Anxiety

[mallorys_camera]

Massive anxiety attack all night long.

Actually, it wasn’t an attack. Attacks are kamikaze raids on the nervous system. Zoom in, zoom out. Hit & run.

This was more of a sustained and ongoing battle.

Ostensible trigger was a phone call to someone who didn’t pick up the phone.

This is why you don’t like making phone calls, I reminded myself.

I turned off my phone. Ancient tribal magic! When you make yourself unavailable, people call back.

But morning came, and there was no record of callbacks on my phone.

My mind immediately spun out in the direst directions: Person got into a car accident, a spinout & crash on Highway 17, which long ago I nicknamed “The Highway of Certain Death”! Person was kidnapped by members of a drug cartel who are even now dismembering him slowly!

Neither of these things happened. I know that.

But that anxiety somehow got mixed into anxiety about money (All your clients are going to drop you), anxiety about life (You were given chances, and you wasted every one), anxiety about self-worth (You’re a failure.) Cascade effect!

Not Fun.

The BIG Not Fun.

Outside, fine snow had begun to fall. It looked like diamond dust.

###

Lotta people I know practice “manifestation.” The way it works is you perch the vision of the One Perfect Thing you want on a lotus leaf floating on a sea just in back of your third eye. Sometimes, the vision works like a compass, and sometimes it works like a magnet, but however it works, slowly, shimmeringly, the One Perfect Thing begins to materialize. Maybe it loses a little of its perfection in the phase change; maybe it becomes the One Good Thing instead of the One Perfect Thing, or maybe even the One Okay-I-Guess Thing, but does that matter? The important thing is that you got what you wanted.

I cannot manifest.

I am so convinced that anything I visualize in any degree of detail will not happen that the only things I can visualize are absolute calamities. Because if I imagine them in excruciating detail, then the calamities won’t take place.

I’m sure this negative manifestation tendency plays a significant role in my anxiety levels. As does, of course, the season… hence, seasonal affective disorder.

###

Anyway, really, there’s nothing to do about it but take deep cleansing breaths, pop a gummy, climb back onto the conveyor belt that’s rolling me ever farther away from whatever trauma predisposed me toward feelings like these.

Writing helps.

Talking might help. But honestly, I don’t have anyone here that I can talk about stuff like this with. It's kinda like needing to be talked down from a bad acid trip.

###

When I’m feeling stronger & calmer, it might be enlightening to trace the anxiety back to the original Big Bang. I’m guessing it was abandonment. My mother abandoned me a lot when I was a little girl. Sometimes, she would walk me to the corner of 72nd Street & Broadway, and leave me there for hours & hours & hours. My father would come and get me, she’d tell me: You’re bad. I don’t want you anymore. I’m calling your father. You can be his problem. You wait here for him.

But I won’t feel mentally centered enough for this exercise until spring.

And by the time spring comes, I’ll have forgotten all about the anxiety attacks.

Comments

[puddleshark]

Sorry it was such a bad night. Hope it passes, and tonight is better.

I hadn't heard of that "Manifestation" thing before. Maybe I was indoctrinated with too many fairy tales as a child, but I've always thought you had to be careful what you wished for. Best not to be too specific. Even "World Peace" doesn't seem too safe, these days, since the world would probably be more peaceful without us.

That is such a beautiful image of the leaves and the ice.

[mallorys_camera]

Yeah, I, too, was indoctrinated in The Monkey's Paw school of magic to the point where I never wish for anything—-because I'm all too aware that all magic comes with a price. (Your example of a "World Peace" wish catalyzing a human extinction event is kinda the golden example of that one. 😀)

Anxiety sucks because a) it doesn't feel good, and b) it's completely useless. No unfortunate situation ever got resolved through anxiety.

[rebeccmeister]

So here's a thing about anxiety. Some time ago, I read a blog entry about anxiety written by an ecologist.

One of the ideas from the blog entry that I return to time and again is that it can be really hard to completely ignore anxiety, because in part it can lead to much better contingency planning.

I kind of think of the manifestation thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it sounds like you do as well. I sort of figure that if it can be conceptualized from that angle, it should be possible to use it strategically, and not get locked into thinking that life is dichotomous: anxiety + contingency planning vs. manifestation of good things.

But it sure is annoying when the brain weasels get so busy they start interfering with restful sleep. I've been having a bit of that myself, I think because I need to do a whole bunch of planning right now.

[mallorys_camera]

Yeah, I think you & the ecologist are absolutely right.

"Anxiety" is really just another word for "not feeling safe," and contingency-planning is a great way to court safety.

And of course, the biggest thing that's making me feel unsafe right now is that I don't know where I'll be living in four months—-and though there are sound, practical reasons why it's better not to make any plans around that for the time being, it seeps into the groundwater, bubbling up in unlikely disaster scenarios.

Those goddam brain weasels! 😀

[rebeccmeister]

Having been in a number of situations in recent years where I haven't been entirely sure about my upcoming living arrangements, I can very much sympathize with how that can eat up vast amounts of one's brain!! I wouldn't even call it all anxiety!

It does help to have some backup plans in mind, even if they are kind of terrible or unlikely.

[adoptedwriter]

Hugs...I hear ya on the anxiety thing. My mom brings on 90% of mine. (It's also caused weight loss, which I had been wanting / needing, so there is that.)
Crying babies in a car while driving home is another big one. (Driving itself causes the rest of my anxiety.)

[mallorys_camera]

Driving makes me anxious, too. At least, driving on major roads with lots of traffic.