Read an Excerpt
How to Live in Fear
Mastering the Art of Freaking Out
By Lance Hahn Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2016 Lance Hahn
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7180-3858-8
CHAPTER 1
WHY ME, LORD?
My anxiety keeps me from enjoying things as much as I should at this age. — Amanda Seyfried, actress
At just six years old, all I could feel was sheer terror. My throat constricted. I couldn't breathe. I was gagging as though some unseen force were strangling me. Why is this happening? raced through my young mind. Little kids might get ear infections and stomachaches, but nothing like this should happen. Why me? And why couldn't anyone help?
Just make it stop!
This scene occurred too many times on too many days. I wasn't actually choking on anything; my throat would just lock up. In the 1970s, the medical and psychological world didn't yet understand panic attacks or anxiety issues. And my parents didn't know what to do.
I grew up in a charismatic Christian home, and my family did the only thing they could think of: they took me to the elders of the church for prayer.
I had spent every Sunday I could remember at that church — an old theater that had been converted into a house of worship. I never wanted to go to Sunday school, so instead I sat with my parents and older siblings in the main service. Like most kids, I would entertain myself. I drew little cartoon animals and passed them over to my brother, who was eight years older than me, and he would name each one. Sometimes my sister and I played a connect-the-dots game on paper, trying to see who could score the most points by the time church ended. Occasionally, we would sit in the small balcony section, which I thought was cool. Right after the worship band finished their songs, the pastor would preach from the raised theater stage.
I remember that particular prayer-for-healing experience. I followed my parents to an upper room over the fellowship hall, where a group of middle-aged men — most of whom I didn't know — was waiting for me. What were they going to do? What was about to happen?
They were nice enough; they even smiled some. But I was nervous. There were no cartoon animals or dot games in this meeting — just the elders praying. They pleaded with Jesus to take away whatever was ailing me. Each of them laid hands on me and prayed simple, yet heartfelt prayers. They made brief mentions of demons, as I recall. Not a very pleasant experience for a six-year-old kid, yet far less dramatic than my mind had conceived. There was a lot of love and concern. I made it through, and I was glad when it was over and we could leave.
I wish I could tell you the Lord swept in and rescued that little guy from his torment, but that was not to be. Over time, the choking did subside. Unfortunately, the symptoms began to change their manifestation, moving from my throat to my stomach.
The human body has an amazing ability to store stress and fear in the pit of its midsection — what often in slang is called our "gut." Nausea ruined many a meal and many a day for me, often hitting when I was ready to go to school. Feeling as though I were going to vomit made me miss a lot of sleepovers and hijacked my spot at a lot of parties. Even when I did feel better, I worried that the nausea would return, leaving me in a vulnerable state. Although I never fully understood this nagging condition, I did find that if I stayed home the feelings would slowly dissipate.
By the time I was ten years old, I realized something emotional was at play. Whatever was going on wasn't merely a physical ailment.
* * *
I begged my mom to not make me go. I pleaded. I cried. I knew full well that a ten-year-old boy shouldn't be acting like this, but I was terrified! What does a kid that age do when he is scared to death? Reason goes out the window.
I pressed myself against the orange interior door of our brown Pinto station wagon as I sobbed.
Where was I being forced to go, you ask? Was it to juvenile detention? Maybe to the doctor for shots? To the tailor's to be fit for a suit?
No. It was the grocery store.
What could possibly create terror in the heart of a boy in such a place?
I was scared of getting beat up, apparently by roving bands of grocery gangs. I was scared I would die in there.
But what was all this drama about? These were such odd issues coming from a boy who grew up in a peaceful home in a sleepy small town with not a single moment of abuse or violence.
This wasn't an isolated incident. During this season of my life, my mom had this battle of wills on her hands every time she tried to stop somewhere on the way home from school. She didn't understand, and I couldn't help her at all because I felt completely out of control.
I remember the day my mom went from coaxing to bribery in an attempt to get me to go to the mall to buy new jeans at Miller's Outpost. I was a growing boy, and all my pants were riding up my legs. I also had holes in the knees, which might be stylish today but definitely wasn't back then. Yet my fear of public spaces and crowds was so severe that I would have rather faced the jeers of my peers because of outgrown clothes than face the horrors of the mall crowd. At first my mom tried promising that it would be the fastest shopping experience known to man; then she tried to hype up the after-party at the ice cream store. But I wasn't having any of it. No manner of her begging could get my eyes off the monster of fear in front of me.
