Looking back now, I would say I was a worried child, tending to be more shy, sensitive and insecure than most. Some kids are like emotional sponges. They feel everything around them and until they figure out how to regulate the incoming stimulation, they can be little drama kings and queens, over-reacting to normal life. When you consider I was “the baby” in my family, my older brother and sister had good reason to resent their weird little brother.
By the time I reached 6th grade, I had figured out how to use my sensitive nature to my advantage. I observed and learned. I acted cool and mellow, as if nothing bothered me. Unfortunately, adults saw that as a “bad attitude” and it led to meetings in the principal’s office with my mother crying and me yawning as if I really didn’t care.
And yet beneath the serene exterior, I was secretly worried. Like many developing humans, social acceptance was like oxygen, except I never took that next breath for granted. I was popular enough but inside I suffered with my own angst. I was so afraid of rejection, I often played it safe, choosing to be alone rather than give someone the chance to hurt me.
Somehow, like most of us, I survived life’s painful progressions and many years later, woke up and discovered I was 40-year-old workaholic and caffeine addict in a second marriage with two young children, a mortgage, a successful psychology practice and no time for friendship.
And the worry was still there. The perfectionism. The fear of failure. I was walking a tightrope, trying to not look down, determined to get it right and knowing I could lose it all.
And then it happened. My heart went bad on me. I was devoted to my wife, kids, clients, houses, cars, pets and bills. I was dedicated to running that eternal marathon while juggling a couple dozen bowling balls, and after years of sleep deprivation and not eating, it all finally caught up to me. I was dying.
The first symptom was as if a bird had come to live in my chest. I felt this fluttering as feathers fluffed up inside the cavity where my calm heart should be. And I freaked. I mean I really freaked. Not on the outside. I’m like a trained poker player but inside my mind I was screaming commands like a ship’s captain afraid of invisible torpedoes in the black sea. “Avoid! Escape! Help!”
I would lie awake at night feeling my pulse, tracking each double and triple beat and the terrifying pauses as if the blood was caught behind a door and couldn’t get through. I would elbow my wife awake so she could feel the spastic, gasping, erratic pulse too, and take comfort if she seemed as worried as I was.
And I thought of my father and grandfather who between them had several heart attacks and I just knew my time had come. This was it. At any moment I expected to die. I kept waiting, sure it could come at any time.
When my wife urged me to see a doctor, I refused. I didn’t have any life insurance and knew that a heart disease diagnosis would make me high-risk. For months I suffered with this quiet torture. Sometimes I felt like there was fist in my chest squeezing so hard I couldn’t breathe. And still I carried on. Dead man walking, sitting, talking. I continued my frenetic life that included, ironically, counseling people with anxiety disorders.
I finally applied for life insurance and was shocked when I passed the physical. I fooled her, I thought. Now at least I could die in peace knowing my family would be okay.
It took a couple months to get an appointment with a cardiologist and when the day finally arrived, I walked into his office, resigned to finally be facing my imminent death. I felt like a twisted up dishrag, wound up so tight inside that I just wanted relief, even if it meant my death.
He ran me through the usual paces including the tread mill and a few other tests. Gratefully my heart performed like an untrained acrobat, flipping and flopping in my chest like a frightened fish on dry land. The doctor would see, I thought and we would finally know the terrible truth.
And then, looking bored and strangely unconcerned, he informed me my heart was fine but my mind was a mess. In effect, he said, quit stressing out and cut down on the coffee. That was it.
I left his office that day a new man and my heart immediately settled down, now that my anxious mind relaxed its grip. And while my heart occasionally still does a flip or two, here or there, it has been 17 years and I no longer worry it’s about to seize and stop. My mind, on the other hand, is my real problem. I never know what it will come up with next.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
