3 important things I’ve learned about anxiety

as an on-and-off sufferer

I was handed a formal generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis in my early 20s, having dealt with various phases, flavors, and intensities of it in the years before and since. The bastard is currently just an annoying little shoulder demon that asserts itself with a pathetic squeak on occasion, and I’m hoping it stays that way for a long time.

That said, I’ve come to understand a few things about anxiety in general. At least from my (completely unprofessional, so take this with a grain of salt) perspective:

It’s really just dread.

Most sufferers know that you can’t think your way out of anxiety. You can be intelligent, rational, and self-aware, and it means absolutely nothing to the horrifyingly acute, swirling mush of dreadful soup your mind becomes in the moment. It’s a primal emotion in itself, masquerading as a rain of troubling thoughts. And in my experience, it can feel exactly like dread.

Dread is by definition the anticipation of something awful that’s going to happen. And the only way out of dread is through it.

Anxiety is dread, but it’s totally misfired dread that’s (usually) missing the actual, awful end result. The brain has no idea what to do with this completely misplaced and contradictory information, so it tricks you into conjuring up a bunch of ‘what ifs’ instead — a twisted bridge of possibility to make the impossible easier to process.

Knowing this doesn’t really resolve anything, but at least in my experience, it’s a good first step. Where did that rogue wave of dread come from, anyway, and why did my brain learn to conjure it? Did something bad actually happen a few minutes or days or weeks after I happened to be in a life situation that looked or felt or even smelled similar to the one I’m in now? And can I see at least part of that for what it is?

It is completely arbitrary.

A couple of years back, when I was struggling in private with my gender identity, my impostor syndrome at work seemed to go into miraculous remission.

After the catharsis of my coming out, the work fears started to claw their way back, but they were likewise tamed by broader waves of terror about COVID and climate change and Putin’s nuclear arsenal, among other things. In moments of global calm (relatively speaking, because what even was 2020 onward?), I would suddenly become totally incompetent and sure to be fired again — whatever my brain could latch that rogue dread wave onto, to help it make a little more sense.

Knowing this doesn’t magically fix things, either, but it’s been another good bit of perspective for my mental arsenal. At very least, it has comforted me in the thick of an attack to know that the awfulness I am immersed in is 1) going to pass, and 2) truly not anything unique or special.

It is treatable.

You deserve to not feel awful.

And if you don’t think so — well, the people who see and feel and love you (yes, they exist) deserve not to feel awful from seeing you feel awful.

CBT — first with a therapist, and then on my own — has concretely and vastly reduced anxiety for me personally.

I’ve also noticed that simply journaling my thoughts (a long Google Doc or something of that nature to type in fodder on the fly will do) would effectively externalize them and keep my mind from trying to re-shape or entertain them quite as much. Though I have not used medication before, I have no qualms about fighting chemistry with well-vetted chemistry. And while things are mild, there is always my rocking chair (I especially encourage investing in one if you’re neurodivergent, as a repetitive self-soothing tool).

At the end of the day, it’s cliche, but it’s true — you just have to find what works for you.

The trial-and-error of establishing treatment may be something to dread, but it’s nothing like the dread — that awful, swirling, dark, and misplaced storm that is anxiety — that you will eventually be liberated from.