My tryst with anxiety – II : The fall

Continuing from My tryst with anxiety – I : The background

The business world judges a person on their ability to handle pressure. I took pride in wanting the most painful engagements. I had a war complex, a desperate need to overcome adversity and deliver results. This pride eventually resulted in my fall. As a consultant, I expected poor behaviour and pressure, but the customer always loves excellent outcomes. The situation is the opposite if you are a business leader. One is bound to attract all the ugly elements of corporate culture as they show positive outcomes. We must deal with insecurities, political backstabbing, nepotism and dishonesty in our organisation. I failed to recognise it.

As pressure mounted at work, sleep started to elude me slowly. Leaving my wife and daughter in one bedroom, I confined myself to another. Social interactions began to consume more energy than usual. It left me drained and battered at the end of the day. I asked my wife to not speak to me and instead text me if she needed anything. I spent 20 hours a day in a single room without interacting with my family. Isolation from face-to-face interactions and immersion in work were my drug as I felt increasingly petulant each day.

Anxiety is the worry of losing something which one considers precious. I started developing palpitations a few times a day. At first, I attributed a cause to each of these incidents. Being locked in a room was a good excuse for me to hide this state from my family. As the country was in lockdown, there was no need for me to step out. The duration and frequency of these started to increase slowly. I am still unsure if the anxiety caused the palpitations or vice versa. However, every time I felt a deep sense of loss. The insecurities in my life slowly started to come to the forefront. Questions like “why will my wife continue with me?”, “why will my daughter like me?”, “why will my friend continue to talk to me?” and “what value am I adding to work?” started to haunt me.

Confidence is the most underrated virtue. We don’t realise the value of it till we lose it. I was a person with immense confidence in my abilities and total disregard for my shortcomings. In short, prior to this episode, I was highly assured. I failed to identify the attacks happening at work. The deviousness of the character assassination and lack of atonement made it worse. I didn’t recognise that the support I sought was part of the problem. The senior leaders whom I trusted turned out to be callous. This inability to foresee affected my perception of myself and dented my confidence. I slowly lost the sense of who I was and what I could do.

Self can’t be an illusion when one is depressed. Lack of sleep, anxiety attacks and loss of confidence left me in a state I hadn’t experienced. I had to admit the vulnerability of my mental health. I became a victim of my expectations. I couldn’t concede I was affected. I was too strong to end my life. I lay down every night, hoping I wouldn’t have to wake up. Every sunrise was a disappointment.

The worst happened sometime in December. Stress levels at work reached a new high. As a team, we celebrated our Christmas by having a Go Karting race. The rush of adrenaline during the race compounded the palpitations caused by my anxiety. I lost my ability to think sanely. I woke up every 10 seconds that night with a fear of loss. The next couple of days were horrendous. I was acting my fears out. The unpleasant feeling hit rock bottom when my wife saw me struggle to watch a movie with her.

Unable to stand my state, my wife confronted me and forced me to open up. I was also a person with biases against anything I perceived as irrational. One of my biases is the need for therapy. I always felt it was for the weak. While I appreciated psychology as a study, especially evolutionary psychology, I found the concept of seeking psychological help beneath me and never perceived myself in that state. Perception isn’t reality. Something had to change to arrest this downward spiral.