Do you know the term for when an alligator violently spins his victim into a certain watery, inescapable death? It’s called the death roll. Pretty much describes my state of mind at the moment. But instead of roll, I like the word spiral better.
Yep, the Death Spiral. I’m currently in one.
No, I’m not writing this from the depths of a Louisiana swamp as Mr. Gator is deciding which part of me to eat for lunch first. I’m writing you from the cavernous depths of my inescapable mind. The boggy, quicksand of thoughts that drag me down into the muck. So yeah, I’m just on my couch.
Out of nowhere the alligator found me today. He peered out from under the murky water and set his sights on me. I never saw him coming. You usually don’t.
Having a perfectly fine day, minding my own business then – ah! There he is. He’s been watching me the whole time. Just waiting for the right moment to strike. It’s always when I least expect it. When I seem to be, *gasp*, happy? He found me in my all new year/new you, gonna-be-motivated-and-get-up-at-5:30 am-and-go-to-yoga-class glory. Thought I saw some beady eyes staring at me in that class yesterday.
I had turned my head and tried to ignore him. But he lied in wait. He waited for a more opportune moment. Damn it, he’s smart. He strikes when you’re weak. When you let your guard down. He waited but he found me again, when I was happy.
And he struck with a vengeance. Is there really any other type of way an alligator strikes?
So you’re saying, what the fuck are you talking about? What does this whole roundabout alligator analogy mean? It’s The spiraling of my mind. (So funny, I didn’t even mean to capitalize the “T” in “the” just then but my computer did it for me. My computer knows what I’m trying to say better than I do.)
“The Spiraling of My Mind”. I should write a book.
The tumultuous spiral – when your mind feels so all over the place, spinning around to this and that, happy one second, sad the next. Bored one minute, excited to do something (write) the next. Don’t worry, I’m not manic depressive. If anything, I’m way towards the depressive end of the scale. But some days the incessant rolling of thoughts just makes you feel…out of sorts. You don’t know what you want, what you feel.
Do I want ice cream or french fries? Not sure I even want any food at all. Do I want to go out and be social or stay home and be a hermit? Social is great – laugh and joke around, but that takes effort. Effort to get off the couch and engage. Sitting home – no effort. But then I’ll miss the camaraderie. Which do I want right now? I don’t know. Like really don’t know. Nothing will fix my “out of sortsness”. I hate feeling “out of sorts”. I’d rather be brutally hungover. At least then I know what’s wrong with me.
The alligator is starting to chomp down. I don’t know where the hell he comes from. I am perpetually barraged with thoughts about everything and anything. I’m sure most of you can relate to that. However, there’s another level my mind tends to go to that I’m not sure happens to many people. Maybe it does but they just don’t talk about it.
I’m sure my anxiety-ridden comrades can relate. It’s a level of such incessant overthinking and the varied emotions that go with it that spirals me into an almost depression of sorts. Short in duration but long in angst. Most days I can compartmentalize my thoughts and control them. Today they are controlling me. A flashing thought of one innocuous detail about something so banal sends my mind off into a spider web of tangents. A simple conversation with a friend telling me he likes mayonnaise instead of mustard on a ham sandwich (weird) and six degrees (more like 100) of separation later I’m contemplating existentialism and my own mortality.
Mayonnaise—->death. You get it. You probably don’t. Neither do I.
But that’s how my mind goes some days. I say to myself, stop it! Stop thinking so much! Just try and get through the day and be present. “Be present” – great saying. My wise sister tells me this a lot. But I can’t be present today.
Trying to not think is like trying to will your heart not to beat.
I can take any thought and dissect it into a thousand pieces and then dissect those pieces into another thousand pieces until all that’s left is a pile of dust. Poof. An emotional pile of dust.
It’s not even the thoughts that are so bad, it’s the emotions they stir up that are the real undoing. Guilt about the past, analyzation of the present, worry about the future. Yep, all from a ham sandwich. This dust storm of thoughts and their emotions try to pull me down into a days long funk that I can’t shake off.
Mr. Gator has clamped on and isn’t letting go. I’m in the full throws of the Death Spiral.
I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Let alone where I’m coming from or where I’m going to. Now I’m in a full-fledged tailspin. Too unmotivated to pull myself out of it, too depressed to care.
A great friend of mine enlightened me about this whole Death Spiral phenomenon. There’s a saying about having a monkey on your back. Well my friend and I have an alligator on ours. The gator can be a ninja, sneaking up on you, striking without warning. (Not all ninjas are turtles.)
But sometimes you can hear him rustling about first – circling, seething, drooling over his impending next meal – you. You’re aware that the too in-your-headness, the unabating overthinkingness is starting to creep in.
Now you’re screwed – thinking about everything, absolutely everything.
You could be happily sitting with your friends having a drink one minute but somehow you’re so sensitive to everything while in this spiral that one stupid song on the jukebox can bring back a fleeting memory from 20 years ago and the tears start to flow. I can usually overcome these insufferable thoughts. But when the alligator is stalking you and your guard is down, your walls of self-preservation start to crumble.
