Fie, Anxiety!

Posted by fxckfeelings on November 3, 2014

Sometimes anxiety and depression are not illnesses, though they may feel like it; they’re part of every human’s normal alarm system, warning you that something painful or soon-to-be-dangerous needs your attention. When anxiety and depression randomly tell you that the world sucks, however, that’s when you cross the line from normal to unnecessary, requiring attention. Either way, never rush to discount what anxiety and depression have to tell you about the world, but never believe them until you’ve assessed the alarm and reached your own conclusion.
–Dr. Lastname

My anxiety has been better lately, but it kicked up last weekend after my roommate’s friends broke a window in our apartment while they were tossing around a football. My roommate’s a nice guy, but he doesn’t want to pay for the window because he says the landlord doesn’t take good care of our apartment in a bunch of other ways. Now I’m starting to worry about what will happen when the landlord sees the damage and whether it will come out of my security deposit, which seems unfair, since I wasn’t even here. Anyway, my goal is to figure out whether I should up my medication because the stress from this whole thing is really hard to take.

Anxiety, like tiredness or anger, isn’t inherently problematic; if we never felt these things, it would be a big problem, and a probable sign of drug use, lobotomy, or being dead.

The issue, of course, comes with feeling anxious too much, or tired all the time, or angry at trees for being lazy. The current anxiety you’re feeling is the regular kind; it’s your response to your roommate’s actions that need rethinking.

Unfortunately, healthy levels of anxiety may require you to take action to resolve a troublesome situation, and the required action may make you even more anxious. That’s why you need to decide whether to start meditating and hope the problem goes away, or quell the anxiety by figuring out what to do and taking a stand (or the name of a good lawyer).

In this case, you’re right; if you do nothing, you may wind up paying for the window broken by your roommate’s friends. Probably not much money, but if your roommate can rationalize himself out of responsibility for this mess, and has friends who like to go long indoors, then the chances are there will be more messes and more costs, and your roommate will find additional reasons to make everyone else pay.

It’s nice that’s he’s friendly and pleasant to live with, but his refusal to pay up, and readiness to blame the landlord, make him less of a “nice guy” and more of a “selfish asshole.” Any Judge Judy viewer worth her salt will tell you that your roommate’s excuse is, to use Judy’s terminology, “bogus,” and will land you with a bill for the window and a possible forfeit of your deposit. By refusing to take responsibility, your roommate is passing his burden on to you.

With that and any other legal research at hand, ready yourself to make the case to your roommate. Price out the repair and let him know that, in your opinion, if he doesn’t pay to fix it promptly, it will create additional headaches for both of you in the future. Make it clear that, if he doesn’t do or pay for the fix within a few days, you’ll be forced to take him to Small Claims Court or give the landlord proof that you had nothing to do with the damage. It’s nothing personal, and you’d only take those steps with great regret, but it’s not up for discussion. Don’t accept any more excuses, particularly those about the landlord’s flaws or your own.

Remember, your goal isn’t to avoid experiencing any anxiety ever again; it’s to deal effectively with the threats and dangers of life, using anxiety to keep you alive, or just keep you from getting screwed.

STATEMENT:
“The last thing I welcome is conflict with a roommate, but I now see I’m at risk of having to clean up after a jerk with a talent for causing trouble and not paying for it. I will do what I can to protect myself while not getting drawn into negative emotions.”

My depression was always pretty bad starting when I was a kid, and here I am, almost thirty, having been treated with several courses of psychotherapy and at least three antidepressant medications, and nothing has helped. Now I have a new psychotherapist, a new psychopharmacologist, and two new medications…and very little hope about how anything is going to work, since nothing ever does. My goal is to find someone or something that can really help so I don’t have to go through my entire life feeling depressed.

Depression itself is a never-ending source of thoughts about failure, dysfunction, and things going from bad to worse. Add the expectation that proper treatment should work, and you have reason to feel fed up and let down after many years of recurrent depressive episodes.

Instead, think of your depressive illness as if it were a form of arthritis that produced despairing thoughts, not swollen joints. There are many medications that might help, but those that are most powerful happen to carry the highest risk of side effects, and the only way to find out which treatments are good is to try them, one at a time, while carefully observing what happens and measuring it for yourself. So far, there’s no such thing as a medication that works most of the time and doesn’t carry risks. There’s no cure, and that’s true whether you’re talking about your hands or your head.

Educate yourself about the major antidepressant options and their risks, either by consulting the internet or picking a psychiatrist’s brain. It’s not hard and doesn’t take long, Then ask yourself whether the ones you’ve already tried were for long enough and at a high enough dosage to know for sure, one way or another, whether they truly didn’t help. Keep a permanent record of your observations.

No, the doctor isn’t the best person to keep this list; it’s the sort of things that doctors do, but doctors come and go and records get lost. You’re the person who knows best whether you took a medication and how it felt, so make sure you keep your own list of which medications you tried, what happened, and whether you decided the medication was an effective weapon.

Doing this research also helps by giving you evidence to counteract the negative thoughts that tell you you’re helpless and mistreated. Find therapists who can coach you to do similar exercises that can keep you from feeling victimized by depression or treatment. You should respect the strong efforts you’ve made to deal with a tough illness.

Depression can be relentless and many medication trials don’t work. If you do your best, however, you can live a full life in spite of depressive symptoms and find treatments that will help, even if it takes a long time, and even if they aren’t cures. A healthier perspective will not only make the future less bleak, but will allow you to respect everything you’ve accomplished so far.

STATEMENT:
“I feel ground down and disappointed by depression and failed treatments, but that feeling has probably impaired me as much as depression itself. I will learn more about my choices, manage medication trials carefully, and check out every good option. I will not allow depression to control my self-respect.”