“Afterthoughts” is a new Fear of God blog series featuring co-hosts and guests further unpacking thoughts, themes, and ideas that keep them up at night from the conversations and content covered on the show. This entry is by listener, Ernst Mantler, and is a follow-up to this past week’s episode featuring Buried. Enjoy, then, the latest entry in this new chapter of The Fear of God…

Throughout my life I have struggled with anxiety, although it wasn’t until my adult years that regular panic attacks became a familiar and recognizable part of my everyday reality. Some of these attacks have been worse than others, and to this day I can still vividly remember the first especially bad one that actually left me debilitated. It happened during my travels to the Philippines on a Missions trip with my Bible School senior class. Overall the trip was a great time, however when I was standing in the airport at Manila waiting to leave for home, I came to the sudden realization that I did not have my passport with me. A second realization hit when I remembered where it was- it was sitting in my room where we stayed the night before hanging on the door handle. The issue was, where we stayed the night before was on a completely different island than where we were currently (if you don’t know the Philippines, it’s made up of a lot of islands). It quickly became obvious that there was no way to retrieve it in time for the flight. 

That began a quick succession of highly stressed and on the fly decisions which unfolded all over the course of the next couple of hours, starting with the attempted negotiations with the airport to let me on to the flight without my passport. No dice. Then we rushed over to the Canadian embassy where I met a member of the consulate and they started the process of getting me an emergency passport or papers (I can’t remember what the documents were called, only that they could possibly help get me back home) that would allow me to depart with the rest of the group. That process didn’t go as quickly as anticipated, but as they were working on it the consulate member kept assuring me that it could still happen. She even mentioned that they could get me onto a helicopter to get me to the airport in time for the flight (which in hindsight would have either been a ton of fun or induced more panic). 

Unfortunately it was all for naught. There was no way for me to get my papers in time for the flight. It was then decided that I would have to stay behind in Manila with one of the teacher chaperones and wait for someone to bring my passport to me. 

What’s interesting about the whole ordeal now looking back is that while my anxiety was certainly sky high, I still hadn’t yet experienced a full on panic attack… that is until the end of the day when I found myself sitting alone back in my room with plenty of time to let the events of the day all sink in. The quietness of that space started to make an already small room feel even smaller and smaller. As the walls began to feel like they were closing in I noticed my breathing also grew rapid and shallow, and before I knew it the panic attack was in full force. I don’t recall how long it lasted, but what I do remember was experiencing this acute and overwhelming feeling that my life was about to end. I couldn’t help but be obsessively and overtly fixated on the stupid mistakes that I had made and how worthless the days events had made me feel. 

I share all that in connection with my most recent rewatch of the movie Buried because, while my situation does not parallel the events of the movie directly, and thankfully didn’t result in the film’s particular anxiety-inducing ending, what this movie did bring forward for me are the range of emotions Paul Conroy (Reynolds) goes through being buried alive. For me they reminded me of what it feels like to experience a full on panic attack. There are the feelings of isolation, that sense that no one can possibly do anything to help you no matter how much you beg. In terms of phases you go from bargaining to blazing anger (often accompanied by more curse words than I would care to admit) to feelings of utter hopelessness. If I could describe it this way, it feels like no matter what there is nothing you can possibly do to get out of this feeling, out of this moment, before it swallows you alive. In the song by U2, “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” the lyrics read, 

“You've got to get yourself together -You've got stuck in a moment - And you can't get out of it - Don't say that later will be better - Now you're stuck in a moment - And you can't get out of it”. 

I have come to use this song as a sort of personal mantra, imagining that Bono is singing it directly to me when I find myself stuck in those feelings/thoughts that I now know are the precursor to a full on panic attack. 

I briefly mentioned earlier that the way Buried ends was thankfully not the end of my own story. It does however capture the essence of how I felt in that moment. The ending of the film is a perfect representation of what it feels like to live through a full on panic attack, even if it was all in my head and I wasn’t actually physically being buried alive. I definitely believed that I was. There is this slight glimmer of light that appears (or perhaps I conjure it despite my best efforts), and that light becomes the one thing I’m grasping for in order to try and find a way “out of the moment”. But then, inevitably, that light, that feeling of hope, is just snatched away from you despite your best efforts to try and hold on to it. The height of a panic attack, the moment when it becomes a panic attack, is what it feels like in that moment when that light is snatched away. The world just feels like it’s falling away from you, the walls of the room closing in on you, the tightness pressing on your chest where you feel like you can’t escape that box no matter what you do.

What’s interesting to note too, which is why Buried was my “what scares me” choice, is that I have always thought that I have issues with personal space, even growing up. But what I realized after watching this movie was that I actually suffer from claustrophobia, that feeling of not being able to escape my surroundings or my circumstance (honestly, the one benefit of the pandemic for someone like me has been all that delicious, warm and inviting personal space). Which leaves me wondering about the intimate connection between the panic attacks and my issues with claustrophobia. I don’t know if they are correlated, but what I do know is that the sensation of losing control leads to that feeling of constriction, which is what makes me feel like there is no hope to getting “out of the moment”. 

I would say I am far from being healed from having these attacks and moments, but the one thing I have learned while finding healthy ways to avoid and temper them is the importance of breathing and praying. Such stupidly simple things, yet so vital. I pray and I breathe. And when I can, I make sure to find some space outside so as to avoid that feeling of being confined. Through the breathing I can relax my body. Through the prayer I can relax my mind. 

As a Christian I know the Lord gave me my body and my mind to allow me to experience this life on this earth, and to also experience relationship with him and others. Sometimes my body and mind feel like they are betraying me, but through him I can have that hope that in those moments when it feels like the world is closing in, it’s still true to say, as the U2 songs ends, “It's just a moment - This time will pass”.