Joey Harmon Photo by Jerri-Jo Idarius

MOVING BEYOND FEAR TO ENERGY AWARENESS
AN INERVIEW WITH JOEY HARMON

I wish I had been validated and encouraged as a child and that I had spiritual training to help me with what I was experiencing. When I was young I remember sometimes not being able to sit up or wake up and being paralyzed in my bed. My eyes were shut but I could see everything in the room. That was the first thing that opened me to knowing that there was something else going on in the world than what I was told. That was kind of scary. I also remember running around the house at around four or five years old and going around something and then going back around in an unwinding motion. My mom would ask me what I was doing. I told her there were strings connected to me—going out the back of me and that I didn’t want to get them tangled up.

My conscious memory was of growing up a pretty normal kid. I was quite outgoing in my younger years—a cheerleader, on a softball team and into journalism and photography. Then one day, in the eleventh or twelfth grade, I remember walking down the hall and getting this wavy feeling. I didn’t know what it was. My heart started racing, I couldn’t breathe, and I had an ache in my solar plexus. I went to the office, and as I sat there the walls started to go in and out on me. I was so scared that they called my mother. There was no physical reason why I was scared, but I felt like I was going to die. It seemed to take my mom so long to come, and even after she took me home I felt like I was going to die.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was my first panic attack. In college, I started having them again in social situations. I would get scared and racy, with a weird sensation around my head. When I went to the doctor and described a feeling of unbalance and a vibrating around my head, he didn’t understand. His tests didn’t find anything either.

Years went by. I learned to deal with these strange experiences by going home, breathing and letting go. When my mother moved away to Idaho and I was in California on my own, these attacks got worse. At work, they started happening continuously until one day I finally had to call and say I couldn’t come in again. This was worse than panic. Driving home, I felt my car was going to drive off the road. My eyesight was strange, and the sky looked weird. My head felt strange. My stomach felt strange. I felt my skin curl, and couldn’t keep my body awareness in the driver’s seat. It felt like something right outside my body was wrong and that something really bad was going to happen. Now I would say that the problem was in my electromagnetic make-up—but at twenty years old I felt doomed.

My employers let me go on medical leave and helped me get worker’s comp, because they knew something serious was going on with me. I called a panic-attack hotline in Cayucos in the San Luis Obispo area, and talked to a woman who had helped a lot of people with this sort of thing. She suggested I see a doctor and possibly get on medication. I was so scared that I couldn’t leave my apartment for days, so someone else had to drive me to the doctor. Even that was difficult. The doctor had to see me in his office because I couldn’t even sit in the exam room. I now know that I am sensitive to fluorescent lights. In school, the doctor’s office and so many other places, these lights were affecting me.

I was scared and spiritually sick, but the medical people didn’t know how to care for that. In 1989 the doctor diagnosed me with agoraphobia, a fear of open spaces. He told me that most likely I would never recover. I read the clinical diagnosis, and made that fit my reality because there was no other answer. The psychiatrist prescribed antidepressants and Xanax. I went home and sat with the pills, but was scared to take them because I didn’t know what they would do to me. After weeks of not taking the medication, I called the doctor and he had to stay with me on the phone while I took the first pill. Although he was a really nice guy, all the information he had was from the medical standpoint.

The pills helped me feel slightly more grounded and better able to breathe, but I was in a drug fog. I took the medication but still couldn’t interact socially, and for about three years I was afraid to go outside. Any kind of noise was scary—even the wind. Although I didn’t experience a constant state of panic, I was in constant fear. Psychiatrist after psychiatrist told me that the diagnosis was correct and that I would have agoraphobia forever. I was told not to blame it on something from my family or my past: “You just have it.” I thought, “Wow, I’m only twenty-one and I have this? How am I supposed to live?”

I moved to San Luis Obispo and tried to go to school in graphic arts, but that didn’t work out. I had been a child here in Mendocino, and had a picture of Mendocino in my room that I felt was calling me back. I thought, “Maybe I need to heal my childhood. Maybe this condition is stemming from something deeper that I can’t heal here.” My aunt and uncle lived in Mendocino County, so I packed up and had a friend deliver me to my aunt’s doorstep. I lived with her for awhile, and then moved in with some other people. Through this time I was still in a haze of medication, and everything still seemed pretty weird and unreal. This was a scary, dark place to be.

Then there was a death in my family. My cousin died of AIDS. Before he died, we had a really good talk, during which we discussed medications. That was bizarre, because I didn’t talk about that with many people. After he died, information started coming in fast, and I began talking rapidly—almost in tongues. In a phone conversation I told my psychiatrist about this, and she said, “Maybe we should try a different medication.” After that comment all I heard on the phone was static when she talked. I knew my dead cousin was there on the phone, telling me not to take that medication: “This is not your path. Don’t do it.” The doctor thought I was crazy, cuckoo, off the wall. I tried the new medication, but I also still struggled to get off it. This went on for another two years. Finally, three years ago, against my psychiatrist’s advice, I put myself into a drug rehab center and came off the medicine.

The Irony of Detoxing from Prescription Drugs

Doctor’s aren’t supposed to discuss what happens when you come off certain drugs like Valium or Xanax, because it is so scary. These drugs can suppress so much that when you come off them you are overloaded with emotions and information. It is important to be prepared, and to have some spiritual background to help you go though a detoxification program. I have seen people in detox go over the edge—go crazy or commit suicide. I felt I was going to crawl out of my skin. It took a long time, but I pulled through. I feel lucky to be alive.

