Sunday, November 16, 2014

Anxiety

As a kid, people always described me with words like, "shy," or, "quiet." I would actually say that a lot of people still describe me as that way; the kid who would rather sit in the front of the classroom, but only talk occasionally. That kid who spins his thoughts over and over, until he can pick the one that seems right for the situation.

Anxiety is a sneaky little bastard who has hung out with me most of my life.

I'm going to go back to my Mormon roots for a second and pull out the well-worn technique of looking at a dictionary and explaining what anxiety is. If you would all turn with me to your DSM-V handbook and look up Social Anxiety Disorders:

A.  A persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations in which the person is exposed to unfamiliar people or to possible scrutiny by others. The individual fears that he or she will act in a way (or show anxiety symptoms) that will be embarrassing and humiliating.
B.  Exposure to the feared situation almost invariably provokes anxiety, which may take the form of a situationally bound or situationally pre-disposed Panic Attack.  
C.  The person recognizes that this fear is unreasonable or excessive.
D.  The feared situations are avoided or else are endured with intense anxiety and distress.
E.  The avoidance, anxious anticipation, or distress in the feared social or performance situation(s) interferes significantly with the person's normal routine, occupational (academic) functioning, or social activities or relationships, or there is marked distress about having the phobia.

...Etc., etc., etc.

If I was going by the book, I would now open up a dictionary and read you the literal definition of anxiety (Something along the lines of how anxiety is more related to social exclusion whereas fear is related to actual physical harm. I feel the need to make that difference.). I would now break this apart piece by piece, until my ten minutes were up and I could sit down and relive myself from all the pressure of giving a talk in church once a year. But I'm pretty shit at being a religious person, so I'll ask you to picture a shaggy-haired kid with large round glasses in the fifth grade. That kid is me, in case you were wondering.
Fifth grade Ryan was quiet. Teachers liked him, parents adored him, and lots of kids found him a little strange. He was very selective about who he chose to be his close friends, which resulted in him only having a few he was comfortable being himself around. One day while at his friend's house, Ryan got more rambunctious than he usually did because he was comfortable. He was being loud and saying most things that popped into his head without everything going through the filter first. While in the middle of running through the house, Ryan remembered the name of a scary movie he had been thinking of all day and subsequently yelled the plot to his friend when out of the corner of Ryan's eye, he saw his friend's mom. The music was loud, kids were running and screaming, and here was Ryan screaming morbid things like murder across the room. It didn't look good. At least, to Ryan it didn't look good and that was all that mattered. He went home feeling rather despondent and the thoughts kept spinning and spinning: what was she going to think of him now? This noisy rambunctious kid--talking about murder! He must be no good. He must be weird. He must be a bad seed. After that, Ryan didn't really like seeing his friend's mom very much.

This little anxiety monster has followed me around for most of my life. There are days when he is really quiet, and there are days when he will not shut the hell up.

"Remember that time you walked into your professor's office and because you stared at him too long he hates you forever?"

"Don't forget about the time you walked into class late, no one will forget that."

"Everyone still remembers that awful campaign slogan you made for jr. high class elections."

"That homeless man remembers the time you farted near him".

"You asked for that day off and now your boss wants to fire you."

I spin these thoughts over and over again, each time making sure that they grow until it's the only thing I can think about, Then there's anxiety, sitting on my shoulder getting fatter and fatter as each thought becomes a slight obsession.

"You can't win in that race and when you lose no one will forget."

"Your friends only tolerate you."

"You're going to fail that class, flunk out of school, and end up alone."

I am ashamed to admit that sometimes I seriously acknowledge these thoughts. Dammit, I really am going to end up alone with a shitty job and no name for myself. I'm sure that even my cat will leave me. Well, he'll probably just eat me. 

They stick to my brain like everything to a George Foreman grill.

There were days when I felt like someone had made my brain into a washing machine full of bricks that pounded on the edges until I felt like I was going to burst.* It was usually during those times when I distracted myself with music, video games, and books. This way, I'd be able to wrap myself up in something that was outside of my own head so I wouldn't become to physically and emotionally exhausted.

Within the past several months of my life, I've had a lot of...grownup life things happen to me. I say grownup because I always joke about how "grownup" I am with my friends (hint: I'm not) and these were things I had never really to prepared for. I had to make a very serious relationship decision coupled with some serious family issues that had arisen. One left me feeling hurt while the other left me in a very cold disposition. 

...Looking at it now, I guess it wasn't a terrible combination for the situation.  

I had gotten very stuck. I stopped blogging because I felt like trying to find things to joke about would almost be like lying since I didn't really believe anything that I tried coming up with (Believe me, I tried; and in all honestly my wonderful and terrific writing probably would have suffered if I had chose to share it). I distanced myself from any social network that I had and instead tried to focus in only on work.

Each and every day I was digging myself deeper into my own little anxiety hole.**

And it sucked.

Then came my epiphany: It was me.

I was the one who decided what I got to do next. As simple as that was, it hadn't really dawned on me before to just stand up against myself and do something. New empowered Ryan started not putting up with shit. New empowered Ryan gained a strange new confidence that he hadn't really ever seen before. New empowered Ryan put himself out there and firmly decided what he wanted. New empowered Ryan only talked in third person!

I got to be the hero of my own story. I got to be Han Solo when he decided to take initiative for saving the galaxy. I got to be Indiana Jones in his last crusade (but nothing more because there definitely no more movies about Indiana Jones after that). Apparently, I get to be Harrison Ford, and I will roll with that.

While I still didn't blog, it was more out of just serious neglect than crippling anxiety (like your first ten goldfish..minus the crippling anxiety). While I've still maintained my distance from social networks, it's less out of weird validation and anxiety, and more from just not needing that around. The endless spinning brought on by over-thinking; not speaking up and wishing I had, or speaking up and wishing I hadn't significantly slowed down. In fact, it made this weird turn around where I did a lot of talking with little regret (except the time I decided to engage a homeless man). I was getting the support I needed from the people who mattered in my life and I didn't see this change going away any time soon.

Now, this post has been something of a struggle. It's been edited, read, re-read, re-edited, completely changed, and left alone to simmer for a very long time. Every time I looked, it changed a little; leaving old parts because I liked them and some serious erasing because why would Ryan five minutes ago ever say something so ridiculous . Now I'm just comfortable with the whole thing.

There are still days when the little anxiety monster still likes to hang out on my shoulder (e.g..: parties and surprise gatherings), but he's gotten a lot more quiet. That, or I've tried to stop listening. Either way, I'm comfortable with that.



*Even as I write that sentence, I have a slight twinge of anxiety from fearing that people will think that's a horrible analogy.
**Do I have enough analogies and metaphors for anxiety in this yet? Because I also worry that I may be using analogy and metaphor incorrectly sometimes, which is why I included both right here because I am shit with grammar and just the English language in general. Now I worry that grammar isn't even the right word.