It’s a river.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s a fairly non-descript river. A river that has, through nature and man, had its course changed – its quality eroded – its importance altered over time. But it is, for all intents and purposes – still, just a river.

But as an idiom; it’s more than that. It is the point of no return. If you cross the river – metaphorically cross the Rubicon – the path of your life will have changed for good. For the good?

I’m reminded of the Rubicon as I plan a trip to Rome next week. I am reminded of how Julius Caesar once crossed the river, defying tradition – by leading his legions in to Italy, thus committing an act of treason; against the state – against Rome itself. It is not my intention to take Rome by force. I intend, in the main, to take it by sightseeing bus or Metro line.

But there is something that resonates here. For legions: read issues, troubles, thoughts and cares. No one should ever go to Rome with anything other a clear head, a spring in their step – a desire to absorb everything the Eternal City has to throw at them.

They shouldn’t be thinking about the board meetings they are missing, the new staff they have just recruited – that constant, nagging doubt that something might be unearthed in their absence.

They should embrace the fact that they are going for a special occasion, with a very important person. A very important person that will do things that might wind them up, that might give them reason to criticise – to admonish – but they shouldn’t. They should breathe, give themselves some space – and accept; accept that this is how it will be.

They know there is little chance they will keep to this view, but they know they really should. They must. It is definitely not always about them.

So they, OK, I, have six days. Six days to clear my desk of the important stuff. Six days to perfect my plastered on, faux smile and calm ways. Six days to clear my head of all the petty, minor things that could become so much more if I let them.  Six days to mass my legions and send them on some much needed R&R.

Six days till I cross my own, personal Rubicon.

Six days till Rome.

Watch how I do it.

Oh my god they’re huge.

Try and do it a little harder.

Just look at her eyes. Don’t look down there.

Keep going. Another 50 seconds.

Look at the clock. No. She might think that’s rude.

40.

There’s an eye chart. Look at the eye chart. No wait. What if I can’t read it?

30.

There’s a pamphlet on the wall. Try to read that pamphlet. Oh bollocks, it’s no good.

20.

I can’t. Not. Look.

Last 10 seconds. Keep going – as hard as you can.

I’m laughing. I am laughing at breasts. Breasts I dare not look at.

And stop.

I knew the minute I walked through the door that this session was going to be difficult. From the opening line, “have you felt like harming yourself since we last met?” to the shaking of hands and parting company – never to see each other again. This last session marked the end of a period when I felt most comfortable. One where I knew I had someone, professional, to fall back on when the going got tough.

What I didn’t realise was that the difficulties I had faced through my anxiety over the last 18 months, would be reduced to a solitary, hugely uncomfortable minute. Where a delightfully, supportive counsellor with previously unnoticed, large breasts would reduce me to a fit of hysterics. So much so that I had to laugh – not just at the scene before me, but also myself. Something I had been incapable of doing for months.

To explain the scene – we were both doing a breathing exercise. It is an exercise intended to mimic hyperventilation. It is designed to put you in a position where you are experiencing the same affects of having an episode, but safe in the knowledge that you can pull yourself out at any time. I appreciated what I was meant to be doing, but all I could think about during that minute was to try and not gawp as the woman in front of me performed her homage to Barbara Windsor.

It was hard not to laugh.

For months Amy had been trying to get me to see the funny side to events that I would usually lose the plot over. I’d bark back at her something dramatic like “do you not understand. I’m really struggling here.” Now, as I stood, ducking out of the way of flying nipples to the sound of heavy panting, I realised there really was a lot of laughter to be had from life.

I should always listen to Amy. She listens to me – always nudging rather than telling me what to do. I still snap from time to time, like Sunday, when she persisted with her “what’s wrong?” line of questioning as I sat on the stairs – body language screaming “are you going to ask me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing” I snarled.

“Don’t listen to him” my crumpled limbs and down-turned features try to shout – but they can’t be heard. Only anger has a voice.

You can see in her face that she wants to snap back – but more often than not she simply absorbs those bitter retorts. And then she waits. She waits. She waits until I slink in to the kitchen and with the casual air of a stage actor about to perform a line – as I bring up the events of the day.

“Darling, I’m sorry. I’ve been struggling today.”

And then, just like that – we talk. She sarcastically, but with love and tenderness, pretends that she doesn’t know what I am talking about. There is an outpouring of why I think I might have been down. We analyse whether they really are reasons to be down about, and then she takes the mick out of me. It always ends with a cuddle, and her taking the mick out of me. It’s how we work. It’s how I manage.