The definition of phobia is "a persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous." Nailed it! That's exactly how I felt.
And just when I thought life couldn't possibly get worse, it did.
* * *
Around the age of fourteen, there was a week or so when I couldn't even leave the house — at all.
I couldn't go to school.
I couldn't step outside with my friends.
I was emotionally bound by the four walls of my home.
But just as the fear entered unannounced, the feelings subsided without much fanfare. Thankfully, after that week or so, the invisible gates somehow opened, and I felt free to move around within my limited, secure spaces: school, home, neighborhood, friends' houses, and maybe one store — places I had previously deemed safe.
As I grew older, however, even in those safe settings my anxiety would unpredictably find a way to break in (or out, depending on your perspective). Some of my biggest fears began to invade my most secure spot — my own home. I grew up in the 1980s, during the Cold War era, also known as the Nuclear Age. The standoff between Superpower America and Mother Russia was propagated like a Wild West duel — two gunfighters staring each other down to see who would draw his weapon first. And of course, someone was going to die — if not both of them.
Everywhere I turned, on TV and radio programs, in magazines and newspapers, the foreboding possibilities of World War III were emblazoned before the masses — and specifically before me. I learned that an atomic explosion would begin with an incinerating blast that I couldn't possibly outrun, no matter what fast car I might be driving. Once the explosion struck, I would see the mushroom cloud. With nowhere to hide, I would have a few scant moments to reflect on my life before being obliterated into dust.
I, Lance, would then be a smoldering dust bunny. That's all I needed to think about to live in fear, and too often it was all I did think about.
During the same decade, the evangelical church at large regularly used fear as a marketing device. Maybe it was to capitalize on the Cold War fears. After all, people were thinking about the end of the world and about dying, so why not connect that to faith?
Those in my own Christian circle — our church, my parents — believed the end of the world was imminent and could happen at any moment. And so did I. If the nuclear warheads didn't get you, you were destined to be left behind if you weren't right with God. Every religious tract talked about the Antichrist, the mark of the Beast, families separated in the Rapture, and the terrible ravages of God's wrath.
Yippee! I was a little, sensitive guy battling fear on a daily basis; trying to grow up in an already scary world was entirely too much for me to handle. More mornings than I can count, I would wake up to a naturally red sky outside my bedroom window, and panic would overtake me. To me, that blood-colored dawn meant either the bombs had been dropped or Jesus had just returned. The fact that I was still there in my warm bed meant that I had been abandoned, and my terrorized little brain scrambled to figure out a way a boy my age could survive, especially if even God was now against me.
* * *
It was 1986, and I was so honored that my brother had asked fifteen-year-old me to be a groomsman at his wedding. Dressed in a tuxedo, I was standing with his buddies onstage in the chapel on the campus of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California — in the middle of summer with no air-conditioning. My parents were sitting in the front row with my sister. It was so cool to stand with my brother on one of the most important days of his life. The chapel was filled with guests waiting to hear "I do" and see my brother kiss his bride. I was as excited as anyone, but also nervous.
Just as the happy couple turned to face each other to begin the ceremony, I began to feel woozy. I knew the danger of locking my knees, so I bent them slightly, shifting my weight back and forth from one foot to the other. But my vision started to go, and the signs of fainting must have appeared on my face because one of the groomsmen leaned in and asked, "Are you okay, Lance?"
People's heads had appeared to grow sizably over the last few minutes, like distorted Dr. Seuss characters, and I could barely stand.
I answered, "No, I don't think so." Then my vision went dark, like a fading light — and I went down.
The next thing I knew I was seeing a bright light. Not heaven, but the doors to the outside of the chapel. My father was carrying me, and he kept saying over and over, "Hang in there, son." Apparently, when I collapsed on stage I started to convulse. Within moments of being laid down on the grass under a tree, I heard sirens. Two shimmering red emergency vehicles drove up with their air horns drowning out my brother's vows to his new bride. The wedding went on without me, and I was no longer standing beside my brother where I so wanted to be.
Nothing like making a moment more memorable, right?
* * *
In the middle of my teen years, when so many suffer some of the worst angst of their lives, I finally found some relief. My first significant period of freedom from anxiety began when I was sixteen. In fact, the peace lasted almost uninterrupted for about six years. Why? I got my driver's license. Freedom and control were mine in a way I had never experienced before.
