Controlling Anxiety is All About Perspective
I've never been able to fully understand the concept of debilitating anxiety. I see so many whose whole world is full of the fear of what may come next following Trump and then the pandemic frozen from making choices, self diagnosing ailments that only exist in their minds and the pills prescribed by pharmaceutical companies inventing the cures to illnesses they created, standing still and excusing their inability to move forward on trauma and anxiety but, until recently, I could only see it from a place of judgment.
Then I woke up one morning confronted with my most trusted ally, my wife, revealing she'd been lying to me on a grand scale about who she was for nearly three years.
I get the anxiety some now. Not in any 'deer in the headlights' sort of way but a low-grade mumble in the back of my every interaction that asks Are you sure this isn't bullshit? Before Christmas, I was offered a job that was almost to good to be true. Events. Promotions. Radio. Solid compensation with benefits. The job I would've invented for myself given I'm locked into Kansas for a while. Due to the holidays and paperwork, the start date kept getting moved. Do I really have this job? Are they changing their mind?
I've since started the job but I can't relax just yet. I don't trust this situation until I see an actual paycheck hit my account. Just typing this reality makes my chest seize up and the balance I used to have wobble. I can't seem to trust my judgment or almost anyone around me.
I'd say that this is a natural response to the marital blindside but that having been declared it doesn't change the simple truth that I can't trust myself right now. I need to see proof or I wallow in the possibility that another shoe will drop and expose my previous optimism and self confidence as false.
This must be a slice of the anxiety so many feel these days. It gives me a sense of perspective. I can comprehend why people I know and love can't leave their homes for fear of COVID or stop basking in the horrors of Donald J. Trump. This perspective softens my derision of these folks a bit making me more empathetic and less judgmental.
None of this stuff is rational but it exists nonetheless. Fear of the unknown, of an inability trusting your instincts, of what may happen rather what probably will happen is a cul de sac of mental decay. What if I'm wrong? becomes the default and is every bit as destructive as assuming you are always right.
It all lends that obvious salve: perspective.
I read this past week a short thought experiment that I think provides an additional bit of perspective:
Imagine you were born in 1900.
When you are 14, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday with 22 million people killed. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until you are 20. Fifty million people die from it in those two years.
When you're 29, the Great Depression begins.
Unemployment hits 25%, global GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War Il starts.
When you're 41, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war and the Holocaust kills twelve million. At 52, the Korean War starts and five million are extinguished.
Approaching your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War.
At 64 the Vietnam War begins, and it doesn't end for many years. Four million people die in that conflict.
As you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends and disco has a brief run.
This is not to say to subsequent generations "Look at how hard these people had it and aren't you just a bunch of whiney shits for thinking you have it hard?" but rather a lens into the past that puts my own hardships in relief. It reminds me that I've never been drafted into war, that I've always been able to find meaningful employment within six months or so, that while my life blew up in spectacular fashion, I have little property and no children to navigate.
It loudly puts in mind that the world as we come to know it is always on the brink of ending and yet hasn't ended yet. That Y2K was a thing the whole world fully freaked out about and for months prior to January 1, 2000 sales of bottled water and duct tape went through the roof out of desire to fend off what might happen. It didn't happen. The world not grind to a halt and plenty of people had a lot of water and tape for no reason.
In 1979 there were killer bees coming to America from Africa. I saw it on the news. I freaked out. I created my own makeshift bee-keeper costume and wore it to school until the principal insisted I stop wearing it as it was a distraction from the purpose of going to school—which if you watch Euphoria is fucking, taking lots of drugs, and feelings. Maybe three mentions of the killer bees (which magically did not materialize in Kansas) on the local news. If I had been able to track in real time a daily update on the killer bees from Africa, I might never have taken that outfit off and been diagnosed with a sort of media induced PTSD.
I might have even bought a flamethrower. Cuz bees, you know.
Perspective is the killer bee killer.
Growing up, I lived through the end of Vietnam, the Watergate scandal and resignation of the president, the gas crisis in 1976, the election of Ronald Reagan. In every school, we practiced duck and cover techniques that were only taught to give us something to do when the inevitable ICBMs came down to level the planet. I watched on television the Challenger Space Shuttle explode in mid-air. The Iran-Contra scandal. The Ethiopian Civil War. The Iranian hostage situation. The Soviet-Afghan war. The McMartin Trial that started the hysteria about pre-school teachers performing Satanic rituals with kids.
The world has always been on fire. The amplification of those myriad horrors has us all jacked up. We are surrounded when we go to the grocery store or gym or church by people lacking coping skills or perspective losing their shit over the last bag of bagels.
I believe that trust is given, respect is earned. I've lost that trust in others to a large degree but to put things right, I have to start trusting myself again. Respecting myself will need to be earned so here's hoping that I get that paycheck and the bottom doesn't fall out again. The more things work out how I think they will, the less anxiety I'll feel. At some point, I'll suddenly wake up with that willful arrogance that only a white guy in America can muster and maybe, with a little perspective, dial it back to avoid being an asshole about it.
