A common theme throughout my Natural Shelter Build Project was my reaction to being inside a small, dark, enclosed space. An unstoppable flow of thoughts, feelings, awareness and images of my own mortality would flood my mind and body moments after I bedded down. And I’m not talking about suddenly being aware that I will die one day or mid-life crisis; intellectually I get that. I am talking about my entire being overwhelmed with an all sensory experience of my demise, my end, my death. It was all encompassing and despite my best efforts to ground myself, manage the feelings and distract myself I was overcome with panic and a compulsion to just get out, get away and get to safety.
This feeling was most extreme during my stays in the snow shelters. I was not able to complete even one full night in any of the snow shelters, even though I have camped for most of my life and slept in snow shelters in the past.
I have speculated that my reaction could be related to a natural claustrophobic reaction or a good ol’ panic attack related to anxiety. I do suffer from PTSD from a childhood trauma and have wondered if my reaction is related to that. There was no light or sound in the snow caves so I have postulated that due to the lack of sensory stimulation my subconscious thoughts, feelings and fears poured into the empty space in my brain. I even tried bringing a book and my phone to distract myself but these only had a mild temporary effect.
Considering the death theme, I felt strongly that my reaction might be connected to the fact that I actually have died. About 8 years ago, I suffered a Sudden Cardiac Arrest due to a super high ventricular tachycardia or possibly ventricular fibrillation. The details are not important beyond the fact that I was basically dead, turning blue, with no heart beat (or my heart beating or vibrating so quickly it was not detectable). If not for the quick reaction of some of my fellow Ultimate Frisbee players, their experience with First Aid/CPR and the proximity of an Automated External Defibrillator I would be dead or extremely brain damaged. My fellow players revived me just in time to see the paramedics walking across the playing field.
After that event, I was kept in the hospital until I could be given an Internal Cardiac Defibrillator. Before I passed out I had this empty feeling in my chest, some dizziness, then everything went black. Since that operation and prescription for beta blockers, I have experienced a few occurrences of v-tach or v-fib that were dealt with by my device or stopped on their own. It’s pretty weird having this empty feeling where you can’t feel your pulse and wondering if you were gonna die. I have been event free for a number of years now, but for a while post event, any little flutter, flub or weird feeling prompted me to wonder if I was dying again. I even had some realistic dreams/nightmares that I was dying resulting in me waking up in a sweat, my heart racing and wondering if I was still alive.
This is a rather long winded way of trying to connect my “death” flashbacks in the shelters to my actual death experience. I often wonder if I was reliving the act of dying on a cellular level.
Until recently, I concluded that it was one of the reasons I have stated or a combination of them. That was before I started having these same experiences every time I have gone camping the last couple years even in a tent and whether I was alone or not. Now this could just be an escalation of the feelings that are coming through no matter what the circumstance rising up once I am away from the city and my busy, distracted, disconnected urban life.
Or, it could be something else. Now this is when the Twilight Zone music starts playing. It occurred to me that since it was only happening when I was camping and not when I was in the city , that I might be connecting to the earth, or nature or the life pulse or spirit something and that the earth was telling me or I was connecting to the fact that our planet and life and humans, were in grave danger. Perhaps sleeping on the ground, with the sights, sounds, smells and rhythm of nature all around me I was more connected to the earth. Intellectually, I do believe we are in the midst of a mass extinction caused by humans and concerned that there could be a major ecosystem collapse in the relatively near future so this could be my subconsciousness bubbling up creating this experience or ……………………………………………
Not sure where this fits in to what I have been experiencing or whether it belongs in an episode of the Twilight Zone but it is something to consider. And not sure how I am going to deal with it as the experiences are so troubling that I have found myself very apprehensive before every camping trip recently. So far I am persevering using all my tricks and grounding tools to manage but end up with little or no sleep. At this point not sure where to turn; therapy, continued use of feelings management tools or maybe get all mystic and try a sweat lodge.
I’ll keep you posted.
urbancampersite 