The day Al and I left on this trip, I wrote this post about how I worried if our trip would be everything we hoped, and how my fears were eventually diminished after I thought about how the past 10 years seemed to be an accumulation of moments leading us to this exact experience. I have referenced a few times on this blog that Al and I have dreamed of this trip for the better part of a decade, but we never knew if it would be something we could realistically make happen.

There were several reasons for this, but one of the biggest obstacles for us is one that only our closest friends and family were aware of.  For the past 10 years, Al has dealt with a severe form of anxiety that only seemed to worsen over time. Although we always dreamed of traveling the world together since we first became best friends, the type of anxiety that took hold over Al was so intense, that it made our dream not only unreachable, but something that we simply weren’t able to consider for years.

This type of anxiety can be very difficult for people who have not experienced it to understand. It is completely separate from getting a heightened sense of nerves in a particular situation, and is not comparable to the feeling many of us have when we throw around the phrase, “This is giving me anxiety” when we are stuck somewhere we don’t want to be. Someone who experiences this level of anxiety cannot be told to simply “calm down” or “look at the bright side” and be expected to turn it around in a few days.

There was a point in our lives when Al couldn’t be near crowds or get in any type of public transportation for almost a year. How does someone go from not being able to get in a car, train, or bus, to confidently driving and navigating his way through several foreign countries he has never stepped foot in? (lets be honest, I’m doing zero of the driving over here). Al worked on beating his anxiety non-stop for nearly a decade. It was an extremely difficult and painful road, with endless ups and downs. Al was relentless in his pursuit of overcoming his anxiety, and ultimately was successful in learning how to manage life with it, in order to live the type of life he wanted for himself.

These are the things that I thought of the day we left for this trip. I thought about all of the doctors offices, emergency room visits, and the years of work it took to get here. I thought about how strong and amazing my husband is, and how much he has had to overcome to get himself to this point where we are able to live out our dream together.

Al’s journey is not my story to tell, but I asked him to write a post about his experience, and he agreed, knowing it is an extremely personal experience to share with the internet. So here it is, the story of Al, in his own words.

Several years ago, I made peace with having anxiety for the rest of my life. As time went on, it had grown, gotten worse, evolved, and essentially became a part of who I was; I had forgotten who I was without it. I was married to my medication and had rationalized that everybody has their “thing” they struggle with in life; mine will be anxiety. It sounds like a pessimistic way of looking at things but by then, anxiety was my life and everything revolved around it.

I had experienced my first bout with anxiety when I was 19. My life turned upside-down and I could no longer function as a regular human being.  I would experience frantic feelings of fright, overwhelming tingling sensations, and assumed the world around me would collapse because of the overload in my brain. What I didn’t realize at the time was I was having clinically defined panic attack after panic attack.  Megan and I would often visit the emergency room since I thought immediate medical attention was needed to cure these crazy-strong reactions. Visit after visit resulted in nothing on the doctor’s side; even though I was convinced there was some new medical discovery lodged in an area of my brain. However, doctors seem to be VERY good at their jobs and I was sent home with pamphlets on anxiety and a referral to a psychiatrist. I struggled for years with this notion that there wasn’t something physically wrong with me; the episodes were so freakish and foreign, and I responded with such alarm, that I assumed I was ailed with something so beyond modern medicine and I was the first case in human history. Regardless, in my mind, I was very much broken and desperately needed fixing.

From my perspective, life felt “unreal”.  I was detached from all aspects of my life: school, friends, family, Megan, etc. I had become a shell of person.  It may be difficult to grasp, but imagine waking up in a different body and mind every single day but still thinking, “I know there is some old part of me in here, but I’ll never find it.”

Despite my loneliness, I was supported by everyone around me.  People knew I was ill and wanted to help me in any way they knew how. I was referred to endless psychiatrists, acupuncturists, neurologists, in constant hope that they would find the thing that plagued me. Life became a series of appointments and in between these appointments; states of panic and depression. I would frequently refuse to leave my room and constantly avoided crowds or any social situations for fear that they would trigger more and more feelings of helplessness.

However, time moved forward.  My life became these feelings day in and day out. You can’t get used to it, but your mind does eventually find its new “normal” and with anxiety, when a new sense of comfort is found, your brain will seek out newer thoughts, feelings, and experiences to make you panic.  I became afraid of things like space, long strips of road, and things in the vaguest terms, unknown. I started to obsess over the location of exits. If and when I needed it, what was the fastest way out of a situation? We sat in aisles of movie theatres, had tables near the entrance of restaurants; everywhere I went I needed to know how to leave immediately.  As a result, I was afraid of travel. How could I spend time in a place that was so closed-off and crowded for an extended period of time without any way out? Simply put, I couldn’t. It was a common occurrence for me to frantically exit dinners, movies, buses, trains, etc. because I was so overwhelmed by fear. As a result, I would leave. I couldn’t stand that feeling for any longer than a few minutes and would need to vacate as soon as possible to make myself feel better.

