Coaster Phobia

Note: I wrote this a week and a half ago. Follow-up to last week’s project at the end of the post.

Phobias and Anxieties

So, what’s the big deal with roller coasters? For some reason, I’m naturally terrified of them. Like, intensely, sickeningly frightened of them. I know roller coasters are scary, but so many more people seem to enjoy them than don’t. So what’s wrong with me? I find this cool snippet on about.com:

Roller coasters are intentionally designed to be scary, appealing to the same part of the brain that enjoys haunted houses and other Halloween events. We seem to be hardwired to enjoy activities that cause fear, provided that we know that we are actually safe. This phenomenon is demonstrated repeatedly in extreme sports, horror movies, and the multibillion dollar Halloween industry.

If our brains are hardwired to enjoy controlled fear, then why do so many people seem to suffer from roller coaster phobia? To answer that question, it is important to understand the basic psychology of fear as it relates to phobias.

One aspect of anxiety disorders is the fear of fear. While most people are afraid only when confronted by a fear-inducing situation, those with anxiety disorders tend to worry that they will become afraid. They see fear as something negative, which must be avoided at all costs.

A phobia occurs when the normal fear response becomes twisted. Objects or situations that are not inherently dangerous become the focus of fear. Although phobia sufferers know that their reactions are irrational, they are unable to control them. (http://phobias.about.com/od/phobiaslist/a/coasterphobia.htm)

AHA. Thank you, about.com writer Lisa Fritscher. I’d be willing to believe I have, or at least have had, an anxiety disorder. In fact, let’s do a bit of Googling for “anxiety disorders.”

Wikipedia: Anxiety Disorders:
Social anxiety disorder

Main article: Social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD; also known as social phobia) describes an intense fear and avoidance of negative public scrutiny, public embarrassment, humiliation, or social interaction. This fear can be specific to particular social situations (such as public speaking) or, more typically, is experienced in most (or all) social interactions. Social anxiety often manifests specific physical symptoms, including blushing, sweating, and difficulty speaking. As with all phobic disorders, those suffering from social anxiety often will attempt to avoid the source of their anxiety; in the case of social anxiety this is particularly problematic, and in severe cases can lead to complete social isolation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety_disorder)

Holy crap, I’m just now realizing that I have/have had SAD. Dang, the reasons to see a professional therapist are just piling up lately, y’all. I bolded that second bit because I’m a wicked awesome blusher and I stutter and stammer, all when I realize people are actually paying attention to me. I used to be a lot worse. I conquered it in college (post on that success coming in the future), but when I’ve been out of practice, I feel it creeping back in. Literally. I feel the blushing creeping up my neck to my face and the sweat starting to bead. And then I stress about that stress reaction and everything compounds like crazy. But, anyway.

The Renewed Purpose of the Blog

Well, now this blog feels kind of pointless, since my “journey of discovery” has just been nailed down in that single entry from Wikipedia. SAD explains why I’m terrified of looking stupid or not being in control of a situation, whether that control be physical or control of how others perceive me.

BUT, I won’t let that stop me. I have overcome my social anxieties in the past and been a fun, carefree, lively kind of person. When I haven’t been able to master them, that’s when my most painful memories were made. So this project still has merit, in that I can examine my successes and failures and motivate myself to continue to grow. (I’ll also share what I learn from therapy when I get in with our next tax return :p ) I think I’ll kind of expand the original premise of this blog and also share ways I’m currently working to improve myself in different areas. That will be so much fun, a nice potpourri of fascinating personal projects I’m researching and undertaking.

