I spent days drawing a blank when it came to conjuring words that began with ‘B’.
For whatever reason, the only words I could lay my hands on were ‘breasts’ and ‘bacon’ - neither of which were hugely relevant to my journey with anxiety.
Eventually, a word sprung to mind - or a name, to be precise. It was the label printed on the first prescription drug I took when my anxiety first began.
B is for Beta Blockers.
The Start
While I’d always been an anxious child, my anxiety had been well masked - shrouded in glittering perfectionism and topped with a high-achieving bow.
My anxiety was driven downwards through my pen and into my school work; channelled into straight A grades and internalised as consciountenssness. Sure, I felt the compulsive need to study almost continually and experienced a nightly urge to hoover my bedroom, but that was just a foible, right?
As long as I had school and university, my anxiety blended in with the crowd.
It was invisible; dressed in graduation robes and hidden beneath piles of study notes.
However, one day it was time to leave academia - to say goodbye to that stable structure that had upholstered and underpinned my functional anxiety.
That’s when my troubles began.
Topshop, Saturday - March 2010
Having recently graduated and finished a Masters in History, I’d moved to London and started a new job at the British Library.
On the face of it, I was still toeing that high achieving line, ticking the boxes that - at some point in my life - had been laid out for me.
However, inwardly, I was struggling. A new city, new flatmates and my first foray into the working world had left me feeling completely overwhelmed. Apparently, your boss doesn’t set you weekly essays, or provide validation through regular feedback.
I had no yardstick against which I could measure myself.
I felt constantly worried and struggled to see where I fitted into the structure of Real World Plc.
Slowly, what had once been coined perfectionism, or conscientiousness, now began to peel away its mask. And beneath it? Not shiny, glossy success, but the pot-holed face of Freddie Krueger.
After weeks of struggling with rising panic, the mask finally slipped one Saturday in Topshop. Browsing clothes, while simultaneously ruminating over something that had happened at work, a light in my brain flicked on (or, flicked off, should we say).
Without warning, the atmosphere around me changed. Reality shifted. The overhead lights suddenly seemed too bright, the noises too loud. My heart rate increased and the tip of my tongue felt as though it had been dipped in battery acid. The shop and the people around me suddenly felt far away; wrapped in Clingfilm and distant.
Dropping the Skinny Fit jeans I was holding, doom flooded in - wrapping itself around me like black cloak. I was sweating, my legs shaking and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be sick, or yawn.
I readily came to the conclusion that wherever I was - whatever black hole I’d just fallen down - there was no going back. I had joined a new world now.
Purgatory, The Upside Down, Insanity - all possibilities.
I pushed past a group of shoppers and ran (slowly, I imagine, as I couldn’t feel my legs).
The Doctor
What I had experienced in Topshop was evidently a panic attack. A good, old fashioned panic attack.
At the time, I sort of knew this, but also felt as though a chasm had just opened in my mind - a weird portal that anxiety might crawl back out of.
As a result, I began to fear anxiety, I feared the fear - and we all know how that ends.
Predictably after a few weeks of struggling and unable to get on the train without The Mind Flayer slithering out my brain, I went to see the doctor.
After ten years of living with anxiety, I now appreciate the limited options that GPs have when trying to help us.
Anxiety is not a transactional kind of affliction - one where a doctor can give you a course of antibiotics to clear things up. Anxiety requires many different therapies and a broad, holistic sort of approach.
It’s not something they can cure in a 5 minute appointment.
At the time, however, I did not know this.
As such, I remember watching the light fade from my doctor’s eyes as I described to him my symptoms. While ostensibly he was looking at me, I knew he was, in reality, looking through me.
As I slowly listed my symptoms, like someone reading from the Doomsday Book, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
‘Like many young women your age, Laura’, he interjected, ‘you’re experiencing anxiety’.
Before I had a chance to tell him that I already knew this, he swivelled in his chair and reeled off my options, typing something into his computer as he went (or playing Solitaire, we’ll never know).
I could either go on a waiting list for CBT counselling (which I would receive in approximately 2070)
I could start to exercise a bit more
Or I could try some tablets to ‘stop’ anxiety’s physical symptoms.
None of these options seemed particularly appealing. My anxiety was in withdrawal mode - it needed someone to tell me that I was doing well, that I was achieving what I needed to - that I could take my foot off the pedal and still be OK.
