Understanding the Anxious Mind examines scientific studies on anxiety, especially the studies of Jerome Kagan, and his former students, who’re seeing a lot of evidence that anxious adults were probably anxious babies.
The article suggests some “are just born worriers, their brains forever anticipating the dropping of some dreaded other shoe.” That’s totally me. IF something really good happens to me, something really bad has to happen. It’s like the universe insists that my life balance out into some sort of mediocre stasis.
One of my favorite lines in the article comes when they’re describing anxiety disorders. These studies aren’t talking about “garden-variety worriers”, those “who are sure that a phone call in the middle of the night means someone is dead.” First of all, are there really people who don’t immediately think someone’s dead when the phone rings at 3am? I can’t imagine. Who are these people?!!!?
I’ve always considered myself a really anxious person, but maybe I’m not. Like right now I don’t think I have Swine Flu even though it’s raging through Austin. I usually don’t think I have cancer unless I find a lump or blood where it shouldn’t be. Then of course I freak out, but then so do the doctors… but I digress.
The other reason I think, after reading this article, I may be garden-variety is because I was not an anxious baby. As I hear it I was abnormally calm as a baby. My mom is always saying my sister was a typical baby, cried all night, blah blah blah. But I slept through the night from infancy (not knowing any better, my mom says she would wake me up in the middle of the night to feed me until my grandfather, a doctor, said Don’t do that!); I wasn’t all fussy and was perfectly calm unless something major happened, like my aunt biting my cheeks too much because they were just so adorably fat.
Jezebel has a great post about the article. Anna N. (the poster) is wary of good things too. “I tend to become especially anxious after something good happens to me, as though I deserve something bad to even it out.” But Anna feels comforted that there might be some physiological reason for her anxiety. I don’t. Now more than ever I’m convinced that I do this all to myself. Where is that calm I had as a completely helpless baby?
Don’t forget to read the comments on Jezebel. Some of the best points are there. I can’t seem to find it online now (taken down?) but one commenter thinks that her anxiety comes from being told “ridiculous scenarios to scare me into compliance and it manifests as me constantly worrying about ‘what if…’”
I know that feeling well. Much of my anxiety is social. I’m constantly aware that people are judging me. And don’t try to tell me no one’s paying attention or it doesn’t matter, because they are and it does. To an extent. I think getting over this kind of anxiety is a matter of knowing people are judging but not letting it stop you from living your life as you want to live it.
