The Pain was Like Nothing Else
but mindfulness helped save my life that day
Dear Younger Tom,
As you collapsed to the floor, the pain in your chest was like nothing you’ve felt before.
Your first thought was that it was a heart attack. Your second thought was that you were going to die. Your third thought was of your daughter Mollie and how you would never see her again.
Then the pain struck again and again, like you were stuck on a nightmare rollercoaster.
Destination hell.
You had just started a dream job selling cars for Lexus and were driving vehicles everyday that were well beyond your pay scale.
The customers were well heeled and quite discerning but you were used to this with your background selling fine wines to Michelin star restaurants and their sometimes snooty sommeliers.
No the stress and pressure actually came from competing with the other sales reps. Turns out it was a real dog-eat-dog world inside the showrooms.
Lots of bravado and decision making made with the dangly bits hanging between the men’s legs.
As a rookie in this environment, it was quite hostile.
Every day was an assault on your values and you started to get the sense that you didn’t belong.
It was unsustainable and looking back the writing was on the wall.
The dream was turning into nightmare.
You had been at the showroom for 3 weeks and the pressure was mounting to cut your tie in half.
The tie cutting ritual was done the day a sales rep sold their first car.
You were the last rep waiting to fulfil that honor and the other reps were sniggering behind your back that it had taken you so long and still the end was nowhere in sight.
A rising sense of panic started to manifest in your body and you became very jittery, like you had overdosed on too much coffee and Red Bull. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
The hot weather hadn’t helped but thankfully the weather had turned and it was a slightly cooler day today.
As you were walking through the car lot, you struck up a conversation with a potential buyer.
He wanted to test drive one of the cars in front of him, so you went out the back of the showroom to retrieve the correct key from the lock safe.
You were excitedly looking for the keys when one of the other reps joined you at the key cabinet. After you told him which car you wanted to showcase he reached in and gave you a set of keys.
When you walked up to the car and pressed the unlock button nothing happened. You tried again. Nothing.
Embarrassed, you realized you had the wrong keys and were actually opening the car next to you. You apologized to the customer and went back to the cabinet. You assumed you had told the rep the wrong vehicle. He gave you another set of keys.
You walked back to the car and the waiting customer, who was clearly getting impatient.
Click of the button… nothing… again.
This time it was the car behind that opened.
The customer muttered something under his breath and stormed off the car lot. Your opportunity was gone.
As you turned round to walk back to the showroom, you saw in the window all the reps guffawing at you. They had played a practical joke on you and it had gone exactly to plan.
Only you didn’t see the funny side.
You had bills to pay and a wife and child who depended on you bringing home the bacon. They wouldn’t see the funny side when you couldn’t afford to put food on the table.
You started to feel an unfamiliar feeling tapping on your chest but brushed it off. Then the next moment you felt like you had been punched in the chest and you dropped to the floor in agony.
In that moment, your whole world turned upside down.
Your defibrillator had fired because the stress had caused too much adrenaline to flood your body and you heartbeat had gone through the roof.
This was the first time it had happened since you had been fitted with the device, so you had no idea how excruciating the pain would be when it fired.
Luckily the device would reset your heartbeat and it would continue to beat normally.
Only luck wasn’t in your corner today.
A side effect of handling pain in your body, is the automatic release of adrenaline. think of the fight-or-flight principle and your being chased by a tiger. You don’t have time to consider pain, you just need to run as fast you can. Here adrenaline comes to your aid and helps you push through the pain.
Only for me, more adrenaline equals more shocks from my defibrillator.
25 shocks to be exact in a 45 minute window.
Words cannot explain the torture I endured that day and the preceding nights following as I battled with the recurring nightmares that visited my dreams as I battled the ensuing PTSD.
To this day, I have to carefully manage my environment and working conditions to keep my stress levels in check.
It’s a horrible way to live.
As I lay on the ground, looking at the approaching ambulance from a sideways angle, a sense of calm enveloped me. Despite the pain of the intermittent shocks, I started to do a mindfulness meditation to distract myself from the pain and try to lower the adrenalin coursing through my blood.
My thoughts drifted away to Mollie again, only this time instead of thinking about how I would never see her again, I started to visualize our next day trips out and about. I got really deep into it, picturing her laughing and chattering away like a babbling brook, her words passing downstream to an unknown destination.
As I focused on these blissful thoughts, I found myself coming back to reality and started to gaze onto the attending paramedic.
He thought I had lost consciousness because I was unresponsive to his questions and he gave a surprised chuckle when I told him I was in fact conscious but that I was meditating.
“Well keep doing what it because it’s working! Your shocks are getting less frequent”
So I did and within ten minutes the shocks had stopped.
Whenever somebody tells me the practice of mindfulness meditation doesn’t work, I gently pull them to one side and tell them the story you’ve just read. They never fail to leave the conversation without a newfound respect for the process of being more mindful.
Here’s what I want you to do over the next few minutes.
Think about something that’s worrying you and causing you some anxiety right now.
Acknowledge it and don’t fight the feelings of discomfort, be okay with not being okay - it’s only temporary - it too shall pass, like the fleeting storm clouds up in the sky.
Next, revisit a happy memory, maybe from time spent with friends or family. Perhaps it’s a holiday memory or a recent romantic date that ended with a kiss…
Whatever the moment, revisit it.
Take a deep breath in.
Now slowly breathe out.
Picture the happy memory and start to describe it to yourself slowly. How many different things can you describe in the picture.
What are the sounds you can hear? What does the room smell like? How many people are there close by? What are they chatting about?
Let your memory go wild.
Now, a question for you… whilst you were thinking about the happy memory, how easy was it to focus on the thoughts that were causing you anxiety?
The answer is it would be impossible!
You cannot think two thoughts at the exact same time and this is what mindfulness does, it distracts you from uncomfortable thoughts and allows your brain time to calm down from anxious thoughts.
This is one of the tools that saved my life that day and it will work for you too, underestimate it at your peril.
Here’s what I know to be true, when you are in a less anxious and fearful state of mind, the world has more opportunities waiting to knock at your window and crucially you feel more inclined to open the door and let the adventures come rolling in.
So what are you waiting for? There’s somebody tapping at your door - are you going to open it?
Love from Older Tom ;)
P.S. If nobody else has told you today… you’ve so got this!