The Truth about Anxiety and Responsibility

I have strange, mixed feelings about the “Anxiety awareness” articles that I see pop up. I understand how debilitating and crippling anxiety can feel, how fear can ultimately ruin your life. But I feel like some of these articles takes a lot of responsibility away from the person who suffers from anxiety, and places that burden onto friends and family who just need to deal with it.

It’s difficult to see now, but I used to be at the point of being completely non-functional. I grew my hair to hide my face as a shield, and turned away as if I’d been beaten from people who tried to say hello to me. I’d cry in the bathroom of restaurants because I dreaded having to talk to the server, and hid behind the vending machine at school during lunch to avoid having to encounter anyone. It’s not an exaggeration to say that if I had not taken the steps I had to be who I am now, I would still be non-functional. I would be unable to have a partner, be intimate with other people, or hold down a job.

At one point, I’m glad these articles for anxiety awareness exist. This was only eight to twenty-four years ago and I received absolutely no help. People were not kind to me. People did not understand what was wrong with me. They pushed me, without understanding the mechanisms inside of me that made me feel like I was unable to move. I suffered a lot, because of the ignorance of other people, who thought they knew me better than myself. I lost count of the number of people who told me “You can trust me,” or “You don’t need to be afraid of me,” which made me feel even more alienated, because they lacked the basic understanding of my issues. If I had friends, I did not keep them for long, and I found more relief and peace from being alone than anything else.

I remember reading on the Internet about a man who was 50 and had never been kissed, and how much he regretted missing out on life. I was about 16 or 17 at the time, and I realized that if I continued on the path I did, if I let the fear run my life, I would never get to experience the things that I wanted to. I would drown underneath the heat of everything I wanted to do but felt I was too afraid to do.

I didn’t know much about the functions of anxiety at the time, but I knew I didn’t want it to ruin my life anymore.

And it wasn’t a magical solution. I didn’t suddenly get better. But I pushed myself, each and every day, to take the steps necessary to do the things that would make me less afraid. Sometimes to the point of heaving tears.

Every way that I have ever gotten better, with my anxiety, was a deliberate action that I chose.

Someone said to me recently… imagine someone came over and trashed your kitchen, and then left the mess for you to clean up. It’s not your fault that you invited them over, but the kitchen still has to get cleaned, and it’s up to you to do it now.

Anxiety attacks can feel debilitating. And the more you face your problems, the more severe they can be. But the mind and the body work in tandem, and if you keep showing the body, over and over again, that you are working in its benefit, that there is no benefit to crippling you, then the attacks will begin to lessen. The anxiety will begin to lessen.

The solution is not to throw your hands up, say that you have crippling anxiety, and be subject to its whim.

Even if there are days you feel as if you cannot move.

Those are the days it is most important to move.

Even if you fuck up, fail, stumble. Even if you decide that today you want to spend it in bed. Or you can’t make it to work. Or whatever thing you wanted to do, and were unable to. You analyze what went wrong, and you try again. Even if you burst into tears on your way to the supermarket. Even if you throw up in the bathroom of a party because the nausea of anxiety is so great. Each step you take that you told yourself before that you could not take is so vitally important to making yourself into the person you want to be.

The first time I held hands with a boy, I was 19 years old. It took me about three weeks to get to the point to be able to do that, after we’d started hanging out, and when we did, I cried.

I cried because of all the work I’d done to get to that point, the feeling of sheer relief, that I was not so broken that I couldn’t touch another human being.

But it was years of work. Just to be able to hold someone’s hand. It’s difficult to explain to other people just how incredibly difficult that was for me, all the thought processes and analyses I had to get through, all the sheer panic and pain that bubbled up over years to cover me in layers of separation.

And to compare that to who I am now, they often think I’m exaggerating or have a poor idea of myself when I say just how terrible I’ve been at being a functional human being.

Did I magically get better because I wanted to be better? No, because anxiety follows the laws of logic as much as anything else. You don’t get something by wanting it, you get it by understanding it, and coming up with a plan of action to get better.

It’s funny to me, the people who have known me in the last few years, who have told me that I’m really good at giving presentations, talking through a design, or who say they can’t tell that I’m anxious, or that I seem to be fairly functional. They think it’s purely a perception issue on my part, sometimes, they have no idea how much I’ve struggled to get to the point to be able to do any of those things.

So yes, anxiety is very real. And if we knew how to properly deal with it, and get treatment, and work through it, instead of beating people up for it, we could get people to get better, faster.

But the solution is never to feel like you are powerless against it, or to force other people to deal with it because you don’t want to.

Because you’re not powerless, if you choose not to be.

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