We quickly got to the root of the issues this time. There’s the possibility of a promotion at work – that has been dragging on, and an email I’ve been expecting for weeks is still to arrive. There’s also the notion that the new job might not be too different to the current one, which makes me question how much longer I will spend wondering if I am fulfilling the potential I have (but am too scared to unleash).

We’re also having our kitchen rebuilt. Change – that dreaded word. What if the builder does a bad job? What if the electrician runs off with our money? Why do I let Amy watch home disaster TV shows when I am in the room?

Two fairly important things – on top of the usual issues that “normal people” can manage most of the time. Difference being that I know – maybe – I’m still not quite a normal person. Thanks to talking, I now have the confidence (read courage?) to tell Amy, who is managing her own work/life balance, that I might need a bit of help. She offers it. I feel a whole lot better.

So do I still have that fear of failure?

Of course I do.

There are certain things I can now manage. I spent most of this bowls’ season playing with the same intensity as with previous seasons, but I’ve thrown away the Rescue Remedy. I no longer look at a scorecard and analyse what sort of position I’ve lost from before – I laugh more, I focus more on getting the best from my team – I don’t punch the life out of my already lifeless steering wheel.

Things have improved at home. I no longer feel that I am failing Lauren, just well – experiencing the difficulties associated with being a parent. I am often at a loss as to how to parent her in certain situations. When a baby laughs and tells you they want to go on the naughty step, it’s hard to decide what to do from there. How do you escalate control when you don’t feel as though you have any in the first place? But that really is a rarity – I can honestly say I love being a dad to a truly wonderful child.

There is still work to do. There is one, fairly major issue that I chose to omit from post two, just to highlight a crucial area in which there is plenty of scope for improvement – coping with rejection. In particular, the rejection that comes with trying to promote myself – as a writer.

I’m always full of excuses where that is concerned. I don’t have the necessary qualifications, I grew tired of producing the pieces magazine editors asked me to write (glowing, upbeat pieces to pay advertising space); magazines are not paying freelancers – I might not, actually, be any good. All of that may be true – but the real truth is that my anxiety can’t handle the rejection – can’t deal with someone not believing in me, or my words.

I write this blog to fill the void that was once taken up by regular paid assignments, because I lost faith in the belief that people would take a chance on me. So I stopped chasing the work – stopped putting out my ideas.

I occasionally get asked to write for other blogs, for new magazines, which need contributors who are happy to work for free just to see their work in print. I write a piece. I love how it flows, what it says, and then I agonise for a day or so before hitting send. Then the horror kicks in. What if they don’t like it?

That fear of failure – as in, to not be accepted for doing something I love – still looms large, even as I type this. I’ll admit to feeling slightly sick before I hit publish on the first of these three posts. The second was written with a fair degree of bitterness, whilst with this third post – there’s a sense of optimism, but still an understanding that I am a long way off being “cured”.

For anxiety is still a part of my life. I still occasionally get my captain’s arm band of pain. I still get jittery, still over think and have an itchy, burning sensation on my scalp. I have been left with quite a pronounced twitch around the left eye, which has caused a few minor incidents when I have inadvertently caught the eye of someone as it has gone off. Ladies sometimes smile, men often look bemused. They are regular reminders to me, triggers, that something is not quite right. Which, I guess is a major thing for me to now understand. Just think back to Episode one when I was in complete denial and thought I was having a heart attack.

My life has changed for the better since that first hospital visit. To be able to admit that I’m feeling anxious is what drives me on. It fills me with the confidence that one day I will eventually overcome that fear of failure – in bowls, in writing, in parenthood – even in life.

*Publish without fear*

Image: Barbara Windsor in Carry on Camping

A trigger is a strange thing.

In terms of my anxiety, a trigger could be a simple thing that I would manage, deal with and move past for weeks on end. Then, out of nowhere; that simple thing would blow up. Become a hard to manage, impossible to pass situation – that I simply had no way to counter.

The granddaddy of all triggers for me is failure.

Of course you can easily throw in a soupcon of rejection, a dash of change, a mere morsel of overloading – but in the end it all comes back to one thing – the fear of failure.

Episode one, as we will call it to keep things simple – was as much to do with overloading as it was with anything else. I was trying to change jobs, move house, plan for a new baby, and admit I had to reconsider my lifestyle – when BLAM – I’m heavy breathing through a microphone in Accident and Emergency.

At the time I was in complete denial that it could be anything other than a heart attack – looking back it’s clear to see that I was so convinced that every component of my life would fail, that it was hardly surprising that I managed to work myself up in to such a state.

