The Opposite of Normal, Andrew Boggan [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

/>
My first experience as a 6 hour old baby probably came down to separation anxiety. From spending 9 whole months in a bubble of complacency, then to enter a new world, could have very well been the first panic attack I had to endure.

After the doctors and nurses had spent many hours attending to my piercing screams and examining me for ill health, an old, but very experienced nurse had wrapped up an old nappy and placed it next to me while my mother was nursing me. From that moment on I had gone completely silent while I hugged into the nappy and dozed off to sleep. One tiny nappy had proven to be the answer to a small baby’s trouble. Although I have no recollection of this ever occurring, I’m sure the process of what I would have gone through would have been separation anxiety thus leading into a fearful panic attack that would have had a profound psychological scaring which would reappear a few years later.

As I later grew up into a toddler, separation anxiety began to rule over my life, although I didn’t know it had complete control of me. My mother was always the focus point of my separation anxiety, wherever she went I followed. After raising 3 other children my mother had natural maternal instincts to know when one of her children suffered with emotional distress and anxiety. As a toddler, there two ways to overcome this problem every time it had occurred. Place my favorite teddy in my cot or give me the belt of her blue satin night gown. Either of these 2 things would bring me back down to normal levels where my emotions weren’t out of control. Holding these two material possessions in my arms relieved the horrific tensions that I was in

At the age of 4, my parents had gone out one evening for dinner and we were left with my big sister. Every time my mother had left the house my sister was to take over and I had always looked up to my sister as if she was second mother, a substitute perhaps. My world would crush when my parents stepped out the door to leave the house. I would sit at the front door for nearly 2 whole hours crying for my mummy to come back, but she wouldn’t until the morning. The distinct smell of my mother’s perfume would linger at the door where I was to last see her would provide some level comfort but it was never enough. After emotionally gathering myself together and running out of tears to cry, I would venture down to my parents bedroom and drift off to sleep. I knew exactly where my mum kept her dressing gown belt which was always placed under the bed. I would walk into my parents room, grab the belt off the gown and hug it like a giant pillow and fall asleep at the bottom of the bed – simply waiting for a new dawn to break so that my mother would be sitting at the kitchen table the next morning having her tea and getting my breakfast ready with her beautiful comforting smile.

Even now, as an adult, if I channel my memories hard enough remember these times when my mother would leave the house, I can still feel the crippling emotional turmoil I went through and my s always begin to weep with sadness. I’m just very fortunate these days I can process the emotions behind the separation anxiety.

Learning to sleep in my own bed proved to be somewhat of a difficult challenge as well. Although I could sleep in my own bed, the thought of my mother not being in the same room would often keep me awake and I ended up having to find many different ways to make myself fall asleep. I would walk into my parent’s bedroom in the middle of the night with my pillow and place it down onto the bedroom floor at the bottom of my parent’s bed. There wouldn’t have been any room for me in their bed so I would make myself comfortable on the cold hard wooden floor and doze off into dreamland.

Another example that specifically comes to mind was when I was 5 years old in the 1st grade at school. On a Friday afternoon my father had picked me up from school and drove me to his parent’s house. My dad had a bag packed in the boot with my overnight clothes. It turned out I was to spend a night with my grandparents at their house.

As most children do, I loved my grandparents deeply but the thought of spending a night away from home made me feel as if my whole world was about to crumble. I might have only been staying there for up to 12 hours but to a 5 year old 12 hours can seem like 12 years. From the moment I saw my overnight bag in the boot of the car, tears began flowing, not because I didn’t want to stay with my grandparents but because I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from my mother, I needed her to be close by.

