Here's a fact. A few months ago someone in a position to know such things informed me I struggle with debilitating anxiety. I was confused. I had no idea what he was talking about. I said something like, "No, people with anxiety are more like ____. They freeze up and can't do things they need to do because they're too scared or worried." The man looked at me and said I was wrong, and that anxiety can look a lot of different ways. Like a woman who appears, from the outside, exceedingly competent and confident and strong and brave. Someone who is often told she must be a saint or a superhero, or that other people don't know how she 'does it'. He told me, rather more firmly than was typical for his personality, that just because all of my worry is self-directed or internalized does not mean it is not anxiety. I was still confused. I knew that no one else who knows me would say something like this, but since this guy is our marriage counselor I figured I should at least think about it.
A little while after that I watched a ted talk by Glennon of momastery.com. In the video she discussed being hospitalized as a teenager for her bulimia and how even though she spent two weeks in an adult mental health hospital with schizophrenics and people with violent behavior tendencies she felt much safer than in her high school. She said the other patients said things that made sense and she never felt afraid of them, but her classmates at school made her frightened or worried every day. Her words made me begin to understand.
As a young child I spent a fair amount of time around my father's friends from AA. I remember all of them, and their wives, as kind, lovely people around whom I always felt comfortable. Their expectations for my behavior were easy for me to comprehend. Those men from the AA meetings at the catholic parish in our town were dear to me. Even now, after probably 30 years, if I run into someone close to Dad from back then they are kind and sweet and I feel safe. I understand the unspoken rules of social engagement for recovering addicts, and even for practicing ones. I know what to say and what they expect from me. I don't worry how they see me or if I'm doing something wrong. After the words of our counselor and the video, I realized that's the only place in my life I remember feeling that way. Ever.
I always assumed anxiety was about worrying and being paralyzed by fear of making mistakes. I'm not paralyzed. I daily carry out the necessary tasks and functions for my life. I feed and dress and parent my kids and talk to my husband. I eat and sleep and shower and I go to the places I've committed to going. I just live under the basic assumption 99% of my choices and actions are wrong. I don't worry about it, I just accept it as fact. It's as unalterable as the sunrise. I don't fear mistakes, because it is a given I will make them steadily from when I wake up until I go to sleep. Even sleeping isn't safe, because it's likely I've either gone to bed too early when I should have stayed up and cleaned something or spent time with my husband or I've stayed up too late which will make me grumpy and short tempered tomorrow. My life is blanketed in the constant snowfall of self-criticism. It has always been this way, and it never occurred to me until recently that this is not how everyone lives. It's a bizarre inversion of perfectionism, with equally crippling results. If all my choices are almost inevitable wrong, why bother changing anything that isn't working for me. At least this particular version of wrong is familiar. New choices only mean new means of failing, and that possibility truly is paralyzing. Constant, incessant failure that crushes my soul I can handle. Risking failure people might actually see? Not so much.
Like all of my epiphanies, I have no cures or easy fixes or ideas on how to change it. It seems I tend to live by the old GI Joe slogan "knowing is half the battle," from the 80s cartoon. Hopefully that's true because I am much more than halfway tired of all this emotional slogging.
I guess we'll just have to see what being more aware does for helping me work through it. I wish I had something more uplifting to say today.