It’s in this intense state of hypersensitivity that everything bothers me. You’re not talking yourself out of the funk this time young lady! (Wish that young part were true! Well, not really. I’m okay with being 46. A lot of people don’t get the luxury of living even this long.) The lingering, unrelenting ruminations about everything and anything just consume me and I stop even being able to see. I can’t see who’s around me, can’t hear what I’m saying, and have no idea what the fuck I’m doing. I’m consumed by the swampy water. The alligator has struck.
He has me fully in his grip now and he’s not letting go. God knows why these days happen or where the fuck this comes from. I usually carry alligator spray. Today, guess what I forgot to bring?
My friend says once you get used to it you can learn to recognize an impending Death Spiral. He’s right.
You can learn to listen for the gator rustling in the brush. Learn to spot the beady eyes peering at you through the bog. And once you spot him, you can then prepare your defense against his ultimate attack. Now my friend doesn’t sugarcoat this (one reason why I love him – he doesn’t sugarcoat anything). He says you can’t escape it. You can run but you can’t hide. Can’t hide from yourself and your thoughts. (Well maybe you can try and hide at a bar behind an entire bottle of whiskey. Been there done that. But that only works until last call.) My friend says you just have to let it happen.
Succumb to the feelings and then fight your way out.
Hey we all get depressed and fall into funks. For some of us the depression is kinda always there, latent under the surface. As my same wise friend says, on the graph of happiness our baseline “normal” is perpetually below most people’s. Our highs are their norms. Their sads are our norm. And our sads, well, that’s just off the chart.
But please, this isn’t a cry for sympathy. It’s just facts. And we’re okay with it. But the Death Spiral is a whole other level. It takes even your baseline normal and spins you out of control inside an overthinking, murky whirlpool of “what the fuck”.
I try to escape the murk and the alligator’s grip. I try with all my might to pry his jaws of steel open to release me from the misery but he just pulls me down deeper and deeper into the water. This battle can last for hours, even days. Fighting, kicking, clawing, thrashing. I start to tire. I can’t for the life of me get him to release me. He’s too strong. I need help.
Anyone?
Sometimes a friend is there to lend a hand and pull me free. And sometimes, no friendly hand appears at all. No one probably even knows I’m here, alone in the swamp. 127 Hours anyone? Did you ever see that movie? You gotta tell people where you’re going! Even if you’re going into the depths of your own mind, you might get lost, so let someone know. They can’t help you if they don’t know where you are. This time though, no one knows, so I gotta try and escape all by myself.
So how do you escape this mind fuck of a Death Spiral all alone? You just have to feel it.
Cry, yell, scream, mope. Whatever those feelings are that you are probably trying to avoid, just feel them. Hell, binge watch 10 hours of The Office while eating an entire bag of Doritos drenched with your tears if you have to. Write a stream of consciousness just to get the feelings out if you want. Smoke a pack of cigarettes – not recommended but hey, do what you gotta do. Have a glass of wine, but not 12, that will just make you more emotional and irrational.
Just don’t try and hide from the feelings because they will eventually come back, even stronger. And keep telling yourself it will pass and you will feel like yourself again. If nothing in particular has happened to spark this spiral, then realize just that, and tell yourself this is just your mind testing your resolve, like a fucked up session of emotional crossfit.
I was gonna say this time I was lucky, I won the battle with the alligator. But it isn’t luck. It’s awareness.
Recognizing the whirlwind of emotions, identifying them and giving them the attention they are so desperately seeking is necessary so you don’t get pulled down into the muck.
Nowadays it’s called self-care and it’s the best weapon you have against the Death Spiral.
So armed with my self-care, I battled that alligator, stabbed him in the eye with a Dorito and swam to safety. (Doritos are sharp! Ever get one stuck in the roof of your mouth?) Self-care can be exhausting but it works. I defeated Mr. Gator this time but he’ll be back, when he gets hungry again.
Who knows why these bouts of depression/anxiety/spiraling start in the first place? I sure as fuck don’t. Why do I fall into these chasms of despair, just to go to bed and wake up tomorrow and say hey, everything’s fine now! Why was I so depressed yesterday? Nothing’s changed. My life outside of the swamp is still exactly the same. But today I feel better. Why?
Wish I knew. Wish I could give you some great insight as to why our minds make us feel happy one day and sad the next when nothing at all in the outside world has changed. For us low baseline people, who alligators seem to prefer when looking for their next meal, the Death Spiral seems to occur more often.
What I can tell you is this: ride it out, feel the pain. It sucks, but feel it. You can’t go around a Death Spiral, you have to fight through it and confront the feelings. Be sure to have your self-care at the ready.
And also have patience. Let the alligator tire out first. He will. And when he finally does and you’re over this whole Death Spiral bullshit and ready to feel normal again, then break free from that gator and swim through the muck towards the safe sands of the shore.
Get yourself out, stand on your own two feet and be proud that you survived another day.
Now I’m off to watch hour 11 of The Office.
CM
1/23/20
