were better just toughening up and getting over, but having gone through such an episode... I can understand it's because I never wanted to admit to it. Shame and disgrace over mental unrest, and... etcetera.

Anyway. Good things to occupy myself with during my unexpected week alone - guess who's in the latest of these Click community casts (at about 10:40 in this video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EljYYzOrStE#t=10m37s

Apart from anything else, I am frankly amazed at how offensively appalling my graphics were six years ago. J Freude's graphics really help the game (and there are some from a couple of other artists in the community there as well), and it's thanks to their lead that the game looks so dramatically different now. Now to get it finished by the date promised in the video...

And tonight at 10pm on the History Channel for some reason, the Americans are going to try their hand at Top Gear. That's going to be good, isn't it.

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Have you thought about hypnosis rather than medication? I've not tried it but heard very good things about its use for anxiety. And if my friends can self-hypnotise themselves into a deep enough state that they can comfortably deal with childbirth pain, well... worth a shot?

You know... I hadn't thought of that because frankly I didn't believe in it, but if it's worked for other people, then it must have some effect even if it's not a... physical treatment. That is an interesting suggestion.

Actually, now that I think about it, from one Freshers' Week, there is a photo of my brother on the Venue 1 stage talking to a shoe - apparently hypnotism does to something after all.

Like I say, my only experience with it is via friends who used it for childbirth, but they managed to completely conquer their fear and to a great degree manage pain, too. No idea how you'd go about accessing it, but perhaps worth a shot. For hypnobirth, it's a short course which you do with a partner and work out all kinds of triggers, physical and verbal, so that your partner can help you move into a relaxed state. It takes some practice, but one friend managed it so well that the hospital told her she couldn't be in labour because she was too relaxed - when in fact birth was imminent! Let me know how you get on, if you decide to do it.

You're definitely not the first person this has happened to, although it must suck to be thousands of miles away from your birthday cake. My dad used to be a really nervous flier, but ironically he was cured by being on a flight where there was a bit of a safety issue, but everyone walked away unharmed.

Medication can definitely help, but there are also good reasons to be sceptical about it, because psychiatric drugs are a woefully blunt instrument for dealing with complicated problems. If you just want something that you can take on the day when you need to be in a plane, and don't mind being a bit stoned for a few hours, this is something that medication can provide quite effectively (I was given Valium for a back injury a few years ago - it's a muscle relaxant as well as a sedative - and it felt amazing except that I couldn't concentrate on anything useful yet could entertain myself for hours just looking at the walls). It's the longer term stuff you want to be careful with, because it can be great when it works, but it can take a while to get it right.

I could see how having lived through an... abnormality could help - showing evidence that if something goes slightly not to plan it's not a certainty that everyone just dies. On Whitney's first journey to Britain, I think it was, they landed on the east coast of America because they weren't confident that the engine was going to last across the Atlantic. Dare I ask what this one was?

Even knowing that the plane made it to the other side of the country despite all the problems I went through (none of which were mechanical) is comforting... I was only this nervous about flying before 16, and I thought I'd got over it (is it a phobia if it apparently comes and goes?).

I have some sedatives left over from my illness last year, although I have read (as a little knowledge is a dangerous thing) that they're not recommended for flights as they can actually exaggerate the... apparent violence of small movements of the aircraft. Being knocked out and waking up somewhere else, though, sounds preferable to having to experience it at the moment.

However, I have anxiety issues with a lot of things that I haven't ever mentioned on here, so it's part of a wider problem (or one that exaggerates it)... even something as simple as getting public transport seems very nerve-wracking if I absolutely need to be at the other end on time and I don't know when I'm going to be picked up. The creation of Track the T was entirely fuelled by my own neuroses.

The specific plane malfunction was that the landing flaps go stuck, so it couldn't slow down properly to land, and hits the runway at a much greater speed than usual, with higher risks of stuff going wrong. They had to circle round for a while to burn off fuel, and divert to an airport with a longer runway and fire engines on standby. But it was all fine - nobody even had cuts and bruises, although some of the passengers got a bit fed up about the three hour coach journey back to the country they'd booked a holiday in.

Phobias are by definition irrational, so it's probably not that unusual that your fear of flying comes and goes. I didn't realise you'd been having other issues though, so I just want to be clear that I'm not saying that you shouldn't consider medication, just that it's not the easy way out that it's sometimes presented as, so other options are worth considering. Having the right meds is good, but sometimes the process of finding what works for you can be less than pleasant.

I had thought that it may be something like that... similarly, I could have at least taken comfort in the fact that JetBlue is (I think) the only airliner to have successfully landed without the aid of undercarriage. And because they're also the airliner with the most television, as those passengers were circling around to burn off fuel they could watch themselves on television, presumably complete with the newsreaders going "What do you think of their chances, Biff?" "Oh, not so good, Hank."

I suppose these things never come up when I'm writing in a setting that's purely... on the Internet and unaffected by things in real life like this. For the most part I have it under control and just need to... plan ahead for my anxiety, but the plane brought it all out - I had been stressing about it for the entire week beforehand. Whatever might cure this, I have three weeks to find it.

Note in the KlikCast I snuck in something at 11.23 ;)

As much as you can "sneak in" something in a bulldozer! ;) I was actually surprised to see that because I'd forgotten that I'd even put it into the game - and this reminds me that I need to email you about something similar for this one :)

The Comedy of Life

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ChrisStreet

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