Sigh, Anxiety

Posted by fxckfeelings on November 26, 2012

If you suffer from anxiety and depression, you know they’re like your own mental Statler and Waldorf, the two Muppet balcony hecklers, except less cute and more evil, spewing criticism that impairs your ability to feel confident and make decisions. Even when they don’t prevent you from achieving significant accomplishments, anxiety and/or depression make you believe you didn’t do as well as you should have. So, if you suffer from anxiety, learn how to tune out its constant negative chatter, or, even better, be proud of your ability to go on with the show.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m 37 years old, nearly 38. I’m undecided on whether or not to have a child. My mother died 12 years ago and I’ve been in and out of depression ever since. I definitely have a lot to be grateful for, but a lot of times I feel like I just can’t go on—the sadness and loss are still unbearable. The other thing is that I have been dealing with very bad insomnia since my mom’s death, which also makes life very difficult. I haven’t had a lot of long-term relationships but I’m in one now and it’s been 2 years. The relationship is good and he is a good man, but I’ve never had that feeling of “knowing” if he’s the right person/life long partner. There’s always something missing for me and I suppose it’s from the loss of my mom, and the reason I usually end up breaking up with boyfriends. I don’t want to keep that pattern going as I’ll end up alone. Because of my age I feel like time is of the essence and I need to make a decision—on my relationship and having a baby. I have always thought that I would have a child and I am a loving/giving person and love kids, but it’s so hard to take care of myself sometimes, I wonder if it’s right for me to me to have one. My partner wants kids (he would be a wonderful father) and I told him I’m not ready yet, but will I ever be? My goal is to come to a decision and be at peace with it.

You’ve had more than your share of pain in life, so it’s understandable that the things that should make you feel happiness, like a good relationship, are buried by exhaustion and a lingering sense of pain and loss.

Your pain hasn’t distracted you, however, from the fact that certain things make life meaningful, even when the joy they inspire doesn’t register. Apparently, two of those things for you are raising kids and having a relationship, which matter to you despite knowing that you’ll sometimes be unable to function or feel anything other than misery.

If that’s what’s meaningful to you, don’t ask yourself whether motherhood or marriage will make you happy, whether your feelings will ever be normal, or whether you’ll always be able to function as a parent. Unfortunately, it’s not your lot in life to have normal expectations about feelings or function. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t achieve normal goals if you’re prepared to make realistic adjustments.

Instead of focusing on possible happiness, ask whether you’ve found a partnership that is good enough to stand up to your emotional downs (after two years, I assume it has already demonstrated strength) as well as the demands of child-rearing. If you think you’ve formed a team that can do the job, and you believe the job is worth doing, then don’t let pain or doubt make your decisions for you.

It’s the nature of depression to tell you that you’ve failed to get over your mother, take proper care of your health, or find a relationship that feels like Mr. Right, and it doesn’t help that popular culture supports similar bullshit ideas. In truth, however, if you’ve done what you can to move on after losing your mother and done nothing grossly stupid to hurt your health (like smoking), those thoughts are wrong and you should never let them go unchallenged. Depression can have the loudest opinion in your head, but that doesn’t mean it has the right one.

So far, loss, pain, and fatigue haven’t prevented you from finding a good partner and daring to think about parenting. If you think you’ve got a good chance to do what matters and the right person to do it with, don’t doubt the value of your choice; if you know what you’re doing is right, then how you feel about what you’re doing, or how you feel in general, doesn’t have to matter.

STATEMENT:
“I feel I’m often weak and sad when others are strong and happy, but I haven’t stopped pursuing what I value and I may well have found what I need. I won’t stop building the best life I can, as long as I think the risks are reasonable and the goals are worth it.”

I’m resigned to the fact that anxiety has played a dominant role in my life, but I wish I could manage it a little better. I was so anxious I’d never get married that I married the first woman who was interested even though she was crazy, put me through a terrible divorce, and has since become the ex from hell. I’m lucky that the kids we had together are terrific, but my anxiety about how they’d feel about me after the divorce kept me from trying a relationship again until recently. I made enough to put the kids through college, but I’m sure I would have done more if I wasn’t so nervous about trying anything new. I have enough life left that I want to figure out how to keep anxiety from pushing me into more decisions I’ll regret.

Just because anxiety has been a constant presence in your life doesn’t mean you’ve failed to get over it; in spite of anxiety, you extricated yourself from a bad marriage, managed a tough divorce, and raised good kids. Instead of imagining what you could have or should have done if you weren’t anxious, give yourself credit for all you did in spite of it.

Like the person above, you’re affected by the negative thoughts that anxiety puts in your brain; it tells you that you’re always undermining your own health, confidence, and relationships by stressing yourself and preventing yourself from performing well. It blames you for choking, underperforming, and disappointing, and is generally your worst fan, so you have to think carefully to realize it’s telling you lies.

The time to worry about your ability to live with anxiety is when you don’t leave the house or tolerate long term relationships, and that’s not you. Yes, you might have performed better if you were less anxious, but maybe not. After all, for every time anxiety caused you to choke, it also identified legitimate things to worry about and avoid. Anxiety is a genetic trait that gets passed on frequently from generation to generation because it helps creatures survive more often than not, which is why you don’t see too many chill gazelles.

Unlike the person above, who has hesitated to get started in life because of her doubts as well as incapacity, you never hesitated and you’ve got good things to show for it. Above all, you know that fear has never stopped you, nor has regret.

So don’t buy into the anxiety-driven should-haves and might-have-beens. Perhaps treatment can reduce your anxiety, and you could talk to a therapist or life coach about new strategies for approaching decisions and stress. What you’d be managing, however, isn’t the anxiety itself, which is probably in your very DNA, but the way you react to it and let it affect the way you feel about yourself.

Whether or not you ever find a way to reduce the impact anxiety has on your life, never let it reduce your pride in what you’ve accomplished in spite of it.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve never been fully me because I’ve never been fully at ease, but I don’t believe that being at ease is a reasonable or achievable goal that is available to everyone—and certainly not to me. Despite anxiety, I’ve taken meaningful risks and forged good relationships. Just because I don’t feel like a success doesn’t mean that I’m not one.”