The Wrong Way to Deal with Anxiety
By: Kim Buchwald
Tags: Mental Health, Anxiety

Photo by Min An from Pexels

Storms always start off slowly with one cloud drifting into clear skies. A thought tinged with emotion, but just slight.

“I haven’t talked to Olivia in a while, what if she doesn’t like me anymore.”

Add another cloud.

“What if I did something wrong to make her not like me.”

I make a mental note of the word what if clearly starting each sentence. “ It’s just anxiety. That can’t possibly be true, can it?” I seek for reassurance inside my mind, “No, she’s probably just busy with Crossfit and Running Club. She’s been way more busy lately. It’s not me.”

At this point the skies are still sunny. There’s just two pesky clouds in another wise beautiful blue sky. These thoughts are easy to rationalize. Easy to dismiss. Easy to forget. But the forecast, suggests heavy rains later in the week and I am not at all prepared for the weather.

Partly Cloudy

If my mind was the weather the feeling of stability and truth I feel when I am not anxious would be the sun. It constantly shines and is perpetually present even when I cannot see it.

Most of the time I cannot see it.

When the clouds inevitably roll in, normally, I can manage them. I notice, I ponder and I dismiss the clouds as shaped like elephants even though I am worried they might be giraffes. I can reason my way out of the uncertainty.

That is until, there’s a storm.

Chance of Rain

Storms always start as white and puffy clouds. Before long they hang dark and heavy threatening rain and lightning. In my brain, when there is too much uncertainty, the clouds start to accumulate. I cannot reason them away. I cannot remember the sunlight. The thoughts are perceived as too pressing, too real, too tangible, to be cast away as just another neural firing.

This normally occurs when the thoughts in question relate strongly to two areas of my life: fulfillment and relationships. You see, after years of observing the same pattern, I have come to realize most of my anxiety centers around the loss of my true potential and the loss of those I love. Worse still is when those two fears meld together, but I will get to that.

Fear is uncertain. The bigger the fear, the bigger the desire to qualm the fear or rather qualm the notion that your fear will not come true in the future. It does not exist here. It does not exits now, yet your thoughts can cast your reality into shadows. Your fears, magnified by your thoughts, seem to exist in the present. Suddenly, uncertainty is palpable and if it is palpable it can be made certain.

At least that’s what I tell myself, as I begin the series of mental gymnastics to try to figure the uncertainty out. “Did I miss out on some pivotal point of my own personal growth by not going to teach full time internationally?”

Maybe if I mentally compare how I feel now, to how I felt while teaching English for the summer in Peru, I will know if I got enough out of the experience.

Thoughts that used to be small and easily tossed aside begin to carry more weight.

“Have my friend Olivia and I outgrown our friendship? What if I did something to push her away? She has always been busy, there must be something else wrong.”

I will analyze. I will obsess. I will try and try again to figure out the answer to unanswerable questions until I come to a conclusion. But as is the case with anything built on shaky foundation, my tower of reason eventually falls and I have to start back over.

It’s futile really. I can’t change the weather. Why do I think I can out wit the storm?

Thunder and Lightning

The more I try to prevent the storm, the more catastrophic it begins to feel. These thoughts are no longer small clouds, easily ignored and brushed aside. They are no long just dark and heavy threatening rain. They are raw and ragged, opening up in a torrential down pour complete with thunder and lightning.

This is the point when my uncertainty begins to metastasize and I am faced with my biggest fear of all. “What if to live the life of my dreams I need to leave my boyfriend.”

Now I have done a lot of work with this fear. In moments of sunshine I can objectively look at this thought and see how clearly it defines my past. My parents were unhappily married my entire life. Neither of them really ever became, what I consider, fully formed versions of themselves. There was a lot of lost potential, that only now are they somewhat getting back after divorce even though they both have latched on to new significant others in an attempt to feel complete.

I internalized my parent’s unsaid message, that you partner is supposed to be the driving force behind your fulfillment. Disney and the romanticized version of happily ever after, has in no way helped to deter these beliefs.

Furthermore, my household was riddled with constant conflict that often resulted in threats of divorce or abandonment. Multiple times, I was asked to choose which parent I was going to stay with before my mom left the house threatening to never come back.

I can see why I need to find certainty in doubt that hits so close to my childhood. I can also see how the idea that living the life of my dreams and being with my boyfriend are so heavily tied together in my mind, even if I don’t believe the sentiments of my parents. This understanding, while immensely helpful in my own personal development, does nothing to put at bay my fear.

Fear is fear. It has no hard edges from which to hold on to. It only becomes stronger with threats of reason or dismissal. With every effort to try to contain the uncertainty fear creates, there is more of it. More intangibility. More clouds. More rain.

There is no use trying to stop the storm, but there is courage in waiting it out.

Sunshine

In a mental rainstorm, there is no knowing for certain whether or not you will be okay. Sure, you can logically look at your life and see to which end you are leaning. You can take action in the direction you want to go. You can even reevaluate down the road and change direction, but fear isn’t about logic. Your thoughts bearing thunder and lightning are not academic. They are pain. Raw emotion. Fear is the crippling uncertainty as to whether or not we will feel that pain again.

So what can be done during a storm?

Nothing.

And that is a courageous act. In doing nothing, you sit out the rain. You feel the rain. You pain becomes known, without trying to change it or lesson its impact.

You cannot reason away you what if’s even when they are small puffy clouds and it is easy to do so. Applying reason to your emotions, only seeks to create the conditions for those dark thoughts to accumulate.

Instead, you need to sit with your suffering no matter how illogical it may be. You need to acknowledge your pain as part of yourself. Only then do you gain clarity and in gaining clarity acceptance and understanding.

“I have pushed so many friends away in my life I do not want to push away Olivia.” I strongly value our friendship and want to continue to work for it.

“I could never make my parents happy, and let down my dad by not teaching abroad in Spain like I said I would.” I am not responsible for my parents happiness, I am responsible for mine.

“I am a failure for not staying true to my word and teaching abroad right out of college and instead choosing love.” I mourn the loss of something I never had, but I cannot be any more grateful and joyful for the way life has unfolded.

No matter how many rain clouds obstruct its view, remember the sun is always still shining. With time you will be able to let yourself feel it.