History of Roller Coasters (well, just mine)

Anyways, onto the entertaining anecdotes about my history with roller coasters. I think it started with Kennywood, when we lived in Pittsburgh. There was a wooden roller coaster called the Kennywood Racer. It was loud, painful (if you’ve been on an old-school wooden coaster, you know exactly what I mean), and scary. I was in third grade. I rode it once and couldn’t stand it. I then tried to desensitize myself to the sensation of being on a roller coaster by riding the kiddie coaster (a turtle-themed coaster, I think…fitting…) over and over and over. My poor dad and sister were very patient with me. (Also, can I say how impressed I am with my third-grade self that I tried to treat myself through desensitization? Too bad it didn’t help.) My dad and sister went on to ride the Steel Phantom without me, and I just stood there, slack-jawed and short of breath watching the car whiz around the massive, looming track.

In eighth grade, we took a field trip up to Busch Gardens. I tried once to ride the Big Bad Wolf. I kept my watering eyes squeezed shut, grinding my teeth against the seriously unpleasant sensation that my stomach was about to launch out of my mouth. Not just the contents of my stomach. I felt like my entire stomach was going to fly out of my body. I white-knuckled the handles and groaned at the effort it took to keep my abs tight to hold my stomach in place and to hold my body still as we whipped around hairpin turns and dove down steep embankments. I was a total waste of a seat. The rest of the trip, I begged out of the rides on the pretense that everyone needed someone to hold their stuff while they rode, so I would be the kind-hearted martyr to miss out on the fun and stand draped in bags, fanny packs, and cameras that I used as a kind of armor against the terror I felt just watching the cars on the tracks. The Abominable Snowman. Apollo’s Chariot. I tried to imagine myself on them as I watched my friends rattle to the top of the first drop, but the full-on revolt going on in my stomach put an end to that in short order.

Around that time, my dad’s work sent him to Orlando, so we made a family vacation of it. We saw Ripley’s Believe It or Not and some other cool things that I dawdled at to eat up the time we should have used at Universal Studios, land of roller coasters. I was obsessed with The Dragonriders of Pern series and was therefore determined to ride the Dueling Dragons. I was also totally in love with Jurassic Park and was super excited for that ride. But the idea of actually riding either of those scared the crap out of me. So I dragged us around to the benign 3D rides and spent at least four hours in the Jurassic Park discovery center, or whatever it’s called, playing with the robotic dinosaurs, waiting for the raptors to hatch, and eating an $8 chicken sandwich with some weird thing in it that I was convinced was a worm. We finally got in line for the Jurassic Park ride, but I kept reading the description in our pamphlet and wussed out when my stomach threatened to choke me. No big deal, there were still the dragons. We stood in another line. For a long time. And then I wussed out again. There were tears. Oh, there were many tears. I was so angry at myself for being too scared to do a ride I thought I should want to ride and enjoy riding. I was angry that I was being such a sucky amusement park buddy for my dad. That frustration was compounded by the fact that I was in the midst of a full-on nervous breakdown complete with intense bawling in a very public place. Oh, my dad. That poor guy.

For some reason, I got a picture in front of the Dueling Dragons entrance because the dragon sculptures were cool, and maybe because that was the closest I was going to get to the ride. Anyways, it’s a photographic reminder to me of my loser-ness. (Everyone’s hard on their prepubescent selves, right?) I mentally punched myself in the face and told myself to stop sucking so bad. Time was running out, and we hadn’t ridden a single legitimate ride, because I was such a wimp. I decided to ride the next one we walked by. It was the Incredible Hulk. Standing under the tracks and listening to the cars roar overhead, I had another lengthy breakdown. I think I cried for longer than we stood in line for rides we never took. (There’s a poem or song lyrics in there somewhere.)

