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The Noise in my Head

Understanding those anxiety attacks

By Yvonne CastanedaPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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"I just want to turn it off"

Like many Latinas, my mom was raised to be of service to everyone except herself: to her husband, her children, her in-laws. Growing up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood in Mexico, she helped her own mother raise 18 children. With no formal education beyond the sixth grade, she came to the US in her 20’s and worked in low-wage jobs to send money to her mother. She remained in low-wage jobs her entire life to help support our own family.

My mom wasn’t taught to be proud of her accomplishments or to be positive. She was taught to make sacrifices, to seguir adelante and resolver. With sacrifices and hard work, she has accomplished a great deal and she is a strong woman whose life is a testament to work ethic, dedication, and perseverance.

But good Lord, Mami is a nervous wreck, forever worried about something.

Her ‘feelings’ and signs from God guide her actions and determine her mental state. When she gets a feeling something terrible might happen, she rings her hands, paces back and forth, and talks to herself. She refers to these feelings as her nervios.

When we were kids, she’d say, "Ay Dios mio, tengo los nervios a millon."

“Uh-oh,” my brother would say. “Mami’s nerves are going a million miles an hour.”

"Valgame Dios," she’d mutter, "estos nervios me quieren matar."

“Mami’s nerves want to kill her,” I’d warn him. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know, but don’t make them angrier.”

Anything can trigger Mami’s nerves: the news, a thunderstorm, dead flowers; whatever spells doom in the near or distant future. Her nervios are what we define as anxiety. WedMD lists 14 possible reasons for anxiety in which stress features prominently, among them stress caused by work, financial responsibilities, a living situation and relationships. Today, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we have another significant stressor to deal with, and even more so because it comes with an uncertain trajectory.

When we’re faced with the unknown, many of us may develop anxiety if our mind transports us to a future in which we envision worse-case scenarios. We turn a bad headache into a brain tumor.

If our partner doesn’t reply to a text message, we imagine them lying in a hospital bed or worse, in the arms of someone else. We develop anxiety because we take a singular event and and turn it into an epic catastrophe.

My mom was a pro at this. One cup of green tea was sure to cause lifelong diarrhea. Walking barefoot would make me sterile. Going outside with my hair wet would lead to pneumonia.

Anxiety messes with our sleep pattern and causes headaches. It can affect concentration and how we breathe. It can feel like an elephant sitting on our chest or butterflies going nuts in our stomach. My mom forgets how to breathe when the weatherman announces a new hurricane off the coast of Africa, even though nobody can predict its path. This anxiety is relentless because we’re thinking about stuff that we cannot a) predict, b) control, or c) guarantee, which is just about everything beyond the boundaries of ourselves.

We cannot control people. We cannot predict the future and in life, there are no guarantees.

There are many ways to combat anxiety but there’s no perfect way, just your way. Deep breathing on a daily basis keeps the nervous system in check. Staying busy by cooking, working, reading, watching movies, exercising, or arts and crafts also works. Staying away from the news definitely helps because good things are rarely reported. The key is to do whatever will yank your mind out of the unknown future and place it back where it belongs—in the here and now.

I use this tactic on my mom when she’s convinced a tsunami might be headed for South Florida. I interrupt her and ask, What are you cooking? What’s that noise in the background? Are you sipping on tequila? Which brand? I’m tricking her into utilizing her senses because it grounds her back in the present until she’s no longer worried about a tsunami and instead focused on our good friend, Don Julio.

Next time you feel an elephant on your chest or your mind is tormenting you, stop whatever you're doing and focus on using your senses: See 5 things, Hear 4 things, Touch 3 things, Smell 2 things, and Taste 1 thing. Say everything out loud, i.e. I see a dog, I hear a plane, I smell brownies. Do this repeatedly until the elephant is gone and you can breathe again. You can also interrupt your thoughts by remembering the date, the time, the day of the week, your address and again, say everything out loud.

Doing this on a regular basis may keep your nervous system in check and your brain working as it should, so that you don’t feel like you have to ‘cope’ all the time, because life is not meant to be coped with, it is meant to be lived.

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About the Creator

Yvonne Castaneda

I've been on earth for about 48 years and have a ton of stories about life, love and relationships. I thought I should share them because why the hell not? Maybe they'll make you laugh, smile or be a nicer human all around.

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