I had doubts as to whether I would be a good enough father for Lauren; whether I would fail her as a dad. Those doubts continued well after she was born. It didn’t help that my head then started to over think implausible, unlikely situations. What if someone walked in whilst I was changing her nappy – what would they think of me with a naked baby – other than it being a normal act of being a father? It got to me so much that I almost had to stop changing her, could never apply nappy cream – it was daft, but the over thinking was really starting to hurt my head.

It took a lengthy chat with Amy, who helped me to understand how ridiculous that all sounded, for me to manage that impossible to deal with situation. Now the only frustration I have is when, like all children, she simply won’t lay still as we try to change her.

Some might find the work situation interesting – a touch ironic perhaps (not my view). I’ve spent most of my working life in change situations. Project management, promotions, business redesign – I am employed, more or less, to guide people from point A to point B, often in a completely new way. I have to educate them on the best approach to take, deal with the pitfalls, but always to embrace change as a means by which to improve.

Apply change to my life, or at least my life past my first period of redundancy, and it is clearly something I have struggled to manage.

I’ve stayed in jobs I didn’t like for far too long for fear I might lose the next one (I’ve been made redundant three times). I eat the same sandwiches for days on end without any consideration for trying something else – I bought the same jeans, the same trainers, the same beer – all because I assumed changed would equate to a negative experience. Why alter from the path of mundanity, when I at least knew what to expect?

The biggest change I struggled to deal with, was that of my social life in the lead up to, and after Lauren was born. I used to be massively in to going to clubs. I often got paid to express my opinion on clubs for DJ Magazine – it would be rare for me to go more than a month without spending one Sunday morning with the tunes blaring, VH1 on in the background – and draining whatever booze we had left in the house, before retiring to bed for the next 24 hours.

Then one night I found myself getting overly twitchy in a club. I asked a DJ a painfully idiotic question – they were polite, but I could see the disdain in their eyes. I turned around to see a couple of mates having a right old good night, but something didn’t sit right. I was no longer comfortable being there. That life was no longer for me. I was a father to be now. Without saying goodnight, I bounded up the stairs, dived in to a cab – physically shaking on the back seat – and left that world behind. I haven’t been back.

But then cold turkey was harder than I thought it would be. Every day I spend about 40 minutes walking in to work. As I do I usually flick through my iPod and load up the latest podcast or CD that reminds me of the good times I had clubbing. At first I could just about make it in to work. Then I had to turn it off after 15 minutes or so. Then just the sound of four beats, four bars would root me to the spot. I was no longer capable of doing something I loved, all because it had such a negative impact on the way I felt. I cleared the iPod of anything remotely upbeat and downloaded factual, historical podcasts instead. Occasionally even the ‘noise’ of those is too much to take.

It did get better. But I needed to find myself somewhere surrounded by old, familiar faces – without Lauren – and a set of decks in front of me, before I could listen to a mix CD again.

But then, weaning myself back on to dance music was positively easy compared to the hardest acceptance of failure I had to deal with at that time – that of losing a game of bowls.

One of the darkest periods of my life with anxiety came on a slip road used for lorries on the A64 just outside York. I’d just lost a game that seemed impossible to lose. We were so far in front, only Carol Vorderman gave the opposition any hope of getting back in. But then, something went wrong. I went cold, ice cold. My body tensed up, palms became sweaty – my decision making process evaded me. I was near drinking the spray version of Rescue Remedy, overcompensating with my loud, mocking self – anything to deflect from the way i was playing. As is a literal, running theme here – I got off the green and in to my car as quickly as I could. I drove for about five minutes, then, realising I might not be in the right state to carry on – pulled over, got out and took countless deep breaths.

I got back in the car. I went to start the engine, but instantly found myself beating the steering wheel. Not once, but a number of times – not softly but with as much power as I could muster. It was only when I hit the horn that I realised exactly what I was doing.

That whole episode taught me one important lesson. I may not have beaten my opponents on the bowls green that night, but it was clear I had a bigger battle to win if I was ever going to happily set foot on the green, change a job, change a nappy or play an Essential Mix ever again.

This fear of failure couldn’t go on.

Image: Trigger from Only Fools and Horses

The next three connected posts – planned to run over the next three days – are about a subject that is, quite literally (Jamie), close to my heart; anxiety.

The first, connected, will try to give an understanding of how I came to accept I had to deal with my anxiety. The second, disconnected, will give an insight in to the root causes of my anxiety. The final piece, reconnected, will shed some light on how – I hope – I’ve learnt to identify and manage the times when the feelings of anxiety begin to take a hold.

