Misgiving Parade

Posted by fxckfeelings on May 4, 2015

Anxiety, like exhaustion and hunger, is one of those sensations that always and unfairly has a negative perception. After all, exhaustion is just your body putting on the brakes, hunger (not the chronic kind) is your body telling you it’s ready for pie, and anxiety is your body’s fire alarm that puts you on high alert and out of danger. Unfortunately, however, even when you take the right steps to protect yourself, the alarm doesn’t always shut down and sometimes it tells you to do things that really won’t protect you at all. Then you may still be anxious, even though you’ve done the right thing, or you may do the wrong thing because you’ve listened uncritically to your anxiety. In any case, if you develop a disciplined way of assessing risks and benefits, anxiety won’t control you or always be to your detriment. Then you’ll be good at protecting yourself without making self-protection (or maybe sleep or eating pie) your only goal in life.
–Dr. Lastname

I want to put my current relationship on hold, but I’m worried that I’m just backing away because I’m afraid of intimacy. He’s a nice guy with a good job, and now that it’s legal here he really wants to get married, so I wonder if I’m just scaring myself out of a good thing because commitment makes me nervous. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been stressed lately at work and feel overwhelmed. I don’t want to overreact to the fact that he expects me to call every day and, when I couldn’t, because my cellphone broke, he wouldn’t talk to me for three days out of anger. My friends say he’s rigid and overbearing, but they can be overprotective. My goal then is to figure out if I have a problem with intimacy or anything else that makes me so hesitant to commit.

Deciding whether or not to break up with someone, like deciding whether or not to move or look for a new job or get bangs, is one of those high stakes decisions that deserves a lot of consideration and often comes with at least a little anxiety. After all, you have a lot to lose, the gain is uncertain, and when you actually want hair somewhere, it can take forever to grow out.

The trouble with anxiety, however, is that it doesn’t just make you nervous about doing things that you really need to, like leaving the house, going to work, and figuring out your order at Chipotle, but it can make you second guess the validity of good, solid data and reasonable judgments.

It’s hard risking loss, except when the reward is surely much greater. The reward, in this case, is not dating someone who acts like your parole officer.

Your boyfriend’s neediness and reactivity to a brief break in contact is, indeed, a red flag which, taken together with your friends’ observations about his being overbearing, spells danger. Ask yourself if the same problem in his previous relationships may have worn them down or prevented them from getting started. (And if he never mentioned his previous relationships or always rushed to change the subject or got defensive, that’s a big red flag in and of itself.)

If you have good reason to back out, don’t doubt yourself because you’re anxious about making a decision. Relationships, like all partnerships, are potentially dangerous in terms of emotional hurt, excessive responsibility, and diminished choice. Anxiety is there to protect you, but your knowledge and experience should trump anxiety, not the other way around.

If anxiety causes you to flee relationships before you examine their risks and benefits, then it is, indeed, getting in the way. In your case, however, you gave the relationship a chance and uncovered a scary problem that has everything to do with your boyfriend and nothing to do with a fear of intimacy.

Don’t let this breakup cause you to doubt yourself or blame your feelings. Continue to watch carefully for how prospective partners handle stress and hurt feelings, and, if any partner makes you too responsible for the way he feels, prepare to move on without looking bad, feeling bad, or wishing you’d just gotten some highlights instead.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t walk out on this relationship without doubting myself, particularly when I feel anxious, but I know what I saw, and I believe I did what was necessary.”

My mother recently discovered she had breast cancer and also has one of those genes that causes it, so I’ve decided that the best way not to freak out is to face this thing head on. I’m going to get tested myself, but in the meantime, I’ve done the research and changed my diet to include more cancer-fighting foods, started taking more vitamins, and made some appointments with specialists just to get checked out head to toe to get a jump on what could possibly happen next. I’m trying to get my sister to get with the program, since she’s at risk as much as I am and even more worried, but she says that she’d rather be worried than “go overboard” like me. At least I’m doing something instead of waiting for a test to determine my fate. My goal is to get my sister to start taking care of herself and stop being so stubborn.

Hearing any medical news that involves the word “cancer” is like your doctor yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, but that theater is your brain. It certainly causes panic when you have to confront your mortality, particularly when you discover you have cancer-associated genes but no real idea of how that will actually affect your future.

And you’re right, ignoring your mortality entirely isn’t a good idea, particularly if you smoke or tend to avoid medical care that might make a big difference in preventing illness. Unfortunately, however, living healthy carries its own risks, because it has a limited ability to fend off cancer but a great ability to take over your life, making it so hard to meet other priorities or even enjoy yourself because you’re so focused on preventing your (not-so) impending tumor.

Yes, there are a few choices, like stopping smoking, that can make a huge difference. In most other ways, however, you have little influence over whether you get cancer or any other major illness, and people who invest in healthy living expecting to live a chemo-free life often feel like failures when illness happens anyway.

So don’t change your health habits unless you see evidence that a particular change will make a difference. Find out what your odds are of getting breast or ovarian cancer and what you can do about it, then take action if you think it’s necessary. Otherwise, live as healthfully as you would otherwise, with common sense, not cancer, guiding your decisions.

Instead of letting anxiety push you to do things just to feel better, or telling your sister to panic, add up the risks and benefits and then decide, knowing that you may always have to live with an awareness of death. Then, in a calm tone, let your sister know the results of your research and urge her to add up the risks and benefits in her own way.

Remember, the goal isn’t to be confident you’re not going to die or to be rid of anxiety about cancer. It’s to take good care of yourself and not let a preoccupation with your health and possible death get in the way of living a full and productive life.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t stop thinking about cancer now that mother told me I might have a cancer gene, but I know everyone is at risk of some illness or other and that, if I want to know what to look out for, I’d better get used to the idea that health risk is unavoidable. I’ll take good care of myself but I won’t let self-care interfere with other priorities.”