Anxiety, brothers tryin me

Anxiety disorders are kind of misunderstood. Everyone has anxiety, so I think some people don’t get what the big deal is. Anxiety disorders became a manipulation tool for doctors and the pharmaceutical industry more readily than other disorders that could necessitate taking medicine because there is ostensibly an entire population of people who have symptoms. So it has become this sort of ‘where’s waldo?’ of people who actually suffer from anxiety in their day-to-day lives.

What your anxiety looks like in human form, what a jerk

Living with an anxiety disorder basically means that every moment of your life has you on the edge of your seat, and not in a fun, roller coaster way. You are constantly in this mode where you try to prepare for an assumed disaster that might never come, a perpetual fight-or-flight. Most situations and conversations toss you head first into a sea of “what ifs.” You basically are never relaxed. I don’t have the ability to relax because there is always something to worry about.

And here’s where it’s a disorder: you lack the ability to discern when anxiety is useful and when it is detrimental. I think normal anxiety has its function. It’s like a preparation tool. But when you start putting anxiety before everything in your life, you create this unyielding force field of worry that follows you around wherever you go. No moment is sacred.

So next time you are talking to someone with an anxiety disorder, keep that in mind. It makes you do and say really weird things. It makes a lot of people jittery. It makes you talk too much or too little. Sometimes it just makes you say really weird things. Like today at the coffee shop. I told the coffee guy that I was smarter than him while he got my coffee. What? Why would I say that? My anxiety also makes me laugh a lot at weird and inappropriate times. It makes me do the craziest things, really, now that I’m thinking about it .So keep that in mind. It’s not me, it’s the anxiety. And a little part just me, too.

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