PANIC!

I’ve been startled lots of times (I have a hair-trigger startle reflex). I’ve been scared on a number of occasions. But I’ve only really experienced panic twice. Knowing people who have panic attacks regularly I feel quite lucky.

Panic is different from fear. The human instinct when fear arrives is for “fight or flight,” and it’s kept our race alive for millennia. But panic is more than fear. You can reason with fear (most of the time), talk fear down a notch or two. Panic does not listen to reason.

My first experience with panic was age nine when coming out of an outdoor public bathroom at night. Not long before, teachers and parents had told some pretty graphic stories about stranger danger and it freaked me out. So when I stepped outside and a man came out of the shadows and began chasing me, fear went out the window and panic descended.

But that’s not the panic story I want to tell. The panic story I want to tell was one that happened as an adult.

I was in my early thirties and on an overnight flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Those of us who fly a good deal must make some kind of peace with overseas travel. In the back of our minds lurks the fact that we are in a little metal tube traveling at 500 miles per hour, far above the largest ocean in the world. If there is a problem, options are virtually nil. To combat these nagging facts, one strategy is to simply utter two words when the flight attendant comes by: red wine.

Back in those days there was just one movie choice, and it played on a screen at the bulkhead. On this flight it was Free Willy 2, which has received a well-earned one-and-a-half-star review on Rotten Tomatoes. I decided to sleep.

I was awakened by turbulence. There is something about waking to turbulence over the Pacific Ocean that reminds you about thing regarding being in a little metal tube miles above an endless body of water (though Free Willy 2 assures us there are friendly killer whales below). It’s hard to know what to choose between the flight/fight response when you’re on a plane? Flight, I guess?

It was when the plane began free falling that there was nowhere for fear to go but into panic. I wasn’t buckled in so I floated above my seat as we plunged toward the Pacific. We lost 1,000 feet of altitude before recovering according to the incident report I asked for weeks later.  People gasped, some screamed, a few released nervous laughter. You become painfully aware of just how out-of-control you are in that situation. Helpless. You can do absolutely nothing to change the outcome of the event.

My heart raced out of control. My palms were cold and clammy. This was like nothing I had experienced before, save that time I was nine and being chased. I couldn’t talk myself out of the panic. The captain came on to the intercom and yelled at the flight attendants to get to their seats and buckle in. That did not reassure me. Every bump, every little shimmy of turbulence triggered panic. Even after we leveled off and regained altitude I would react to the mildest bump.

It turned out alright, except for the six injuries aboard – one person needed to be taken off by paramedics when we landed in San Francisco. But those few minutes of panic affected me for years. I regularly dreamt that I was on the ground watching planes falling from the sky and crashing to the ground. In my many, many flights since I still get triggered a little by turbulence.

For some, the current pandemic has brought you beyond fear and into brief periods of panic. You feel like you are in a free fall and there is not one thing you can do to affect the global outcome.

While this pandemic is not the sort of thing that spawns panic for me, I want you to know that I see you, I understand the incoherence of panic. I get how you can’t talk yourself down when it takes hold and I appreciate how frustrating it can be when people say “don’t panic” because panic will not be reasoned with.

From my little experience I can tell you that even though you can’t reason with panic you can wait it out. Panic is a fury that exhausts itself after short period of time. It is the one power you have over panic – perseverance. You will outlast your panic.

You may dream about pandemic’s for some time. You might find triggers to panic related to this season that don’t seem to make sense. But you have staying power. So buckle your seat belt, hold on to the armrest, and wait. This, too, will pass. You will outlast your panic.