The GP was not the tonic I’d hoped.
Eventually, and sensing that his attention was waning, I opted for the medication - a drug known as Beta Blockers.
‘While it won’t stop the root cause of your anxiety’, the GP explained, ‘it will stop its physical symptoms’. While it wasn’t quite the cure all I’d been after, and I felt nervous to resort to medication so early on, I also felt desperate.
I agreed to try the drug.
Off I went, no counselling or therapy in place. Just a small packet of beta-adrenoceptor blocking agents for comfort.
Were Beta Blockers Useful?
In short, Beta Blockers stop, or ‘block’ the effects of adrenaline, or epinephrine, as it’s also known.
Given that adrenaline is anxiety’s gasoline - the thing that causes all those unpleasant physical sensations - it’s reasonable to suggest that this drug might help anxious folk.
I first took my Beta Blocker the next day, ready to roadblock anxiety.
I imagined the Beta Blocker as a miniature Hoover Dam, bravely holding back a torrent of foaming, angry anxiety.
Sturdy and strong.
I took the pill and waited, my biblical-like recovery hopefully just around the corner.
As it was, all I felt was cold. Freezing, in fact.
It turns out that alongside anxiety, Beta Blockers are also prescribed to help manage abnormal heart rhythms, angina and heart failure. As a result, my heart felt like it was beating at an almost glacial speed - my blood moving through my veins like icy cold slush.
I began to worry. And then worry some more. Eventually, I spent the entire day ruminating over whether I was about to go into cardiac arrest - my anxious thoughts spiralling.
Of course, these thoughts didn’t trigger any physical anxiety, they couldn’t. My dam was was in place.
But it didn’t stop a tornado of anxiety tearing through my mind.
You see, and as I’ve now learnt, anxiety is an inherently mental affair. It begins in the brain, surging through our neural pathways, before triggering that physical reaction.
In my case at least, anxiety was - is, in fact - nearly always triggered by thoughts.
Given that the Beta Blockers weren’t blocking these thoughts, the medication wasn’t particularly helpful in managing my anxiety. Instead, I just felt like I’d caged a lion.
Whilst my heart may not have been pounding, a wild, feral animal still stalked my brain.
I imagine it’s how cage diving with a Great White Shark, feels. It can’t necessarily get to you, but it’s still there - staring at you with those glassy eyes and gnarly grin. And the worst bit? You can’t escape, you can’t move. You’re stuck in that cage until somehow hauls you out.
Thoughts on Beta Blockers
For anyone at the start of their journey with anxiety (or even in the thick of it), the physical symptoms can feel unbearable. They are strong and incredibly powerful. They can make you feel as though you could lift a car with your bare hands, all whilst experiencing an existential crisis.
As such, many with anxiety believe that if they could just get a grip on their physical symptoms, they’ll be cured.
Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case.
While it would be useful if anxiety only sat in our physical being - in the sinews of our muscles or the passages of our heart - the reality is that it’s much more ephemeral than that.
Much more nebulous.
Trying to use Beta Blockers to treat anxiety, or cure it, is like trying to capture clouds in a jar.
To really treat anxiety, we instead need to travel away from our physical bodies and into the foggy land of our thoughts. We need to identify what thoughts and core beliefs are feeding our panic, and to reconsider how we react to them.
Furthermore, we must learn to be comfortable with feeling physically uncomfortable - to be curious about those raging visceral sensations, rather than trying to suppress them.
Given that Beta Blockers prevent us from doing much of this, they are, in my eyes, nothing more than a numbing agent.
While they can definitely help, these miniature dams can only do so much. It’s up to us to follow the water to its source and to calm its currents there, rather than relying on Beta Blockers to hold them back.
Please note, this article is not intended as medical advice and is based on my own experiences. If you have any questions regarding Beta Blockers, please contact your doctor.
Interested in learning how to tame your anxiety when it comes to travel? Sign up to my Overcome Travel Anxiety course.
If you enjoy my work and fancy supporting me, you could buy me a coffee to help keep the words flowing. Thanks in advance!
Check out my blog, containing more mental health tips.
This is so great! I hadn’t heard of beta-blockers for anxiety before. I love the analogy of the lion.
Ooooffff. I know plenty who have been on beta-blockers and this resonates hard. The numbness of the physical dam versus ongoing spiralling of the thought processes.