How I escaped social anxiety & depression without drugs

This is a dramatized version of my first major synchronicity, which I've written about elsewhere on this blog in other forms

I keep having the same nightmare.  In my dream, I’m stuck in cold and dark place, completely alone; and thirsty, so thirsty…the dryness clicks and snaps in my mouth.  In the dream I’m trying to fall asleep, but I’m shuddering and my teeth won’t stop chattering from the cold.  I can’t get warm and I  can’t get comfortable because I’m pinned behind a giant boulder—the only way to lay down is to lean forward and drape myself over the rock.  Every time I start to fall asleep in the dream, I jolt awake in real life with a sense that I’m about to fall out of bed.

It’s no mystery what’s causing this recurring nightmare…it was brought on by Aron Ralston’s memoir, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place”… I’m haunted by Aron’s story.  He’s the guy who went hiking alone and had to cut off his arm after a boulder fell on him.  He spent 5 days trying to engineer a way out from beneath the rock before realizing that his only escape was to (action: slice arm below elbow).  The worst part was the nerve…he plucked it out like a guitar string with the tip of his knife, the unmediated pain coursing through him.  Ugh, I can’t even think about it.

Yesterday something strange happened.  I was telling my therapist how upset I was one evening and ended the night in bed reading.  Her response?  “Sounds like you’re between a rock and a hard place”.  I was stunned…had I just told her that the name of the book I was reading?  I concluded that I must have.  But then something else happened which shook me to my core.  A few hours ago, I woke up from one of my nightmares and grabbed a book to help me fall asleep.  I started reading and instantly connected to a story about a woman who was stuck in her life.  In the book, the woman’s therapist tells her that she is between a rock and a hard place.  I felt like I’d entered the twilight zone.  Cue eerie music.  I can’t even believe I fell back asleep after that. 

It seems to me that the universe is trying to tell me something.  And I understand now that I’m stuck, just like in my nightmare; just like Aron.  That’s why his story is haunting me.  like Aron, I’m alone…alone because I can’t connect, backed up against a wall of shame and self-loathing, of social anxiety and awkwardness.  And now a new weight is pressing down on my chest…I’m in charge of another life, of growing my baby into a child.  It is a boulder of responsibility heavier than anything I’ve ever lifted.  So for two years now I’ve been scraping by, zombie-like, paralyzed in this hole. 

And it’s just occurred to me.  I’ve been trying to engineer a solution like Aron, to maneuver myself out from under this rock.  But that won’t work…it’s me that’s got to change…to change my mind and see my life in a new way.  To start believing that there is meaning in the world and that I am tied up and connected to it all.  And I do believe it…how could I not after getting a wake-up call from the universe?  And you know, that’s the cure...the knife which can cut me from my psychic bindings: believing wholeheartedly in a deeper meaning, in an underlying order and network of connections between every living thing.