How I became afraid

November 30, 2015 10:41 AM

So long as I was smoking, I would never reach the point where there would be nothing more to be done. Emmett Rensin on the peculiar self-management of anxiety.
posted by Zarkonnen (14 comments total)

I recognize myself in so much of this. I suffer from anxiety/panic disorder as well as hypochondria. It makes life for you and those around you very fucking irritating as well as unhappy. Every ache is a disease, every migraine a tumor, every chest pain a heart attack. It keeps you awake at night, it makes you smile weakly at your office mates as you careen with panic inside, it has you pace the floors of your house, muttering and near tears. It has you making bargains with deities you aren't sure you believe in anymore, it has you looking your husband sleeping peacefully next to you and praying that you get to stay with him.

As I said, it sucks. It's exhausting. And after nearly 20 years of feeling this way, I'd like it to stop.
posted by Kitteh at 11:01 AM on November 30, 2015 [18 favorites]

I like this piece for a couple of reasons. No, say three.

First, because it reads the way panic feels. Everything is in the present tense with panic. Everything is happening, everything that could happen, is happening right now. Yes, bad things could easily happen in the future--and they surely will, and they will be awful--but right now there are coughs and headaches and mysterious lumps and car crashes and plane crashes and electrical fires and poisoned food.

Second, because it is a reminder that panic was not always the case. There was a time before panic. For me, it is with things like driving, like being out and about. Once upon a time I could drive on the interstate; now I cannot. Once I could go to the movies and watch the movie rather than worrying about which of the people around me might be a killer/mugger/infected with the flu. Or whether I will crack a tooth on the popcorn and spend a couple of thousand dollars at the dentist. Or whether the person behind me will be offended because I am too tall. It is amazingly sad to think there were times when I could just be. Now I cannot be. Now I am, but with a footnote, an asterisk. "But you just drove to the store." "Yes, the store is a quarter mile away on roads that max out at 35 mph, and I went at 6 am because no people were there."

There was a time when I did not carefully avert my eyes whenever I pass a mirror, just so I do not see signs of disease. Now if my elbow accidentally touches my belly when I am in bed I carefully move it away so that it does not accidentally poke in and find the tumors I know must be hiding in there. It has progressed from a fear of disease, to a fear of discovery of disease. Fear of fear.

Third, because smoking. Smoking is the best thing ever for panicked people. "Oh, but it's a stimulant, it raises your anxiety, it kills you," sure, yes, but it is something to do which is, for a few minutes, fairly consuming, fairly distracting, fairly pleasurable, and provides structure and pattern to life. You can sit alone with your thoughts, meditative, with the soothing repetition of the motions of lighting, inhalation, ash-thumping. I really, really miss smoking. I won't go back to it--it turns out my absolute terror over cancer is stronger than my desire to go back--but my god, how I miss it.
posted by mittens at 11:36 AM on November 30, 2015 [29 favorites]

Panic is in the present, and is like a physical presence. The cliche "the walls are closing in" is sort of what it feels like for me, but it's not the walls, it's everything. Everything is closing in. Everything is so close but looks like it's a million miles away.

The first anxiety attack I can remember having was when I was maybe 17, and I was going to give a speech for some student council position or other, and I vividly remember the sensation of the room stretching away from me, and being right in the center of this circle of people all not paying the least attention and how gut-wrenchingly awful I felt and how all these people (who weren't paying attention at all) hated me.

The worst part of anxiety and panic, for me, is the irrationality of it. There's nothing worse for someone who uses their intellect to solve problems than a problem logic simply can't solve. Of course not everyone on the street is looking at you, they are busy people with busy lives. Of course they aren't. They are looking at you. Those people laughing are laughing at you. Get inside. Hide. Hide.

One of the reasons I spend so much time online (and I imagine it's not just me) is that if I'm alone and inside, I don't exist. Existence is tricky.

I'm working on my anxiety and panic with a psychiatrist after ignoring it (it'll get better) and hiding it (you are worried about being annoying or embarrassing so you build your mask up) and with some medication and some CBT I'm improving - it's been a month or two on a new medication now and I don't... break up in quite the same way. Keep my pieces together. I still feel it though, and I know it's something that I have to learn to work with, work around.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 12:59 PM on November 30, 2015 [8 favorites]

"Months earlier, a blind date had a few drinks and put out a cigarette on my neck."

Can we resurrect Raymond Carver and get him to write a short story containing this sentence?
posted by jmccw at 1:11 PM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Months earlier, a blind date had a few drinks and put out a cigarette on my neck.

One time I was at a "rave" - actually a trance event with a bunch of big names that I lucked into a free ticket for - when my friend, who was on ecstasy, abruptly decided to give me a big 'ol hug... while smoking, thus burning my hand.
posted by atoxyl at 1:57 PM on November 30, 2015

Drugs and CBT work, yo...there is hope.
posted by radicalawyer at 4:25 PM on November 30, 2015

This

[I]t is a reminder that panic was not always the case. There was a time before panic.

and this...

The worst part of anxiety and panic, for me, is the irrationality of it. There's nothing worse for someone who uses their intellect to solve problems than a problem logic simply can't solve.

...ring so hard and true for me. So much latent anxiety -- the kind that isn't about anything in particular, it's just there -- is so obviously irrational. There's some weird and cruel irony in the fact that intelligence, the ability to logically evaluate things, is the thing that often gets you by in the world at large, but it is also the thing that eventually cripples you in your own head.

