Sometimes I Wish I Could Just Turn Off My Brain — Misadventures of an Anxious Mind

Jan 23

Jan 23 Sometimes I Wish I Could Just Turn Off My Brain

I used to see every aspect of the world in black and white. In my childhood life, something was either good or bad. There was no middle ground. Ever. It was never ever appropriate to go in through the out door, just ask my long-suffering mom. Ages before I was a Led Zeppelin fan, I was admonishing my own mother for trying to take a shortcut into a store. I'm quite sure I was exhausting for my parents to raise, as I was forever telling on my little sister. In my mind, either she was being good, or being bad. It took me forever to learn that while bad can be just plain bad, most of the time there are varying degrees of badness, and my parents didn't want to hear me shout with little girl indignation every time my little sister picked her nose and wiped it under a table.

Fast-forward to my early twenties. I was still hopelessly rigid in my thoughts of morality. Add to that the passionate belief of the young that they are always right. To me, at that time, anyone who even thought about cutting down a tree was a horrible monster who equated in evilness to serial killers (sorry, dad). Did you hunt or wonder about hunting? Shame on you, you evil and sadistic murderer. In my mind I was always right always justified, and so very passionate in my righteousness. And since we live in our minds, and are steered by how our minds work, I was a captive to this over-the-top, zealous way of thinking.

Then my life changed. The small stream of anxiety that had flowed within me my whole life catastrophically overflowed its banks. It came with no warning, so there was no time to put up sandbags. This was a thousand year flood in my mind. In the space of a month I lost my job, and I had to drop out of college (where my GPA was around 3.8). I was swept away in this flood. All my careful plans for the future were laid waste and strewn in jagged piles across my mental landscape. I felt like an abject failure, so I was an abject failure, according to the black and white nature of my mind. If something could be worse than being a failure, but slightly above murderers, rapists, and molesters, I was that.

I would look around and see so very many people who were scurrying from one place to the next: I bet she has a nice career. I bet he doesn't have trouble remembering when to pay bills. I bet they haven't ran their credit score into the ground buying things in an uninhibited effort to make themselves feel better. Everywhere I looked, everything pointed directly to my own failure. Life was like a giant hand, rubbing my puppy nose into my own mess and telling me I was bad. Garbage. No Good.

I have struggled with anxiety for these past 12 (gazillion) years. Sometimes I can't go to the store because I am 100% positively-sure that I will die in a car crash on my way to Save Mart. Sometimes I can't wash dishes because all the anxiousness coursing through my veins makes my whole body shake, and I'm afraid I'll break everything in the sink. Sometimes I can't do anything because the medicine I take for times of very high anxiety makes me feel as though I'm pushing a rock uphill, like some strange Greek mythology punishment. Does this make me feel like a failure? Most oftentimes, yes. It's hard to even mention the dish washing problems in this post, it's so demoralizing and embarrassing. But I have learned something in these past 12 years pushing that boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down: If you are truly trying your best, to do your best, to be your best, you are absolutely not a failure. Sometimes, and I still have trouble myself with this next part, that is as good as you can do for that day/week/month/year. I wanted to be a meteorologist, and have a doctorate and an awesome career by now. But my "now" is so much different than I had ever imagined it would be. Because of a change in brain physiology or chemistry, my life is wholly different, and it's been done against my will. I'm not telling you to accept less from yourself, only to ratchet down your "judginess" to acceptable levels. Would you judge your partner, family, or friends as harshly as you do yourself? I bet not! When you judge yourself (because you will, oh you will), do not be excessively harsh. You did not ask for that catastrophic flood. You are not trying to be weird, or awful, or a diva, or a failure. Just live your life as best as you can, and be proud of the things that you can do. Life is not black and white! Life is not lived in absolutes! Life is feeling unsure of everything, and is lived in beautiful shades of vibrant, pearlescent shades of gray.

It will be frustrating. And by "it" I mean everything. When the anxiety tiger grabs you by the back of the neck and starts to drag you off in directions you never wanted to go, and didn't even know existed, you fight back. When you start to panic by getting in a car because you know deep in your soul that you will not survive the trip, kick that asshole anxiety tiger in the face and fight through it. The fight will be long, bloody, and exhausting, but it will get better. I can say this because it took me forever not to have panic attacks any time I put my little toe into a vehicle. Any time life makes that anxiety tiger give you a shake, acknowledge that yes, things are different now, and no, this issue does not effect most people like it does you. Acknowledge it, embrace it (because this is the way you are now, like it or not) and fight that tiger with every scrap of energy you have. Every time you give into the panic the anxiety tiger gives you, it wins and makes it a little bit harder for you to try and overcome it the next time. Deny the tiger entry.

So you know you locked the front door, but the anxiety tiger is telling you, "Of course you left the door unlocked, fool! Now your cats are running free and everyone is looting all your stuff! Hahahahaha!"

Now you say, "Not today, stupid tiger!" and you don't go and check the door. Fight through the certainty that anxiety tiger is right. Entry denied. And it will be easier to deny the anxiety tiger entry the next time. Sometimes now, I can just roll my eyes at myself and move on. Not always, or even most of the time, but I'm more used to fighting, so the fight goes easier.