It’s not something I find easy to write about. It’s not something I necessarily care for others to know about – but if this blog is about me, and my life, it seems wrong not to mention it. Even if I then choose to delete these posts sometime down the line. Ah well, here goes:

It’s been two years since my last episode.

The first person I went to see about my condition told me not to refer to them as panic attacks. He said they were more anxiety episodes, as though by softening – almost rounding the edges – it would make it easier to tackle.

I didn’t really get anything from those sessions.

I can vividly remember the last episode, for want of a better word then. I was sat in work, minding my own business, lost in my thoughts – which were clearly, wholly negative – and I felt what can only be described as a captain’s armband of pain grip my upper arm. I felt dizzy. My mouth was dry and my heart was racing. I was, at least I told myself I was, having a heart attack.

This was my third heart attack that week.

I quickly got up from my desk and ran to the door of the office; gasping for air – palms sweating so much that I struggled with the door knob. I thrust my hand in my pocket and took out my phone. I called Amy and told her I had to rush home. I had to see her. Only she could save me.

I didn’t tell anyone from work where I was going. No one would have cared anyway.

I near ran, for I can’t run with my knee – nor would I dare to run mid-heart attack – to the car. When I got there I saw someone had smashed in to one of our wing mirrors. That was my fault. Ours was the only damaged vehicle in a row of cars, but I had clearly parked in such a way that only I could be blamed for the smashed mirror. I went in to a rant. It was a rant at me more than anything. All the time I am still on the phone to Amy. Who was looking after Lauren – barely a month old at this time.

I got home. Checking for FBI helicopters as I drove (oh wait, no – that’s Goodfellas). When I got home I rushed to Amy, who was still holding Lauren, and sought instant salvation – from my heart, my head; my fears. I think I then went to bed, exhausted – as only nervous energy can wear you out.

I knew at that point that I needed extra help.

The episodes started shortly after I found out I was going to be a dad. It wasn’t just the fact I was going to have a child, but it was the last of a number of factors that seemed to push my mind in to the “precipice of doom” (I am prone to exaggeration). I had just agreed to buy a new house. I was changing jobs, but not one that made me feel any less of a failure than I did at the time. I’d stopped with most of the writing I was doing, and then – even after months of planning – the news that I was going to be a dad kind of hit home harder than I thought it would.

I ended up in the Leeds General Infirmary with a shortness of breath, as well as chest and arm pains – all classic heart attack symptoms. They did a few tests – they asked if I drank coffee (not too much), if I had any issues at home (no – though I am moving so which home do you mean?) and whether I was doing anything at the time I noticed the pains (not really – I was just moaning about how much I hated my job).

I went back, almost sheepishly to work. So there was nothing wrong with me I told myself.

As we moved through the months between Episode One and Lauren’s birth, my fear of heart attacks grew on an almost daily basis. I had an episode that made me run in to an Oxfam bookshop. I assumed, logically of course, that only old people go in to Oxfam shops, and as such they would be trained in CPR. I had another episode that meant I stood outside without any shoes on, so that if I did collapse, a passerby would note something had to be wrong – and they could save me. Why I was shoeless is still unclear. I even had an episode at the bottom of the hill that leads up to our house. I called Amy to come and drive me up the 200 yards to home, in the rain, whilst heavily pregnant, as otherwise I’d have stayed there all night.

I was back in the LGI on the day Lauren was due. It was clearly too much for me. They said they wanted to keep me in overnight for observation. Amy refused point blank, telling them she was due any day now. Amy was standing – nine months pregnant. I was sitting, sweating and moaning about my arm band of pain. We laugh about it now.

There was a lot of self doubt during this period – a lot of “oh woe is me” sort of internal and external monologues (I just talked at Amy). I missed a few nights out with friends, unsure I could get through a meal or drink without taking all my clothes off and running amok through the restaurant. I knew I wouldn’t, but then would you take the chance? No – exactly.

There was also a lot of toilet visits. Very little eating (I lost over a stone – which hey, that would help the old ticker) and plenty of (more than usual) moaning.

Which brings us to yesterday.

I wasn’t right in myself. I went to toilet a fair deal. My mouth was dry, my head held in my hands – I was irritable. I wanted to just curl up in a ball and hide from the world, from my family – from my thoughts.

Yesterday was the end point of a number of days. A number of days of moaning, of feeling down – of wanting to get away – of bad coffee and of upper arm tension. It was also the last day of my holiday. The day before I returned to work, a job I enjoy but wonder if – well, I could be doing better?

I thought I was past those sorts of days.

Clearly not – so I did the only thing I thought I could that would help me in that situation.

I cooked a ragù.

Title taken from the lyrics to “Panic” by The Smiths