I recently had the opportunity to walk on the edge of the CN Tower in Toronto! It was all at once exhilarating and absolutely mind numbingly terrifying. The experience was a paradigm shift for me.
To my total surprise I was more afraid than the self-proclaimed fear of height people in my group. And this was embarrassing! You see this group was part of a leadership seminar that I had just finished co-facilitating! Our culminating exercise was to go as a group up the CN Tower to do the Edge Walk so that we could challenge our fears together. When I found out that this was the exercise we were going to do, I thought this should be no problem for me since I live on the 20th floor and I have a view of Toronto that’s way up in the sky. But the reality was different. Once I got up there, I started to really lose my sense of what was logical and what was not.
They take you through copious checks to make sure you are secure. And even though we were checked over five times for our belts and hooks and all the bells and whistles to keep us alive on that tower, my brain kept screaming at me “I AM GOING TO DIE! GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”. I wanted to run as fast as I could. I wanted to punch out the guy that was soberly giving me key safety instructions. I was having trouble processing the information yet I knew I had to. The anxiety within me was starting to peak. With all of my might, I summoned up my professional decorum and kept quiet as I scraped together every last ounce of myself in order to listen to the guy’s instructions. This led me to a kind of zombie like numbed out feeling; an emotional paralysis of sorts that made me hyper focus on what I thought were my survival instructions in order to walk to what I thought was my death.
After the experience was done and I was able to breathe and think normally again, it really got me thinking about my self proclaimed honed ability to have a disciplined mind that allows me to navigate challenges well. In the past, I have been challenged by very painful life events, death of loved ones, professional hurdles and I have coped and diminished my own anxious mind through my various practices in brain training, meditation, therapy and writing. Yet none of these worked as I prepped to go on the Edge Walk. The anxiety I was experiencing was just too high. And after walking on that tower I realized that nothing would ever be the same again for me.
You see for the better part of 20 years I have worked with people who suffer from anxiety and I have taught them powerful and effective ways to calm their minds, discipline their thoughts and confront their fears through neural pathway/brain science exercises, body centred/holistic psychotherapy, visualization, breathe work and meditation. The work has been effective for many. But sometimes getting through to the person who suffers in this way can be like trying to be understood by someone who does not speak the same language. They sometimes think: “How can you really understand me if you have never felt this? If you don’t speak my language and know my experiences?”
And frankly, it wasn’t until I walked on the edge of the tower that I was able to “get” at a much deeper level the actual visceral feeling and searing pain of someone who experiences profound anxiety. This has enhanced my communication and has helped me increase my empathy level so that the transmission of my information can occur more effectively.
Anxiety is like that. It sends our brain survival messages that stimulate the most primitive aspect of our brain. It’s called the limbic system which sits at the back near the brainstem and then within that system is a small mass called the amygdala which sends messages to the brain to either fight or flee or freeze depending on the situation. Usually when you can neither flee nor fight you will freeze! I’ve heard many of my clients tell me that they feel like they are frozen in the most uncomfortable body sensations. They say their brain is engaged in a kind of negotiation in which neither side can win. A kind of lose/lose debate in which no option is a good one. A kind of thought death spiral giving you different calculations on whether or you can run or punch your way out of the situation. When neither can happen, you freeze. Previously, I understood this due to my understanding of the brain. But after my tower experience I now get this at my core and in my gut. When I was up on that tower ledge looking down at Toronto, I finally understood what my clients go through. It gave me a visceral experience that has increased my empathy for them and understanding of the anxiety journey.
“Walk the talk” used to be my motto in that I work to live by example in terms of striving for personal mental and emotional fitness. Now “Walk a mile in my shoes, and you will feel my journey” has taken the lead in terms of my philosophy, especially for those I work with who suffer the anxiety plight. And as a result the work has become even deeper in my office.
