Wednesday, July 6, 2011

How it is, sometimes (most of the time)

I have anxiety. Nothing fancy, nothing that I can't control (well, most days and with varying degrees of success), but it there. If you want to know more, read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/magazine/04anxiety-t.html?pagewanted=all

Reading this article was a kind of relief because it explained a lot about me to me. I always knew I had stuff in my head, but this put it together. It also pointed out to me that not everyone is thinking like me, not everyone's head goes a million different ways when faced with, well, anything. When you have anxiety, it's easy to forget that not everyone else feels the same way.

It's hard to describe what goes on in my head, but it's constant. I try to anticipate every possible outcome, so that I am prepared. What if we're late, what if we're early, what if I spill my coffee? A surprise is no good. Here's the worst part: if something goes wrong that I didn't anticipate, my first reaction is to be kicking myself for not anticipating this problem. There's a vanity in anxiety, that somehow that just by seeing the potential for a problem, I can solve it all. I have a friend who is constantly reminding me that I'm not that powerful but my anxiety tells me that I might be.

Here's an example of how my anxiety works: the bag I carry to work. My bag (and it is a bag; a mere purse cannot contain all I need) has pens (many, many, because one may run out and then another, so I better have ten) and notebooks and cough drops and safety pins and gum and a deck of cards and my phone and an ipod and a Kindle and so much more. Someone once told me that I am the person they most want to be trapped in an elevator with because I would have snacks and a bottle of water and band-aids and a sewing kit and, most likely, games. The crazy thing is not that I carry all of that, but if there is occasion when I don't have something (say, a paper clip), I find that I start beating myself up over that. ("How could I forget paper clips?! How could I be so careless?") (I have since put a few paper clips in my bag.) This is not to say that I'm organized. Hardly. I have a kind of organization but I am always misplacing stuff. when you carry the world in your bag, you might misplace a few things.

Anxiety is not fear. I often need to remind myself of this. That if I can control my anxiety, I can do anything. The anxiety won't go away but it can be managed. I rode a zipline -- it can't be all that bad. I know I'm no fun when I get anxious, but I'm trying to be better.

3 comments:

Tracy said...

That was a very interesting article. My son has, at this point, debilitating anxiety.People sometimes have trouble understanding how real it is. I'm glad you have found ways to cope with yours.

Unknown said...

I have struggled with anxiety as well. Do you ever find that your anxiety causes anxiety?

AMA said...

I think, for me, sometimes just accepting it's there is better than ignoring it. If I accept that there's an elephant in the room, I can handle it better.