The All Too Relatable Freeze *and* Flee Response of Narwhals

Narwhals, unicorns trapped inside small whales, should-I-stay-or-should-I-go, I can relate this new research: "East Greenland narwhals exhibit both 'freeze' and 'flee' responses when escaping threats, researchers report." (Italics mine.) To that I say, God yes, totally. 

Threats, escaping them! is my life's work (also the trapeze and high wire).  Threats are always there, two distant figures, thin and tall, approaching while the sun sets.

THE SCREAM, 1893, IMAGE COURTESY OF WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

I have raging generalized anxiety disorder. There, I said it.  Now, where's the towering chocolate cake slice I heard you get for being honest?

It's never been adequately controlled. I have only ever fleetingly experienced whatever it is that "normal" feels like and that was in a friend's truck in the lowland Andean mountains and it's not like I can suddenly become a Venezuelan long-haul truck driver because duh, Venezuela, Venzuela's Misery Fuels Migration on an Epic Scale.

Maybe the only safe space in the whole universe is in metta meditation?

WE ARE TRYING DESPERATELY TO OPEN OUR 'HEARTSPACE', OKAY?

What does anxiety feel like? Bad! And so many of us have it. Bad times 1/3 of Britons bad! "Only Fundamental Social Change Can Defeat the Anxiety Epidemic," ran a headline in The Guardian.

"Now it is time to rebalance individualism agains the common good." I say, Amen and Hallelujah (before we hide the Hallelujahs away for Lent). The high church Episcopalianism of my childhood is something I'm sorry to be turning toward because duh, midlife spirituality is like a tent revival.  But how do we do individualism rebalancing exactly?

Anxiety feels like flu, but -- thanks to advances in marine mammal science I have a new simile -- it feels like narwhals in the salty ocean of my bloodstream freezing and paradoxically *also* fleeing.  Thanks, Science, for the narwhals, unicorns of the sea.