It was 22 years ago this month that I became housebound. There was no clear end in sight, and the only sure thing was that life couldn’t ever be the same if I made it through. For a very different reason, most of us are living that same scenario today. It seems like a good time to look back and share a journal from the very beginning of my practice.

This first entry came two days after full-on agoraphobia took over, and one day after first meeting the psychologist who would introduce me to mindfulness and insight meditation.

Three months earlier, I moved out of the only house I’d ever lived in. Three months before that, I landed a dream job in my new IT career … or so I thought. The dream soon became a nightmare of anxiety sparked by the unpredictability of a consulting job that could send me any place at any time. Ironically, before that anxiety set in, I felt like I had “reached my goal” of having the right job for the long haul; for the first time, there was no “next step” to work toward.

With both constants in my life suddenly gone for the first time within a few months, I felt ungrounded and dissociated. My finely honed skills of self-distraction and denial no longer stood a chance against the new tag team of job anxiety and panic disorder. Once the bottom finally fell out, I knew that I’d have to look for a more predictable job … but going back to ANY kind of work was a long way off …

April 22, 1998

I used to have solid anchors; my old home at one end, and my goals at the other. Now they’re both loose … there have been major disruptions in deep-rooted things that have never changed and I’m disconnected in strange territory. I’ve defined myself in terms of the two anchors; one establishing my entire past and one directing my future. Now one anchor has been uprooted and the other anchor is “gone” … and both for the first time. Nothing is pulling me toward the future. Job interviews may help but it’s probably better to get some work done on the issue of the other anchor first (I have to trust my own feelings on this issue). Who am I without my anchors? I’m not used to just “being.”

In retrospect: were the anchors really keeping me grounded? Or just holding me down?