‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’

How an Oscar Wilde quote helped me understand my anxiety.

I have tattoos on the back of my arms, just above my elbows. When combined, they form a sentence that describes the inside of my head, the inner depths of my anxiety. It comes from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Duchess of Padua.”

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

It applies to me in a slightly different context than it’s used in the play, but the overall message is spot-on. See, the way my particular “brand” of social and general anxiety tends to work is like this:

If something is good, it’ll convince me that we’re coming up on certain disaster. If we’re nearing disaster (or I convince myself that disaster is near), my body will start to shut down in various ways. Maybe my appetite will disappear, or maybe I’ll stress-eat until I’m overstuffed. Maybe I’ll struggle to get air into my lungs, or maybe I’ll find myself doubled over with sharp pains in my stomach.

The devil, in this scenario, is my brain — my devil is my anxiety.

I refuse to let my anxiety devil win. I may lose a few battles in the process, but I’m not giving up on overcoming it — whether that’s through therapy, exercise, diet, medication, or something else entirely. I’ve tried it all, and I’ll keep at it even if it takes another half-century to win.

What’s important is that I don’t get too ‘in my own head' in the process.