Do you know someone with an anxiety disorder? Well, of course you do. Whether you know it or not, someone you think you are close to has one. Nine times out of ten, they won't tell you about it either. Not because they are worried you will make a big deal out of it, but because they are worried you won't understand at all. You see, an anxiety disorder is not the shaky feeling you get before you perform on stage or the nervous feeling in your stomach on a first date. No, it's like effing Ebola. Okay, maybe not like Ebola. But it definitely feels like cancer sometimes in that it is silent, eats you alive, and sometimes death feels more appealing than one more damn panic attack.
Not many people understand anxiety disorders, which is why I decided to write this blog post. Because by not knowing what your friend/family member/significant other/minion is going through, you cannot fully prepare yourself to help.
Spoiler alert: Telling your anxiety riddled friend that they don't need meds if they can just learn to breathe through it is not a good way to help.
So, here we go.
This is the situation:
You go to the store for ice cream and happen to run into, let's say, an old friend. Maybe it was kismet. Maybe you both just happened to like the same rocky-road-peanut-butter-deliciousness that only one store in the whole damn valley sells. Who knows? Fact is, it's been ten years and you both are there, face-to-face, exchanging words... interacting, as it were.
This is what the person without an anxiety disorder will do:
You'll smile, tell the person (let's call her Stephanie) that it was great to see her, and head off toward the ice cream. You might say to yourself, "Hey, that was cool to see Stephanie again," or "I should friend request her on whatever social media channel I'm addicted to this week."
Pretty simple, right?
Situation leads to action leads to reaction leads to delicious peanut buttery rocky-road goodness. No harm, no foul.
Now let me show you what happens when that same person has an anxiety disorder:
You smile, tell Stephanie that it was great to see her, then continue to exchange pleasantries as you back away into the store. If you were there for anything less dire than your favorite ice cream (toilet paper or toothpaste), you would probably climb right back in your car and head home. Instead, you steer through the aisles on auto pilot. The cashier speaks to you, but you don't hear her. You are too busy replaying the interaction over and over in your head.
Her name was Stephanie right?
Did you say anything stupid or offensive?
What shirt are you wearing?
Do you smell clean enough?
The cashier hands you your change. You don't even bother to count it (something you'll agonize over later) before shoving it into your pocket. You climb into the car, start up the engine, and back out carefully. You've never obeyed so many traffic laws in your life. That's because you are convinced that if you get into an accident or get pulled over, it will be another exchange with someone else you know. Then that person will talk to Stephanie (because of course they are best friends, why wouldn't they be?) and share stories about you. They will talk about how awful you look or how you had another kid. You're sure neither of them think you should have had one in the first place. Maybe they'll even take it to the internet. #youfailatlife
We haven't even made it home yet at this point.
By the time you make it to your driveway, you've convinced yourself that Stephanie's name was really Stefanie and that you probably said it with some inflection that hinted at the misspelling. You're sure you've offended her beyond all reason. Nothing you can do about it now except feel awful.
Next, you run into the house and take off the shirt you're wearing because it doesn't matter that you got it out of the dryer that morning, you're sure it smells weird. The shirt doesn't match the pants anymore so you might as well change those, too. And you know what goes great with any shirt? Pajama pants! And what do you care? You're not going back outside where the sun is just a spotlight following you around, waiting for you to screw up so someone can pop out behind a tree to record it and post that embarrassing shit on the world-wide-trashcan so it can go viral.
Stephanie would just love that, wouldn't she?
She's probably searching out old photos of you from your awkward or fat years and showing them to everyone.
Because she's probably turned into just that kind of bitch in the ten years since you've seen her.
You empty your pockets and notice that you never counted your change. You run through that exchange in your head, too, cursing yourself for ever leaving the house at all. You're sure the cashier shorted you a dollar. Your heart is racing and your fingertips are going numb. It's just a dollar, but if someone could take advantage of you like that when you are so distracted then what else could happen?
This is all too much.
After changing your Facebook privacy settings so Stephanie can't find you if she tries, you head off to take a nap because you know the only way to calm down is to climb under your covers and sleep. This could follow a friendly visit from our wonderful friends Xanax or Klonopin, but it doesn't have to.
You agonize over the steps you took today that lead you to that store. You curse your all-consuming addiction to gooey ice cream awesomeness. You curse the show you were watching last night that had that same ice cream flavor on it. Surely, that's what made you crave it. You curse your TV for being on in the first place. You should have read. But you haven't been to the book store because your mortgage was due. The same mortgage you were out paying when you decided to stop at the store for your ice cream.
Finally, you curse your house. Without it, you never would have been where that awful person "Stephanie" was in the first place.
When you finally fall asleep, napping away, you dream of the memories you have with Stephanie. And yes, her name was Stephanie with a ph. And she was always really nice.
You wake up feeling better.
Until you look over at the nightstand and realize that your dollar is still missing. Then it starts all over again.
Having an anxiety disorder is like being your own bully. Only this bully comes in the form of illogical thoughts and irrational reactions. It sits in your head and taunts you with "what ifs," "could haves," and "should haves."
You think I'm kidding? Ask your closest friend who suffers from this disorder. Though, be warned. They are not going to admit any of this to you. Because admitting it usually only gets one of two reactions: complete ignorance or complete over-empathy. Yes, it is possible to be over-empathetic when it comes to a friend with anxiety.
So next time you see one of your friends glaze over, give you a partial smile, and shift their weight back and forth, ask them if there's something else they want to do. Keep an open ear, but unless you have anxiety yourself, don't pretend to understand it. Because despite how many books you've read or how many people you talk to about it, you don't understand until you go through it.
The struggle is real. The scenario I described to you was only ten minutes from that person's day. That's part of what anxiety is: hours worth of emotion and thought crammed into ten tiny agonizing minutes. I don't assume that anxiety disorders are the same for everyone. In fact, I promise you they're not. Sometimes they are better and sometimes they are much, much worse. This is just one of mine.
Because I have severe anxiety disorder.
Want to know how I can have crippling anxiety and still post this blog and publish books?
Well, that's a different blog post for a different day.
Return to my webpage to see more updates about projects I'm working on at CjEthington.com.
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