On Anxiety

As you probably guessed by the title, this blog is going to be SUPER FUN and UPBEAT. You know, the two things I’m most known for. Anyways.

I don’t think I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety, officially, but that’s probably because I have avoided therapy like the plague since the year I spent in it back in high school. In my mind, I did my time. I should be cured. Of course, that’s not how mental health works, and my high school problems were only the beginning.

Back then the concern was panic attacks, and I haven’t been shy about my experiences with those. In 2015 I had several, for the first time in many years, and that wasn’t very fun. But today we’re going to talk about anxiety, and what it means in terms of me and my life. Because this is my blog and I do what I want.

I wasn’t always anxious. In fact, for much of my life, it was my mom and brother who were the tightly-wound ones, where my dad and I were fairly chill. Then things happened and circumstances changed and sometime in high school I went from casually weird to stringently weird. My anxiety as it manifests now, panic attacks aside, didn’t start cropping up until college, though.

The song I identify most with in the musical Hamilton which I am currently obsessed with is “Non-Stop.” This song follows Alexander Hamilton after the Revolutionary War and is focused on his insane work ethic and his inability to slow down or speak softly to anyone with whom he disagrees. I’m not saying comparing myself to Hamilton is a good or healthy thing, but it’s a thing that I am aware of.

Basically, since Hamilton came from incredibly modest beginnings, he felt very insecure about his place in this new world of power and money and compensated by having a better work ethic than anyone. In the same way, when I get anxious, my coping mechanism is to work harder and faster so if I fail at least I failed with style and productivity.

I have been described as a bulldozer. That’s unflattering, but fair. I have a tendency to bring others down with me in my fits of anxiety, especially when my coping mechanisms for said fits are related to shared projects. Because I’m so anxious, and the only way out is to work harder, I get very impatient with the people around me who have similar stakes in the projects because I’m working extra hard! I’m working extra fast! But I can’t finish the thing and conquer my anxiety if they are lagging behind, at a non-anxious-person’s speed. So I bulldoze. They either outrun me in fear, keep up against their will, or I crush them and take over whatever their part in the project was, usually in a passive aggressive rage.*

Take Brains for instance. Season 2 is on the cusp of happening. It probably will happen. I’m burying this announcement in a post about anxiety because there are still a few details we need to iron out before we can make promises, but low key, Brains season 2 is happening (edit: it happened!). And it’s happening way before I thought it would. So, naturally, anxiety is crashing with me for a while.

After realizing that Brains was going to happen, or it could happen if we can get certain things in place in a particular time table, my entire body went catatonic while electric waves of discomfort shot up and down my insides, finally settling in its favorite two places: my upper chest and my stomach. In the next 24 hours I drafted frantic emails on the subway, wrote a massive list of things to do, organized that list into departments, wrote an agenda for the first official pre production meeting, interrupted writing this blog post to send a text I’d forgotten about, sent out fifteen emails, updated our proposed budget, and then started working on the To Do list that we were supposed to assign to different people after the aforementioned meeting.

The point is, I handle anxiety in a way that positively reinforces the feelings of anxiety in that while I torture myself, I get shit done. This is not to say it’s a healthy response. I should definitely be in therapy again. Not that I think I can’t do it. I can. I’ve proven that to myself and to those around me time and time again. But at what cost? To my physical health, to my friendships?

I don’t want to end up like Alexander Hamilton. Enemies with everyone, estranged from the good favor of family and friends due to a single-minded obsession with work and a particular kind of legacy. But the option to slow down is an unacceptable one. My speed is my thing. So what else is there?

I’m not sure. That’s probably where therapy would come in. Maybe once school is over and I settle into a routine I can explore that avenue.

I don’t know where I was going with this post. I think it was just a way to remind myself that I am in control of this feeling, as debilitating as it can be sometimes. And to consider myself lucky that the manifestation of my anxiety is not like others I know or have known, where it wins out in the struggle and shuts them down. I have seen anxiety stop incredible people completely, making it nearly impossible for them to get going again. So while anxiety is not what I’d consider a friend, at least we’ve worked out a system.

So what can you do? You, the few people who will read this and worry that you’re powerless in this never ending war I fight inside my own chaotic brain? I’m not entirely sure. Sometimes, the best way is to just step out of the way and let me work my way into a sense of order again. Quinn’s great at this one, only checking in to make sure I’ve eaten recently.

Sometimes, though, especially if you’re working with me on something, taking something off my plate is a good option. I’ll probably fight you on it, especially if I once bulldozed you to take it over. I know I can do it, so sometimes I will just to prove it to myself. But that doesn’t mean I should do it. Or that you can’t. You might have to trick me into this solution. Once I decide I’m going to do something, I’m very hard to convince otherwise. But I promise I will be grateful, and I promise I’m working on expressing that better.

In summation, anxiety sucks, and in my case, it is also currently the key to any modicum of success I have had. That’s very confusing. I’m working on that.

*Sometimes the bulldozer is necessary, though. When there’s a timeline on a thing, and the option is taking on more work or the work not getting done, I’m perfectly fine running someone over. Maybe that makes me a bad person. In this circumstance, I kind of don’t care.