true life planet

If anyone out there has suffered or suffers from panic attacks, you know how awful and all-consuming they can be.

For those of you who don´t suffer from them, count your blessings.

I myself have been suffering from panic attacks most of my life, since I was a teenager.

When I began my around-the-world trip back in October, I was at a point in my life when I was experiencing them almost daily. I would get them often because of stresses in my life, and the way I dealt with stress and stressful situations.

As I have been traveling, they have been happening less and less frequently. I still have stressful situations(probably more of them!) but the way I´m handling the stress is drastically changing. I find myself noticing what triggers them, and while I´m not avoiding these situations , I´m not inviting them to be a part of my journey either.

Being the Camino has a been a tremendous time of reflection for me. Without the distractions of one´s life, and all that that entails, one can actually take a break from the demands of others and oneself..and really examine one´s soul, what moves one, what one needs. There are not the distractions of one´s job, one´s house, one´s loved ones, one´s friends, one´s social status. All of those things are still there, but they aren´t the thing that is defining you-what is defining you is only that next step.

I have found the Camino to be a wonderful training ground for the rest of my life. It seems to be full of opportunities to grow, to develop, to know oneself. It is an equally good opportunity to set boundaries with people you meet along the way.

Many people that I have met along the way I like very much; while others, quite frankly, pressed some button, or bothered me in some way. Defining who I am in these circumstances-what limits I want to have with others-is an exercise I am not terribly familiar with in my daily life.

I am, in general, a people pleaser. I take it personally when others are not happy, and even more personally when they are not happy with me.

Recently, a situation from home was conveyed to me in an email. The situation itself is not particualrly important-what is of more interest, is that I reacted to it, violently, and had a terrible panic attack.

This panic really surprised me, as I have been having less and less of this kind of response to stress-especially as I have been traveling in some very stressful situations.(Like, for example..on a chicken bus in Guatemala, at night; sick with Dengue fever in the middle of nowhere; bitten by a dog and having to give myself stitches as no hospital..and so on)

At any rate, the attack was so strong, I thought I was having a heart attack. It was so painful, and so all consuming.  I had to go back within myself and remember that I am learning how to deal with stress differently, that I get to decide how I am going to respond to any situation that comes my way. I had to go back and think about how I have learned to set some very clear boundaries while on the Camino itself. I had to breathe.

The panic attack ended.

In the past, I would have been very hard on myself that I had panicked-but instead, this time, I am grateful. It reminds me of how far I have come, and how much I owe all the people I have met along the Camino, for they have taught me many lessons and shown me that the Camino itself is a wonderful teacher. I have learned so much about myself in this short period of time; this daily walking and musing and thinking-and in the end, knowing.

The amazing thing about traveling in general(not just on the Camino, but any traveling), is that one has the chance, the amazing chance, to recreate onself. Real recreation.

In my old life (which I liked well enough, but…) I didn´t have this chance, this opportunity to really take my life as it actually was, and pluck out the parts that I wanted to keep, while tossing out the rest. There isn´t that choice in day to day life. When we change drastically, it upsets everyone. It upsets the balance. People have a need for sameness, even when it´s not healthy, or perhaps not practical.

Being on the road has taught me that I really do get to recreate myself, recreate my entire life-I literally get to decide what will happen next. Such freedom.

And the person I am recreating myself to be-she´s peaceful, and she´s free.

It´s wonderful. And I thank the Camino for helping see this possibility in myself.

gigi

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.