Letting go of fear

After having her twin boys, author Rowan Coleman, 46, became gripped by her childhood anxiety. Then she learned to retell her story, with herself as the heroine

How Rowan Coleman freed herself from anxiety by retelling her past

Iwas 12 when I asked my dad not to leave me, my brother and my mum, for his new girlfriend – and he went anyway. That was the moment I began travelling on dual roads: appearing to be happy and secure on the outside, but feeling a churning mass of anxiety within. It was at that moment the safety net of a stable family I had always thought would be there was suddenly ripped away.

I pivoted at speed from a place of perceived security into a world in which bad things happen and, more than that, they happened to me. I grew into womanhood expecting disaster, always with a worst-case-scenario exit plan, prepared to do battle with anxiety on a day-to-day basis.

Then, shortly after my twin boys were born five years ago, my habitual low-level anxiety became full-blown fear. The shift from coping to retreating came about almost imperceptibly. But, soon, the anxiety, and the accompanying debilitating horror-movie levels of terror, began to control my life.

As a novelist, I’m fine-tuned to pluck plot threads from the world around me, and to weave them into fictional tapestries. But, as you’ll know if you’re imaginative too, this can be a dangerous skill. I began to believe the dramatic and emotional stories I told myself.

I believed the pain in my side must be cancer, despite what my doctors told me, to the extent that the only way to allay my fears was to pay for an expensive MRI scan to rule it out. And even when it came back clear, I still worried they had made a mistake.

IF MY HUSBAND, ADAM, WAS A LITTLE LATE HOME,

I became convinced he was either having an affair or dead in a ditch. Sitting in bed under the duvet, I’d plot the end of our marriage, or what I would say at his funeral.

World events scared the life out of me. I’d look at my five children, then aged from zero to 10, and fear not only for their future, but that there might not be any future at all.

These kinds of concerns are passing worries for many people, but for people like me, people with an anxiety disorder, they become technicolour, three-dimensional fact. Once a sociable person who loved to be at the centre of a party, by this time last year, I didn’t want to go out at all. I didn’t want to connect to the internet, I didn’t want to see my friends.

The only place I wanted to be was in bed – to get lost in a calmer, more predictable world than mine, by reading a book or watching a film that might take me out of the terrors of my own head. I was stuck in a loop of perpetual

I am no longer damaged, I am POWERFUL and self-made, able to bring LOVE and empathy despite my past

fright, of fight-or-flight. Which might sound melodramatic, but is exactly what it felt like. And yet, as much as the stories I told myself were trapping me, storytelling turned out to be my way out of the maze I was lost in.

It was during a counselling session with my psychotherapist, who I’d been seeing for six months, that I realised my vivid imagination was holding me back, helping me to conjure up scenarios out of mismatched cues and clues. Then, my therapist explained that it is possible to use your imagination to do the opposite, too. To pour a salve on my past, to heal by reconnecting all the dots to create an entirely new picture. That was the moment I understood we can rewrite our own endings.

Psychologist Catherine Green explains, “Using imagery and stories can bring to life difficult and painful issues and allow people the possibility to reflect upon their concerns.”you’re already using stories to understand your life every time you identify with characters who have had similar life experiences in books and films. The need to tell and reframe our stories is a need as ancient as humanity, and as contemporary as Instagram stories, or posting on Facebook or Snapchat.

You can rework what happened in your past. Telling it as a story is an incredibly powerful way to see your life not only from an outsider’s point of view, from a point of safety, but also to take control over the outcome, its impact on you and how you respond to it. Of course, you can’t actually rewrite your past. However, just by reimagining it, you can get a feeling of closure and acceptance that you’ve never had before.

This was how I began to make sense of the world; to reimagine and reinvent myself as the hero in my own narrative, and crucially, more than a survivor – a victor. I rewrote and retold the story of the collapse of the relationship with my father, this time casting myself as the hero. In my imagination, I decided to see myself as no longer abandoned, not a victim, but resilient, strong and independent. I told myself this: I am no longer damaged or broken, I am powerful and self-made, able to bring love and empathy to my own children despite my past, and not because of it. I have found my own path, and found my own way in the world. I am not only proud of myself, but I know that I can take care of myself, whatever may come. I am an able person.

As I was beginning to rework my own story, I created a heroine in my new book, The Summer Of Impossible

Things, who was fiercely brave, prepared to sacrifice everything to save others. As Luna went on her journey – to save her mother from a life of torment following a brutal attack – I accompanied her on my own, because at that time my anxiety was crippling. I envisaged a world in which I was bathed in light, super-charged with the energy of the universe, a fierce and steadfast lioness, as strong as she is calm. I redrafted myself as someone who takes a step back from any perceived crisis and reacts with calm and measured responses.

Now, when a mystery pain or a scenario comes to mind, instead of at once following that fear to a terrifying imaginary conclusion, I imagine one of my children coming to me with the same worry. And I think about what action I would take to safeguard and reassure them. If a trip to the GP is appropriate, I make an appointment, but if that rash on my leg is more likely to be an allergic reaction rather than septicaemia, I am able to take myself outside of my head and assess the situation rationally.

IF ACTING AS YOUR OWN PARENT DOESN’T REWRITE YOUR ANXIETY,

you could try imagining you are taking your anxieties to a judge or policeman, or any figure of measured or sensible authority. How would that person respond to your concerns?

The difference in my quality of life since I have found a new way to reimagine my anxieties and past is profound. Rewriting my past has allowed me to let go of the anxiety and rejection that dogged me since my father walked out of my life. Now I am in control of how I react. I have given myself a choice, where previously I felt I had none.

The Summer Of Impossible Things by Rowan Coleman (Ebury Press, £12.99)