The gulf between the anxiety of the world and the anxiety of the self…

April 15, 2020 12:03 PM

Sequestered with my family, surrounded by disease, embedded, clearly and undeniably, in History—in the shared consequences of politics, pathology, and plain old fate—I wish to see and feel my anxiety not as my own, not at all as my own, but as ours. The city’s. The country’s. The world’s. The time’s. One unmistakable sign that I want this is that now when I write about my own anxiety, I do feel shame. I feel shame like a warning, like a threat: I, I, I, I, I, I: the eternal song of anxiety. (n+1)

This is how anxiety operates. I know that well by now. This is the nature of the emotion. It is a kind of solipsism machine. It is ingenious and rapacious in its ability to transform experience into self-involvement. With anxiety, even the most familiar and mundane stimuli—birdsong, an old photograph on your wall, the books on your shelves, an advertisement—can come to seem like direct indictments and private threats. The mind becomes a magnet for assaults. “And no Grand Inquisitor,” Kierkegaard wrote, “has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as anxiety does, which never lets him escape, neither by diversion nor by noise, neither at work nor at play, neither by day nor by night.”

I know all of this. I have lived with anxiety a long time. I know its contours, its deceptions, and its tricks. Still, I don’t think that the selfishness of anxiety has ever felt quite as cruel or as alienating as it does now, when it seems least appropriate to be selfish. The gulf between the anxiety of the world and the anxiety of the self is so huge at this moment as to highlight its own absurdity. Never in my life have I experienced something that is more immediately and dramatically collective, that is so obviously not about my individual fate. And here I am, subsumed in the self.

posted by not_the_water (9 comments total)

That gave me really bad anx....never mind.
posted by lextex at 12:06 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

The best bit is the end.

"So I write these lines, which are, in the end, lines against myself. And I read. I read those things that distract from and dissuade the nervous inward glance. Lately, I have been rereading the poet George Oppen. For two weeks now, a phrase of Oppen’s has sounded in my mind like a prayer. That phrase is “The unearthly bonds / Of the singular / Which is the bright light of shipwreck.”

The bright light of shipwreck. It sounds in my mind, and I hold to it and repeat it.

Lord, I tell myself, save me from this solitary and isolating fate. I fear it worse than the virus. It is a privilege to share anything at all, even anxiety."
posted by storybored at 12:34 PM on April 15, 2020 [5 favorites]

Im reminded that parts of the country went BSI 155 years ago today. Hysteria, anger, fear, the re-splitting of Poilty. yeah, anxiety, it is a shared thing, nice take from the writers perspective.
"bright light of a shipwreck"
I get an image of something that needs rescued.

"...we rise in the morning
to Crusty world headed nowhere, doorless:

out chests burn with anxiety and a river of
anguish defines rapids and straits in the pit of our stomachs: how can we intercede and not interfere: how can our love move more surroundingly,

convincingly than our premonitory advice."

-A.R. Ammons. ' Garbage'.
posted by clavdivs at 1:05 PM on April 15, 2020 [1 favorite]

I have anxiety about my anxiety and that makes me anxious. But, for real though. I also hate how many symptoms of anxiety/panic attacks are exactly the same (perceptually) as like, most major medical conditions that will actually kill you. That's super helpful.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 2:30 PM on April 15, 2020 [3 favorites]

I suffer from constant anxiety. At least I'm sober now. But I'm still anxious. Always anxious. Always. Always.

A few weeks ago with the guidance of an MD, I "successfully" weaned off of some anxiety/depression medication after getting sober a year and a half ago. I want my sex drive back. I just got back on a new round of medications yesterday. This pandemic and all its fallout is not helping anything. Unemployed for a long, long time. Kissed my old career goodbye a while ago.

And I guess I'll just not have a sex drive anymore. I guess existing means accepting some level of suffering. And I don't have it THAT bad, I guess. I still exist, so I've got that.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:39 PM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

ALSO: I read and hear about Depression, Clinical Depression all the time. All the time. Almost every day, I read some snippet about something that has to do with depression, read it online, see it in the news or on the radio.

Anxiety is deeply connected to depression and—in general—is not considered or discussed nearly enough. I have never had major depression symptoms, but I am really troubled with anxiety. I know it runs in my family—hard.

I guess I have nothing deep to say about it, except that anxiety is probably a wider and deeper issue in our world than it is made out to be. "Depression" gets the headlines, the talk shows, the Disease of the Week TV shows, the Oscar nominations and the celebrity tell-alls. But anxiety is sorta put on the shelf. Perhaps anxiety is a commonly held value? Anxiety meshes well with Late Stage Capitalism?

I'm gonna take a pill.
posted by SoberHighland at 3:56 PM on April 15, 2020 [5 favorites]

That picture is the best visual depiction of anxiety I've ever seen. I think if somebody drew that at a Pictionary game, everyone would say "Oh, anxiety." Tiny, static cubes crushing you is exactly what it feels like.

I've had anxiety, and it seems to blossom the most when things are "fine" and/or when I can't do anything to fight something. And during this pandemic, it started out okay, but as time goes on, I feel like I'm perpetually waiting for the storm to hit me. I know it's already hit a lot of people, but for me - I'm just hanging out at home, doing my work remotely, going on walks in the pleasant spring air - which is now cleaner and quieter. There's been some hiccups, but it's not a true hardship on myself. But the constant feeling that Bad Things are about to descend upon me, or that society in general is going to get way, way worse than what we have now is always there. That is the source of my anxiety.
posted by Stargazey at 5:01 PM on April 15, 2020 [4 favorites]

Yes, I have generalized anxiety disorder, and I keep expecting a sudden avalanche, all the bad things I am imagining happening at once, on the weekend or when I let my guard down... I am going for a walk now though, and that will help.
posted by Vegiemon at 5:25 AM on April 17, 2020

Anxiety is deeply connected to depression and—in general—is not considered or discussed nearly enough.
at least among younger millennials and gen z people anxiety seems to be much more the word on everyone’s lips than depression, hence things like the glamorization of benzo abuse
posted by LeviQayin at 10:40 AM on April 18, 2020