So onto the meaning of this post….a dream to travel is absolutely destroyed when you have to factor in all the aforementioned shit.  It became so bad that simply pushing through the fear was impossible. Crowded city centers? No way. Underground trains? Forget it. 10+ hour plane rides? Fuck you! As a result, our dream of long-term, worldwide travel was indefinitely put on hold until I miraculously figured out a way to combat it.

I’ll save you the many years of stumbles and falls through therapy and panic attacks since they became a staple of my life. More importantly, I’ll get to the healing.

I started working for Northwestern University in the summer of 2013 and found a psychiatrist nearby that I could visit on a monthly basis. As my Nth psychiatrist, we went through the mundane process of telling my story through the years of anxiety and formed a plan for the coming months.  On top of talking things out, your psychiatrist’s goal is to find that perfect blend of medication that would help curb your debilitating anxiety.  Side note- I had taken the same medication for roughly eight years that it became my life preserver; without it, I was drowning.  As a result, I continued with my stapled anxiety meds and tried a new concoction my doctor dreamed up for me.

Our monthly meetings became routine, and I hadn’t noticed any significant strides in my anxiety.  However, my doctor urged me to try this therapy a fellow colleague specialized in called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT.  Up to this point, I had tried various techniques but found the most effective treatment was through medication; but saw no harm in trying and agreed to schedule a meeting with this doctor.

You know how in certain movies when the music suddenly changes to cue the moviegoer that something is about to happen? Well imagine this scene of me waiting to see this new doctor: the typical waiting room, magazines strewn about the table, the receptionist chatting with an arriving patient; everything I’ve experienced over and over again for years. Now cue the curious and upbeat music followed by “Alex Reinhardt, Dr. Young will see you now.”  Little did I know that I was heading to an office that will eventually change my life forever.

First off, I believe in past lives and I believe in timing. So when I began chatting with Dr. Young for my first visit, I knew I was chatting with an old friend and this meeting was supposed to happen. We had talked about what has plagued me for so long and how it has impacted my life but most importantly, we talked about what I was thinking in these moments of disarray, agitation, and panic.

The root of CBT is to for the patient to UNDERSTAND WHY they think the way they do and teach you that your thoughts influence your behavior.  People don’t wake up one day and are simply unable to sit in a movie theater; there are thoughts and processes in one’s mind that make us act this way and that is what needs to be unraveled and understood. Thus began the long process of detailing every situation I experienced anxiety and meticulously analyzing what made it so unbearable. With much fewer words, we then asked a series of hypothetical questions of “what’s the worst that could happen?” What if I vomited on the crowded train to work? What’s the worst that could happen? Well, I would get off at the next stop, walk home (embarrassed), take a shower, and maybe sit in shame for the next few days but that is about it. Would I become a crazy lunatic? No. Would my friends and family still love me? Yes. Would I lose my job? No. What would the people on the train think? They would have either helped me or avoided me. I was forced to think realistically, not dream up situations that have never once happened to me before. Worst case scenario, there wasn’t an outcome that would result in my life falling apart.  I would still be a smart, funny, caring human being who happened to ralph on the train.

The funny thing is, I’ve never actually puked on the train. Not once in my entire life. Nor have I passed out in a restaurant. I’ve also never taken my shirt off and run up and down the aisle of a plane (yes, an actual fear I’ve had…) That is what clicked for me during this process of CBT. This fear is based on no previous experience and therefore has no merit on creating ACTUAL fear. As this notion sunk in, the anxiety began to shrink bit by bit.

Another portion of CBT is challenging your anxiety. While armed with the previous paragraphs, I was tasked to experience as many panic-inducing situations as possible: I held my breath on crowded trains, spun in circles for minutes, watched existential documentaries, and forced myself to hyperventilate.  I began to see the world as my testing ground for my therapy and was motivated to try any and all situations to beat this thing. As a result, life became more livable. I eventually had to plan much less for train rides, dinners out, social situations and started to see things outside of finding exits, medication, and that “broken” part of my brain.

My life had suffered long enough. My dreams had been put on hold too long. I had realized that nothing had become more frustrating than the image of my 18-year-old self who was full of inspiration and vigor to travel the world; that version of myself was alive but has been beaten down by the years upon years of fear and doubt.

As my therapy progressed, I was challenging the world. Meg and I jumped out of a plane, I floated in a sensory deprivation tank (look it up), and began enjoying small versions of travel: road trips, domestic flights, etc. What I eventuality began to realize is that the long standing dream of long term travel was going to become a reality.

So here I am now. I’m in Croatia with my wife; writing about my anxiety rather than experiencing it. To get here I’ve flown 10+ hours, driven through countless country roads, walked through tourist ridden streets, eaten in many centrally seated tables at restaurants and I wake up each morning wanting more.