I wrote this a while back as a tongue-in-cheek set of instructions people in my life needed to follow before they decided they knew enough about my experiences to give me advice or make a judgment on how valid my anxiety was. I’m sharing it here again because I think it does a good job capturing my daily experience, at least:
Step one: Get a big roll of packing tape and just wrap it all around your chest as tight as you can. It will get incredibly uncomfortable and sweaty and constricting. If you feel like you’re suffocating, you’ve done it right. While wearing it, try to ignore people who comment on your posture. People will tell you the solution is to “take some deep breaths,” but when you try, it just makes the tape feel tighter and reminds you of how trapped and labored your breaths are.
Step two: Think of the nastiest most obnoxious person you’ve ever met. call them up and hire them to stand in your bedroom and, as soon as you try to go to sleep, have scream GO TO SLEEP! GO TO SLEEP! YOU’RE NOT ASLEEP YET! YOU’RE GOING TO BE TIRED TOMORROW! GO TO SLEEP! GO TO SLEEP! Nothing can make this person shut up. You can only avoid this person by getting out of bed and doing something else, but if you do that, you’ll get just as little sleep.
Step three: Stick an earpiece in your ear and set it to play sound bites every few minutes at an annoying volume. sound bites include: NO ONE LIKES YOU, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO WEAR TOMORROW?, YOU’RE THE WORST, EVERYONE YOU LOVE WILL SOMEDAY DIE, YOU FORGOT TO DO A VERY IMPORTANT THING, YOU PROBABLY HAVE BRAIN PARASITES, and sometimes just a really loud screech. Almost everyone you know will joke about having similar thoughts, but you suspect that most of their earpieces are at much lower volumes and/or yell much less frequently, given how flippant they are.
Step four: Every morning, take a bunch of caffeine pills and some benadryl. This will make you feel wired, restless, and on edge, but also too exhausted and unfocused to direct that energy toward something productive. Use this inability to get anything done to inspire more self-critical sound bites (see step three). People will tell you the solution to this is to just haul yourself up and conjure enough focus and energy to do the things.
Step five: Acquire a wolf, or a feral dog if you cannot get a wolf, and keep it in your house. Get it to follow you around all day by sticking raw meat in your pockets. It is an incredibly dangerous animal. You will always be at risk of being attacked. Stay on edge. Pay attention to what it’s doing. Never let your guard down. People will recommend that you just ignore the animal, or train it to befriend you. They do not understand that it is a deadly predator. They will tell you about their struggles getting their pet terriers to stay off the furniture, as if this is comparable or relevant to living with an angry wolf. Other people will insist that it’s not there, or not that dangerous. All you know is, you can see it, snarling and threatening at the edge of your vision.
Congrats! You now have a better idea of what it’s like to be me. If you have not completed all these steps, any input from you regarding treatment for, or the severity of, my anxiety disorder will be summarily ignored.
