Another chapter excerpt from my book – Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere. This chapter is more relevant now more than ever for me…

ANXIETY

Society alone can give you anxiety, a stressful home life or working environment can trigger these emotions and feelings too. But if through your life of extra upheaval, emotional blackmail and what would be termed ‘a very dysfunctional’ upbringing, what if you didn’t get the necessary experience to understand all this and know what was going on? What if you didn’t ever develop coping mechanisms or recognise what might be a weakness in yourself or potential strength? Then how can you hope to make it easier for yourself and work through it? This is the type of question I ask myself, then go to work trying to unravel what it really means. I also know you don’t have to have had a dysfunctional life to feel anxiety, it can happen to anyone, but it definitely makes the path a bit harder.

What I did work out was to spend less time worrying and trying to predict the outcome of things I hadn’t done yet or that hadn’t yet happened. This is where I feel mental time travel has held me back a bit. I missed out on a lot of experiences because I couldn’t stop theorising what would happen and how I would feel. I have a good memory for feelings, so unfortunately I still come across an event or idea that would require me to be in the presence of ‘people’ and I just can’t do it. However much I might want to be a part of the subject matter. Not because I am always anxious, but because now I have the experience to know I don’t want to cause it and will be awkward and can seem rude. There are some things I just like the idea of, but I ‘walk’ myself through and it does always end the same. I’m bored, don’t know how to join in, feel uncomfortable and want to go home.

This isn’t negative, this is realistic. I am not a naturally happy go lucky person, and I can deal with crowds if I have to. I’ve been to trade shows, tattoo conventions, festivals and work networking events, although that was a number of years ago now. I like to believe I could again if I really wanted or had to.

I have just worked out I don’t want to, I am not that person. I just tried to be for a really long time. I don’t socialise now at all, have very limited family and keep myself to myself mostly in real life, and I am happier and more stable for it. But it is a shame to think in order to have a quiet enjoyable life you can’t have people generally in it. I know now that’s because people are the random element I cannot foresee, predict, control or understand fully. I myself am included in that.

It is disturbing to me to see what society has become, how frustrated everyone is, how the goalposts keep moving and creating a confused landscape. It seems we went through a phase of encouraging everyone to be themselves when nobody knew who they were, and it’s all gone a bit wrong.

Just paying attention to the world around you and media driven news and propaganda can cause people to feel worry. Throughout the last century there have been many scare tactics and fear campaigns, just for the sake of profit and manipulating the masses. I just try and pick my way through what is around me and apply concern and worry to that which should be worried about. But anxiety for me is sometimes applied to things I cannot change so I try and minimise this where I can.

I know I have covered dreams already but as this is applicable to anxiety, a further reference needs to be mentioned.

Example: I have watched and do watch a lot of disaster movies, apocalyptic, life altering event films that give you the worst case scenario. I love them, partly because we always defeat the impending doom so really they are feel good films to me. I have gone through phases of having nightmares though, not so much these days (I have a theory about why), but most of these are and have been about disaster. Whether it be alien invasion, zombie virus, volcano, tidal wave or tsunami, they all had a common theme. I would need to save myself and my dogs. The panic at knowing it’s coming or of not being able to get away can often linger well into the next day. The nightmare is no longer happening, but the feeling is. My husband found it really bizarre that I even had dreams, and even weirder that the feeling of something completely fabricated can stay with me. Also that I went out of my way to watch films that would give me nightmares.

I determined this to be nothing to with the movies per say. But because I was anxious in real life about something happening to my dogs, or that I wouldn’t be able to save them or myself. The reason I decided this, was because after I met my husband, I very quickly stopped having those nightmares. Because I fully believe in the time of a crisis, he is exactly the person you would want by your side. In real life I began to feel safe, secure and protected (something I had never had before), and this transferred to my dreams. I am still worried about these things on a basic level, because they are possible, but it doesn’t take over as it did before.

The anxiety is managed, but not eliminated. How could you possibly not have some anxiety about the world around you? Firstly we are told we are hurtling through the massive void which is space, while spinning. We are at the mercy of unpredictable weather and on a geologically unstable earth. We are surrounded by unpredictable animals and people, and can be killed by microbes we can’t see. Just that little lot gave me much to worry about, before I even learnt about what terrible things humans do. So when I would hear people talk of being anxious, I used to think, yes, but are you anxious enough? Now I realise it’s turned into something else entirely. It’s become an industry, and rather than help people to cure it, they help to manage their anxiety, labelled it and designed medicines for it – at great profit to someone I’m sure.

I do believe people should be concerned about the world around them and of the harmful things out there that can affect people, but to try and have a quality of life too. That’s the balance I have always been trying to achieve. I now believe experiencing some anxiety is normal, this is a mechanism that has served its purpose well in the evolutionary past, as we are led to believe. I’m not sure we should constantly be trying to dampen our human responses just to function. At what level do we accept that the trigger for so many might need to be addressed – but when the trigger is life itself and society, what can be done? More medication I guess.