The Genesis of Roller Coaster Therapy

I successfully avoided roller coasters for the next several years. When I was 20, I worked as a counselor for a summer youth program. For some stupid reason*, I developed a crush on one of the other counselors. (*the reason is that I was always going after the wrong guy. The arrogant douche. The emotionally unavailable one. I pinned my self-worth on whether I could get these kinds of guys to pay attention to me and like me. I was in a sick cycle where I’d subconsciously pick the most unhealthy, unavailable guy and set about changing everything about myself to attract him. This guy was actually very timely, though. I realized there were so many things wrong about him--for me--that I realized I wanted to find the complete opposite of him, so I wrote down everything I was looking for in a guy in my journal. I met my husband almost immediately after that. J)

ANYWAYS, this guy liked a local amusement park and I totally wanted to pretend that I loved everything that he was into, because that’s just what girls with low self-esteem do. So as we were talking about it, I concocted this totally improvised philosophical stance on roller coasters, which I now call Roller Coaster Therapy. The goal was to get him to take me with him to the park, so the genesis of this idea is pretty shallow and twisted, but the idea itself is still a good one. I’ve detailed it on the blog before, but to repeat, the idea is to put myself in situations that make me uncomfortable so that I can expand my comfort zone and grow. You have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

The idea behind practicing being uncomfortable specifically on roller coasters is that the whole point of roller coasters is that you’re supposed to feel scared and out of control. On the Big Bad Wolf, when I was exerting so much energy and will to hold still and stop moving, I was going against the very reality of being on a roller coaster and entrenching my terror and phobia even deeper. I was trying so hard to control the situation, but the whole point is that the situation is beyond your control. To fail so miserably (as you must, when you try not to move on a roller coaster) is incredibly disheartening and scary. You’ll do anything to avoid feeling that powerless again.

So, in my bid to get this guy to take me to a theme park, I told him I was scared of roller coasters, but needed to practice riding them with the idea and goal of relaxing and embracing the sensation of going with the rhythm and pace of the roller coaster. Sometimes that’s all you can do in life. And it’s often actually a lot more pleasant than white-knuckling and groaning your way through a ride that you yourself are making more gut-wrenching by your inability to relax and enjoy the ride. Or, as my pal Lao Tzu said, “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Success!

It was my first great triumph. I rode every ride in the park several times. I started to enjoy it. My husband and I went to Six Flags when we were engaged and rode every ride there, too. We went back to that other park together the summer after getting married, and I wanted to ride the roller coasters more times than he did! Major successes all around! Although, with my husband, I wimped out on the Blast Off/Re-entry ride, you know, that just shoots you straight up in the air or drops you. Mentally kicked myself in the stomach for that one, for being lame and too scared to have fun with him. For being so lame that I stifled his fun, too. But that’s the growing process, I guess, you need to keep working at what you want to improve on and moving forward, or you’ll drift backward. And it’s okay to mess up. Just fix it as soon as possible. I owe him that ride the next time we go to a theme park J

So, that’s that. My shaky history with roller coasters. I love them now. Now, instead of inspiring fear in the deepest recesses of my gut, I look forward to them as a way to feel free, to completely relax, and to enjoy something that used to scare me witless. I think my fondness for them is more the fact that I can stare my old fear right in the face and smile. And that’s my goal with this project: to identify things that similarly terrify me and to work on them until they become something I enjoy, or at least, enjoy being able to do them. If you’re not growing and expanding, you’re shriveling up into a very unpleasant, uncomfortable, lifeless speck.

This week’s RCT project: I started TapouT XT. Okay, it’s not social discomfort, but it sure is physical discomfort and growth! Maybe I’ll put up my before and after pictures once my 90 days are up.

Until next time, remember: Results are not achieved in the comfort zone! –Mike Karpenko, TapouT XT coach

Follow-up: Like I said, I wrote this a week and a half before posting. Two days after writing it, I went to my MMA class and got the crap kicked and slung out of me, so I had to take a few days’ break from TapouT. Now my husband wants to do it with me when he’s done teaching his class, so I’m on hold for a bit. L

But for real, this week’s project is putting together a 30-Day Declutter Challenge that I’m going to post here for anyone who wants to follow along, now or in the future. I’m also going to try to enlist my local friends and acquaintances to do it with me so that we can have a group yard sale at the end. So stay tuned for the intro in the next few days and the whole program over the next few weeks!