There are no clinics for people specifically coming off of prescription medication. I was told that I had a substance abuse problem. The doctors prescribe the medications on one hand, and then when you try to get off them you are judged as having abused yourself. This breaks you down even further. I tried to protest this as a complete mind fuck, but it was useless. The doctors and staff would dig into my past for evidence of drug or alcohol abuse. Since when I was younger I drank for awhile trying to self-medicate, they called made me an alcoholic. I was chasing my tail to discover what I was. After you list all the drugs and substances you have ever taken, you begin to think you are a drug addict. After all, you are in this place!

The Path to Healing

Many people get into twelve step programs after they come out of a detox program. I did so for a couple of years myself. I had to admit I was powerless over this feeling of anxiety. When I searched for and found my higher power, I also found Reiki. Although there was pressure on me to stay in AA, it was appropriate for me to leave. I’m on a healing journey and have a spiritual practice of my own now.

A woman who was my former counselor had become a Reiki Master, and was teaching Reiki and Intuitive Energy Medicine. Studying with her led me to a wonderful chain of events. I now look back and realize I had always been psychic. From a young age, I remember kids asking me how I knew certain things about them. I believe now that I was unconsciously picking things up from other people, and this had become such a burden that I became spiritually sick. If we don’t purify ourselves, things can take a turn as they did with me. I was completely out of balance. I had to look at the foods I was eating, what I was drinking, and what I was doing energetically. Was I trying to fix people? Was I letting them invade my space energetically? Was I trying to be the center of attention, or fit the magazine image of a twenty-year old?

Just before I first attuned to the Reiki symbols, I thought, “This is not going to work. This is not going to work.” When it did, I thought, “Oh, My God. Something amazing has just happened to me.” All my aches and pains, anxiety and fears melted away with the attunement. They were just gone. I’m not sure if anyone else will have that same experience, but this is what happened to me.

With the first symbol my neck relaxed. A white light came through my head, down my arms and out my hands. I was floating. That was a completely new feeling. An attunement in Reiki happens from master to student as a guided visualization in which you meet your Reiki guides, do some breaths, and imagine ancient symbols. The power of these symbols is handed down through a transmission that can be traced back to China, India and Tibet, and which came to the United States in 1937.
I realized that through Reiki, which translates as “universal life energy,” I was experiencing something very ancient and powerful. I also felt that something way back in my own history—lifetimes back—brought me to this point, and that I was supposed to do this for the rest of my life.

Later, when I received my first Intuitive Energy Medicine treatment, I was tested to find out what levels of imbalance were occurring—environmental, hereditary, social, family, dietary and so on. Then the therapist began talking to my body, and asked it to come into balance according to certain frequencies and numbers. At first this seemed bizarre. I was skeptical, of course, but I started to feel better and became more focused. I realized, “This really works for anxiety.” At one point I remember hearing a high pitched ringing sound that made me delirious to the point where I had to lie down. This was part of my letting go. I had been in fight or flight for years, and over time that began to turn around.

I went through the Intuitive Energy Medicine training so I could work on myself. When I feel out of balance now, I don’t go into complete fear and isolation. I have tools and methods to clear myself, stay physically grounded and receive guidance. I can also help others to raise their vibration, to feel better and get over addictions to things like smoking.

My life isn’t just about living and working anymore. Looking back, I now feel that I had to go through what I did. I needed to go through a huge detox of anxiety and fear. My guardian angels were tapping me on the shoulder and helping me feel the fear of myself in order to get me on a spiritual path.

I’m thirty-one now. A good seven or eight years of my life was spent numbed out. It was sad and very hard, but it led me on an incredible journey. I invite anyone who is scared or going through any type of anxiety to reevaluate their situation. My panic attacks showed me that there was something in my life I wasn’t dealing with. They were hints and pushes to work on myself and to change my focus—to open up and try something else.

I have learned that our lives are in a sacred balance and that, like a drop of water held up to the light, we are bodies of light composed of all the colors of the rainbow. To receive this entire spectrum, we shouldn’t kill our food with microwaved, over-cooking or processed foods that are depleted of the natural rainbow spectrum.

If you are having a problem, journal it, log it and look around at what is happening around you. Are you over stimulated? Are you working too hard? You may need more information to know what is affecting you. Some people don’t know that a fluorescent light can cause them problems, or that an extra cup of coffee could be too much for their body. When I was homebound, I was actually, spiritually and electromagnetically sick. I slept a lot, watched a lot of TV and had a lot of electromagnetic stimuli in my house.

Joey and her daughter, Arianna Hiilani Oliveira Photo by Linda Harmon

I hope that I can give others hope and trust. I want to tell women to find their unique path to healing, whatever that is. It’s your life and your body. It may be a hard journey, but it is totally yours. Perhaps get into a meditation group, get a tape, have some bodywork or energy work.
I am learning that there is a spiral to life, and that everything comes full circle. All my life, when I have become insecure, I would decorate my room oriental style. It is strange that I now have an oriental boyfriend, a daughter who is one quarter Japanese, and that now I am doing Reiki. Are these coincidences? There is some knowingness, some energy guiding all of this and working itself out in a master plan that I don’t have any control over—no matter what.

My primary fear was facing the fact that I had no control over the fear. I had to completely submit to the fear and let it roar through my body, take me over, deal with it and then let it go. I had to find the strength to find the answers within myself. Now the fear comes only in small portions. My answers have come as an understanding that a higher power greater than myself is in control. I trust in that higher spiritual process to guide me, and I listen to my body and trust the clues it gives me about my life.

If I put myself ahead or behind myself I don’t feel good, so it is important for me to stay in the moment and remember that now is all there is. By living with faith and presence I have the energy I need, and feel a sense of wholeness and grace. I look at things differently now, and know that I possess the power to change my thoughts at any time. Fear is only a projection of my own uncertainty and insecurity—and that’s okay. It’s all okay.