Afterschool Special Week: It Makes Me Anxious

It's Very Serious Subject Week here at G:TB, not necessarily by design. After this post, as I've told others, I'm going to take a trip to the Isle of Dipshittery, where I'll reside peacefully for the next several months. But I hope this one resonates for someone who might need it.

I've been writing this post for almost four years, and I've had a hard time deciding whether I even wanted to publish it. It's personal, and it's scary, and it makes me feel vulnerable as hell. But in light of recent events in my little town, and of my admonishment to our community to reach out when we see people in pain, I feel a bit obligated.

The Atlantic's Scott Stossel wrote a cover story in the magazine's January 2014 issue about anxiety. Irrational, crippling, stressful, anxiety. One of the most common of all mental illnesses.

I've been there.



The first 39 years of my life were blissfully anxiety-free. Nerves, sure. Ask Whitney about how I couldn't eat before I gave the toast at his rehearsal dinner, pushing my food around my plate for 20 minutes or so. (Nailed the toast, though.) And I worried about normal stuff - bills, and my kids, and the Red Sox. But debilitating, heart-pounding, depths of despair anxiety wasn't in my emotional vocabulary.

Then, in August 2010, I found myself at a conference I didn't want to attend, with a group of people I didn't care to be around. Alone in a Tampa hotel, I had the longest night of my life. My heart raced uncontrollably. I was drenched in sweat. I couldn't shake the notion that I was going to die. And I certainly couldn't sleep.

I made an excuse and took an early flight home, hoping that familiar scenery and the proximity of the people I loved would help. Not really.

The next month is a dulled blur. I took sleeping pills and melatonin to try to get some uninterrupted slumber, but they rarely worked. I fell asleep at the wheel driving to work more than once. Which was better than my commute home, which I spent every day focused on worst-case scenarios, mostly economic, like losing my job, falling into financial ruin, driving my wife and kids away.

I thought about what it would be like for them if I were gone, me with my $1.0m+ in various life insurance policies. To be clear, I never contemplated suicide - just the results. It is exceedingly easy for me to see how people in a similar place could take that next step. I saw no way out, no obvious remedy.

A few months later, just after Thanksgiving, after a two-year battle against cancer and a rapid decline, my father passed away. I felt it was my place as the man of the family now to be strong for my Mom and my sister. I greeted well-wishers and accepted their condolences, and I wrote and delivered a eulogy, and I talked to my kids about their Papa.

One thing I never did was spend time with my own grief. I was too much of a mess.

Had you seen me at that time, you likely wouldn't have known anything was wrong. I managed to handle my professional affairs, though Lord knows I can't tell you how. Perusing my G:TB content over the first few months of 2011 yields nary a clue. That was the era of #3bids4CAA, and our dustup with Mid-Majority's Kyle Whelliston.  (In a bit of supreme irony, I later learned that Whelliston himself suffered from depression, so at least a few of the things I said about him cause me some measure of regret.) I withdrew a bit from my friends, but after a couple of beers I could generally find an equilibrium, or at least moderate the racing thoughts. Depressive anxiety is a motherfucker, silent and invisible.

My wife might tell you otherwise. At home, according to her, I was a zombie. I'd come home and retreat into myself, doing the bare minimum necessary to be a parent and husband, and often even less than that.

I confided in a few people, and when I did, it helped. Unburdening myself, opening up, leaning on others reminded me that I wasn't alone, at least for a brief period. It was that realization that put me on the path to recovery. If you take nothing else away from this, take this: the concern and care of others matters, and is a huge bulwark against the loneliness and helplessness that blanket the thoughts of people in the throes of depression and mental illness like a low-lying and persistent fog.

Ultimately, three things made the difference for me: therapy, medication, and time. My wife has a background in counseling, and she helped me understand that talking to a professional was necessary, that being proactive in trying to help myself was in many ways the opposite of weak. My doctor prescribed an anti-anxiety med, which settled me at a time when I was all over the place, even as it dulled my emotional range. And as a few months passed, the combination of those first two supporting scaffolds enabled me to slowly regain my equilibrium. Those, and the continued, never-judging love and support my wife provided.

I'm lucky. Many people don't emerge from bouts of depression and anxiety, or at least don't do so over a period of months. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America estimates that 40 million Americans experience some form of anxiety disorder each year, but fewer than 40% of them receive treatment. The National Institute of Mental Health reports that 16 million Americans experienced a major depressive episode in 2016, 6.7% of the adult population. The statistics are worse in many other countries. Practically speaking, one out of every 10 people you see every day is dealing with some kind of anxiety or depression disorder.

It's been nearly seven years since I last displayed any anxiety-related symptoms. Now, when I worry about money, or the future, it lasts a few minutes, and there's a whole set of rational arguments I can make to change the subject in my mind. Like anyone, I have good days and bad days, positive moods and shitty, grumpy ones (that hasn't changed much in 47 years), but the reasons are closely tied to the actual events of the day, not to some imbalance in my brain chemistry. As I said earlier, I'm lucky.

I consider myself fortunate in another way, too. I'm a far more compassionate person as it relates to the suffering of others, particularly those dealing with mental illness. I'm a private person. I don't like to talk about myself. But in the past six-plus years, I've found myself more than once telling someone about my experience because I thought it would help them feel less alone in theirs. I'm an advocate for therapy, and for admitting that sometimes other people have answers we don't. I have no idea whether I've helped, but staying silent seems less of an option now.

As Patton Oswalt has famously said in his recent standup special, "It's chaos. Be kind." I've adopted that as a bit of a mantra for myself. It applies in so many ways in our modern world. I've learned that there is no 'normal', and we're all fucked up in our own, unique ways. There is no shame in seeking help, in admitting that you don't know everything. And if you don't need help at some point, you're blessed beyond your own understanding.

And hopefully, that's...one to grow on.