The Anxious Morning

We often do not talk about the financial burden that comes with mental health struggles. Everyone sees injury or physical illness that can prevent someone from earning the living they want and need to live. But the hard fact is that even though it may be largely invisible to many, a significant number of people struggling with anxiety problems are unemployed or underemployed for some period of time during that struggle.

When you are not working or have modified your employment in the form of fewer hours or less responsibility, there is going to be a financial impact on you and your family.

The point is that when we are struggling and anxiety and fear are loudly demanding to always be the most important thing in the room, we are easily sucked into our own suffering where there is exactly zero visibility when it comes to how grateful we should be for anything.

People dealing with anxiety disorders can dread days like today often for the reasons I describe here. For many that struggle with hyper-responsibility or the belief that they are in charge of making everyone happy, there can be tremendous pressure that drives the anxiety and fear. Regardless of what your situation and specific issues may be, today you may be struggling and feeling like you are a million miles away from thankful.

I’ve wrestled with this decision, but I will publish the final edition of The Anxious Morning on Friday December 30.

So … how shall we wrap this up? What do you want to talk about in the last 20 editions of The Anxious Morning?

We have 20 more mornings together. How do YOU want to spend them?

The barn was ice cold. My family was no more than 5 feet from me, but I could not hear a word they were saying. I could see my kids talking and smiling, but I could also see that they were not talking or smiling … at me. I was checked out and they clearly knew it. I may as well have not been there.

Clearly, I was doing this all wrong...

I am not here today to give Carl Sagan credit for curing my raging obsession with death and the nature of existence, but what I needed something to hang on to, he gave it to me. Sagan taught me that if nothing else, my job is to simply experience things ...

You know that thing where the coach or mentor repeats the same thing again and again, rarely acknowledges variations, never changes or broadens that message, and works to “scale” that simple message for a large number of clients? Or you know that thing where the coach or mentor can’t really help then declares that you’re just not doing it right, you’re not fully committed, or that you’re not capable of following their “proven” methods? How about the thing where the coach or mentor suddenly realizes that they are in over their heads and abruptly stops whatever form of help they thought they were providing you? ...

What happens if I decide that my lived experience and the fact that I read Claire Weekes means that I can go from social media psychoeducator to one-one-one or group recovery coach?

I’ll tell you what happens. I run a very high risk of treating you, guiding you, and advising you, as if you are just like me. That’s just a function of how humans work. It doesn’t make me a bad person. It just makes me untrained and inexperienced when it comes to providing actual face-to-face guidance or treatment. If I do not spend ten plus years actually listening to the experiences of others and interacting with them, then spend another 3+ years being formally trained and supervised by experienced clinicians, I run the risk of misapplying my experience, missing details that matter, ignoring complexity and nuance, and causing harm even when I have the best of intentions ...

The misconception or misinterpretation that occupies the top slot on the list of things that make my crazy is that thing where someone tells me that this all boils down to, “just do it.”

No. That’s not what it boils down to. This is not a Nike commercial. Nothing in life, including running or whatever else Nike thinks you do better in their shoes, ever gets that simple. Recovery from an anxiety disorder is absolutely and certainly not ever “just do it.” ...

Recovery is more than just exposure and trying to feel better. Last week on The Anxious Morning we talked about the common “recovery identity crisis” issue. That thing where we’re not really sure who we are if we’re not anxious people. That can be part of the recovery process, and part of addressing that identity crisis is to literally just try new things, sometimes at random and just for the sake of trying them ...

Are anxiety and excitement related? Are they the same thing? I’m going to point at some research that you might find interesting because it indicates that anxiety - at least anticipatory anxiety - and excitement may very well look so much alike that two people in the same state can choose which of the labels they attach to it. This creates very different results when performance is measured on anxiety-triggering tasks.

This thing that we’re sure is so horrible and dangerous is also nearly indistinguishable from what we feel in some of the happiest moments life has to offer. That has to hold at least some value in this thing we do together.