If ever I was sick during the night with my asthma as a child, the only person that had the potential to make me better was my mum. In the shivering cold of one icy winter when I was 4, I woke in the middle of the night with an asthma attack. Not thinking about what would happen I went to wake my mother up out of bed so that my mother could make me better again. My mum had been fast asleep and my father attended to my ill health. He toke me to the kitchen and grabbed me a glass of water and half a tablet to settle my breathing difficulties. The anxiety from that, moment had taken complete control of my brain and nothing existed at this point other than the fact that I so desperately wanted my mum to give me water and tablet. My dad had handed me the glass of water and tablet and because I couldn’t have my mum I tipped the water over the kitchen floor and refused to take it. The only way I would have taken the tablet was if my mother had attended to me. I remember running back to my bedroom crying, feeling so heartbroken and scared because my mother wasn’t there for me. Although I loved my dad, he just didn’t seem to have that connection with me that mother’s have with their sons. Even to this day I feel so terrible what I did to my dad by tipping the water onto the kitchen floor that it breaks my heart. It sort of makes me feel as if I was a rotten child as it would have made things difficult for my father. But as a child in that moment, his feelings were the last thing on my mind and that was incredibly selfish to think of only myself. I regret doing that even to this very day.

From as far back as I can remember I always suffered a heightened sensitivity to noise. One of my worst fears as a child was a raging thunderstorm overhead; hearing the crashing thunder and seeing the blinding flashes of lightening. It wasn’t so much the storm that I was afraid of; it was the crashing sound of thunder.

I believe my fear of thunderstorms stemmed from the afternoon of January 18 1985. This was one of the most violent and costliest thunderstorms Brisbane had ever endured. An apparent tornado had touchdown in the western suburbs of the city causing millions of dollars in damage. I can’t remember the build up of humidity that day but from what I am told by others, who remember this storm clearly, it was one of the most uncomfortable summer days ever and people could apparently feel a huge event was building up in the skies.

My mum used to babysit her best friends 2 daughters; Lucy and Naomi. On the day when the heavens broke loose my mum had been babysitting the two girls. In the afternoon the three of us were sitting on the couch watching cartoons whilst we waited for my brothers and my sister to get home from school. We had been sitting on the couch when the storm arrived. Every second passed with a horrific crash as armageddon set itself upon my house. My mother was never keen on storms and always had somewhat of a fear of thunderstorms herself but on January 18 1985 nobody would have ever guessed that my mum was scared. It felt like the world was coming to an end when flying trees and debris began crashing into the side of the house. My mum had picked up us three kids and moved us to the bathroom and shut the door until the storm had passed. With the sound of flying debris, smashing hail, crashing thunder and flashes of lightening; my fear of thunderstorms and loud noises began. Little did I know that a fear of thunderstorms and loud noises would stay with me for the rest of my life.

During late spring as the weather changed into summer, every year I would begin to panic about the coming months and what the storm season would bring. The thought of crashing thunder day in day out for several months was sometimes too hard to bear. I always knew that thunderstorms couldn’t hurt you, but it was more the loud noise of the thunder that would scare me. I have many vivid memories of sitting in my parent’s bed as a very young child riding out the passing storm until it went away. When I look back now at my fear of thunderstorms, there was also another phobia I had that was probably at the same level as thunderstorms; the fear of not being able to have control. As I aged slightly, I began to realize that I couldn’t control the thunderstorm and that it had the potential to do anything it liked and the fear of not being able to control a thunderstorm was just as scary as the sound of crashing thunder. Perhaps I had control issues, or perhaps I was simply feeling vulnerable deep in my subconscious.

My dad tried to make several attempts to help me get over my fear of thunderstorms. One Saturday night when I was 5 years old a thunderstorm had approached us bringing with it very heavy rainfall and lots of lightening. My dad thought the best strategy for me to learn to cope with my fear was to watch a thunderstorm in two separate stages. The first one would be to watch it from my bedroom window with the lights on and the second would be to watch it from my bedroom window with the lights off. However there was only one way he could entice me to do it. In the fridge my Dad had special yoghurt that my Mum would always buy for him. He had a range of different flavors and I was always attracted to the design on the container. On this Saturday night I had asked my Dad if I could have a yoghurt and the only way Dad would let me have one was if I would watch the storm with him in his suggested stages.

Given that I so wanted to have yoghurt after dinner I gave into Dad’s request and watched the storm with him from my bedroom window. In a very comforting way my dad grabbed my hand and toke me into the bedroom where we sat and watched the