It didn't used to be a problem for me. It is now, even though I'm smarter than I was before it all started. Where's the sense in that? Where did it come from? None of it makes any sense, which is the worst part of all.

Anyway, hello, my people!
posted by mudpuppie at 5:18 PM on November 30, 2015 [6 favorites]

Drugs & CBT work, sure, radicalawyer. But so do a lot of other psychotherapeutic approaches that relate to anxiety as a kind of tonic, but one that comes in the shape - in modern America, at least - of a sometimes crippling disturbance. And, of course, these are certainly increasingly "anxious times"... But I agree with the anecdotal analytic theory that anxiety is a more positive sign than, say, depression. In the midst of anxiety, we a feel a thrust into an active (Erotic) state of hyperarousal, hyper-feeling, while depression is generally a more (Thanatonic) helpless/numb place to be, and therefore more difficult to abide, as well as treat. On some level, sure, the two states can overlap and/or coexist. But in the big picture, they feel really different and manifest clinically really differently. The "wisdom" embedded in anxiety is the self-realization that, as earthly beings, the only sense of security is a false sense of security. In other words, brushes with/glimpses into the transient nature of existence are often deemed and treated as an anxious occasion, but there is always the (in my opinion and experience, a much greater chance than in states of unexamined "normal neurotic" wellness) chance of discovering & accepting more about oneself, and about one's place in the larger picture. So yes, if you're feeling anxious, do check out CBT (and/or meds, for that matter) for what it has to offer, but don't assume its efficacy over psychoanalysis/psychodynamic/existential/mythopoetic schools of psychotherapy that also offer just as much if not more in terms of relating positively and responsibly to the opportunities of anxiety, particularly if you can find a good therapist you can connect with.
posted by Bob Regular at 6:17 PM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I actually turned to Metafilter to find something to read because I can't sleep on account of a general feeling of anxiety. In myself, I recognized a lot of what was in the article and a lot of what people are writing here. It's starting to become evident that I have some sort of anxiety problem.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 7:03 PM on November 30, 2015

Man. I need to sit with this one for a while. I'm close to people who are, relatively, so much more anxious than me, and so much less inclined to hide it, that I sometimes forget not everyone has this stuff going on in their head.
posted by jameaterblues at 7:14 PM on November 30, 2015

I'm reaching a point this year where I feel like I want to use my brain's irrational fear logic against itself.

"Most car accidents happen within a mile of home? Fuck it, I'll fly to Amsterdam."

"Really likely to slip in the tub? Might as well take a shower and then go dancing if it's all the same."

"State Department put a travel warning on the whole friggin' world after the Paris attacks? If it makes no difference, why not visit Columbia?"

"Just as likely to get shot at a movie theater than at a Planned Parenthood? About time to see if I can put in some volunteer hours in at my local PP."

None of those things are logically connected, but they're *just as* logical as the other silly stuff that pops into an anxious brain.

I've also been seeing formerly bulletproof people starting to grapple with anxiety in their 30s. The onset piece seems to be really extra difficult for people like the article's author. When I really think about it, it also coincides with these friends grappling with quitting smoking. I guess I have the same guilty thought for both cases... "I always knew the world was a dangerous world, what took you so long to figure it out?" and "We always knew smoking was a dangerous thing, what took you so long to figure it out?"
posted by Skwirl at 8:50 PM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Huh. I first experienced proper recurring anxiety about six months after I stopped smoking (age ~35). Never drew the connection, but seeing it mentioned a few times here makes me wonder whether there was one? Since then, I always bring a bottle of water with me on long drives to curb or drown the irrational fear of being trapped in the car when the traffic gets bad. The first unbidden attack was awful—I tried to maintain normal conversational flow at a party while being completely unable to swallow.
posted by migurski at 9:29 PM on November 30, 2015

@Bob Regular - interesting. I think I sort of agree that anxiety is in some maybe poetic sense more hopeful than depression, in that there's still the intention of controlling one's future or environment with anxiety (and false belief that one can), and depression might be seen as resignation when that effort fails (given that anxiety usually precedes depression). But they're also, very commonly, comorbid - here, 75% of people presenting with depression had an active issue with anxiety, which could look like any of these. The focus is different, but one commonality is a ruminative thinking style.

I wouldn't say that anxiety is necessarily less of a trap, or less debilitating, though. It's got a physiological grounding - the hyperarousal; that buzzing - that can just be unreachable by mere insight about its causes. I think there's value in understanding, but I don't know - personally, I was always very aware of the reasons (both deep and immediate) for my anxiety; knowing them didn't help.

I have less firm an understanding of the processes that led to improvement (here are my guesses) - certainly didn't at the time - and improved anyway.
posted by cotton dress sock at 2:57 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I had anxiety attacks on a few occasions in college, but a general sense of anxiety decided to sit in the back of my brain after my father's death. I'd had grandparents die and siblings of friends, but his was the first immediate death I had experienced, outside of a pets. It's anxiety about an existential dread. It's a fear of dying, not of any particular cause, but of death itself. It hits most when I'm trying to sleep, although I am pleased that my reaction these days is being pissed at my body for having the fight or flight reflex triggered and going and reading for an hour or so instead of the paralyzation that I faced initially. (First time, I ended up in the ER because I kept feeling like I wasn't getting enough oxygen, despite breathing deeply and clearly.)

Distraction usually works. I used to value time to sit and be alone with my thoughts and have introspection. These days, I find something to do during those times. I'm afraid of what I'll find. For others, does it show up randomly, or do you know the places you'll find it?
posted by Hactar at 8:29 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]