Anxiety Makes You Selfish
And other half-truths
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. — Teddy Roosevelt
When anxiety gets its claws in you, especially when it brings along its hired goon, depression, it can convince you of a lot of things that just aren’t true — things that you probably don’t even believe when you’re doing well. And it can cause us to come across negatively to others. After all, they can’t peak inside our minds to know what’s really going on. All that other people experience are our behaviors, which leads to misinterpretation and, often, judgment and stigma.
No matter how others see you, though, and no matter how you judge yourself, bear this in mind:
Anxiety does not make you selfish. Nor does it make you self-entitled, a burden, or any number of other things you might tell yourself. It makes you a human being grappling with an intruder in your psyche.
Inglorious Selfishness
But why do we appear selfish to those on the outside looking in?
When we’re anxious, we become lost in our own thoughts, waging a battle so distracting in its…