Suddenly I was the one who determined when and where I went. I was calling the shots, and if I didn't want to stop somewhere I didn't have to. I was free to escape from any situation I deemed anxious and fearful. When the steering wheel was put into my own hands, I didn't have to face as many of those fears. I had an escape route in nearly every situation — at least for a season, before the overwhelming fear eventually pushed its way back into my life.
In my early twenties, my anxiety returned. For instance, I was able to go shopping at the mall, but I needed to take breaks to go outside, clear my head, and regain perspective. As I went from store to store, my vision would start to get blurry. I felt almost dizzy, though not quite disoriented. I never imagined I would be retreating from crowds instead of being energized by them, because I'm a people person. I love people! I already loved public speaking. But somehow my body didn't agree with my mind, or maybe my mind didn't agree with my heart. The stomachaches that had bothered me so much as a boy came back with a vengeance as my body continued to hold fear in the core of my being.
One of the most maddening things about struggling with fear is the constant question "Why?" I was plagued with thoughts of what I might have done wrong. Shame followed me around like a looming shadow. I didn't know one other soul who felt the way I felt. I felt alone. I felt like a freak.
Why was I picked to win the lottery of doom?
Why was I afraid of what I was afraid of?
Why me? Why me, God?
CHAPTER 2
THE AGITATING ANGST OF ADULTHOOD
I try not to worry about the future ... so I take each day just one anxiety attack at a time!! — Tom Wilson, cartoonist
In 1996, my wife, Suzi, and I were newlyweds. We decided to scrape together all the money we could and book a cruise with our good friends, the Patelzicks. We could only afford the minimal three-day voyage from Orange County to Catalina Island, down to Ensenada, Mexico, and back.
I had never been on a cruise before and was looking forward to a getaway from the world. I daydreamed about how relaxing those seventy-two hours would be, out on the ocean, soaking up the sun, and exploring the two port cities. Greg and Mindy were fired up to go exploring, so the four of us set off on our adventure.
The first day we had an awesome time, laughing and swapping stories, eating lots of food, and taking advantage of all the fun on the ship. The next morning we arrived off the coast of Catalina. I could not wait to see this beautiful island I had heard so much about from so many people. I hoped the romance of the environment would overwhelm my new bride. And I was pumped to get to visit the former spring training facility the Chicago Cubs had used to prepare for their baseball seasons for thirty years, view the former home of Norma Jeane Mortenson (aka Marilyn Monroe), and walk where stars, celebrities, and sports heroes had walked.
When I woke up on the day of the Catalina excursion, something wasn't right. I felt off and didn't quite know what was going on. Not overly concerned, I figured it would go away. I wasn't on any medication and didn't know enough yet about anxiety to pick up on the signals, so I forged ahead like a good soldier. I didn't want to let down the team; after all, this was an amazing vacation and we had spent all our extra money to get there.
Because the shoreline is too shallow for the ship to dock safely, our excursion would start with taking a smaller boat to shore. On the short ride to the island, the sensations went from uncomfortable to immobilizing. I had never had such a rapid onset with this set of symptoms, but I felt dizzy, scared, and sick to my stomach. By the time we reached land, the attack was so severe that I told my wife and our friends to go on without me. It took some convincing, but they agreed. I quickly got on the next boat back to the ship and beelined straight for our cabin. At first, I paced around the tiny closet-sized room, and then I tried lying down.
What is happening to me? I kept thinking. With my heart racing, my thoughts flying at warp speed, I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I didn't know if a twenty-four-year-old healthy man could have a heart attack, but I didn't want to take the risk.
I called the ship's doctor. The woman who answered said they had just encountered an emergency and were swamped. Could I call back?
But I didn't. The rational side of my mind kicked in and told me how ridiculous I was being and that I wasn't going to have a heart attack, no matter what I felt.
Slowly, gradually, relief seeped in. I even tried to nap. By the time Suzi and our friends came back, I was mostly better, but the trip was now spoiled for me. My disorder decided to set itself off that day for no discernible reason, so I was wary the next two days as well.
One of the great hassles of living with fear is how much it takes us away from being fully present with our families, especially after we have children. It feels so selfish to want to be anywhere else but smack in the middle of a loved one's birthday party or piano recital or wedding. Just as depression might take a parent away from the family room and leave that mom or dad alone in a darkened bedroom, so too does anxiety remove us from being emotionally present.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How to Live in Fear by Lance Hahn. Copyright © 2016 Lance Hahn. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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