HerKind.com

I'm terrified of thunder and lightning. I'm not kidding. So, as you might have guessed, it hasn't been the greatest week for me with thunderstorms travelling through southern Ontario every other day, sometimes all day!

And does anyone know why there's always a cacaphony of sirens that begin as soon as the storm breaks out? That really isn't helpful!!

Like all irrational phobias, fear of thunder and lightening has a name, or several: Astraphobia, Astrapophobia, Brontophobia, Keraunaphobia, Ceraunophobia or Tonitrophobia.

Whatever.

It's all the same to me.. I see the lightning, hear the thunder and want to hide under the bed with the cat.

But what's behind it, I wonder. And have been wondering all week, while I endured my anxiety and prayed for it, and the storms, to pass quickly. Anyone who's lived with anxiety and panic probably gets what I've been dealing with. It's  annoying and frustrating to have to fight with my anxious mind for control. Intellectualizing doesn't help. I've come up with a million reasons that make me feel more jittery.

What starts with the storm becomes fear of the fear response, conjuring every emotional and physical worry I have - an unfortunate cycle.

Exhausting.

Worse, you feel too silly to tell anyone what you're going through, and if you do you downplay it so as not to make them worry. And anyway, noone can help you wrestle your demons, whatever they are. What can anyone possibly do for you during your wee hour anxiety attack, that has you not sleeping and not breathing very well either.

And all this because of a series of silly storms. What I know about my anxiety is that it is situational and usually has to do with not feeling enough ground under my feet. Try as I might to figure out if that's what's going on here, I really don't think so. Things are ok - transitiional, perhaps a little uncertain - but ok.

So, it has to be the damn storm itself.

I remember only one terrible storm as a kid. It was probably a day alot like this one, sunny to start, not a cloud in the sky - why not go for a picnic? We might have been at Christie Pitts (which seemed alot bigger back then) or Sunnyside Park, I'm not quite sure of the locale because I doubt I was much more than five or six.  When the thunder and lightning broke out, we took shelter under a tree. Bad idea... and although the worst thing to happen was my drenched peanut butter sandwich, there is something about that storm that has stayed with me. I sure do remember screaming and crying and probably making my mother crazy.

Sometime between then and now I forgot a little about my fear of storms. Maybe because living out west, where the rain can sometime be interminable, there is hardly any thunder and lightning. Everything about living there was even and moderate, one of its main recommendations.  I spent so much of my life before that living in extremes that Toronto weather seemed to mimic, and exacerbate.  The reliability of the steady rain, sunshine without humidity, and slowly climbing or descending temperatures helped settle me down.

That would probably sound crazy if it wasn't so true.

I think that's why I get so upset during a storm. It feels like so much pressure building and then releasing and that is a feeling I no longer want in my life.

You can't live somewhere just because you like the weather. Or can you?