The existence of the authors suggested a way to live and work within institutions that didn’t involve giving up parts of myself, and their books suggested that fear was not an inappropriate response to the world — that there was real violence at play, violence felt not just by me, but by everyone.
I had been taking Citalopram for ten years when I decided to take a break. At 18, I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a constant and persistent sense of worry about everyday things. I think of GAD as inchoate and needy, willing to attach itself to any normal set of circumstances regardless of whether there is actually a threat.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Except for you! Except for you! The spirit of fear has made your heart her home, and she will never leave you! No power, no love, no soundness of mind – the spirit of fear is yours!
Don’t expect the conversation with your friend to extinguish your anxiety; your anxiety won’t go that easy. It’s braided and baked into you, part of your dough. She won’t have any magic words to change that. Honesty doesn’t trump anxiety. What it does often do is reduce it down to proper proportions, make it a more manageable size.
AXIS 1 Anxiety as Birthright So Jesus asked [the mute boy’s] father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.” —Mark 9:21 For Maren and Nathaniel—may you be spared. —Scott Stossel’s dedication to his children, My Age of Anxiety We entered in together. Not like a man and woman in marriage. Nor a boy and his saw at the base of a tree. I’m convinced that even as my head…
Let me tell you about fear. It rises in you; it pulses like it is a part of you. It settles on your chest and clots in your lungs. It is the water scudding toward shore, tightening into an immense wave. The fear exists always in that moment right before it crashes into you; it is always rising up, ready to strike.
I had my first recurring nightmares in preschool. They involved the witch from Disney’s Snow White waiting to snatch me in my laundry room. Sleep is a major mindfuck for most children. I was convinced I didn’t sleep until I was three because I couldn’t remember it. But I’ve had vivid dreams and bad nights since, at least, then.
Marissa Maciel's previous work for The Toast can be found here. One clue that you may be having emotional difficulties in your pregnancy is when you tell people “I’m pregnant,” and their first reaction is to say, “Oh, is that ok?” No matter how planned my second pregnancy had been (trying for months, taking prenatal vitamins in advance, storing hand-me-downs from our first child for years), whenever I told anyone I was pregnant, I…
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, although studies have shown that sugar is sugar, even if it comes from apples, which suggests maybe you shouldn't be eating apples, since studies have also shown that sugar is toxic even at very low levels in rats, causing irreversible damage to both the brain and reproductive organs. But also if you're going to go "whole hog" on quitting sugar, you risk becoming one
This piece is brought to you on behalf of Michelle Brigid in celebration of her recent confirmation. I didn't know the secret meaning of the word “anxious” until I was older—seventeen, maybe, or eighteen. I knew that I felt different, that I worried a lot, that I was fearful. But I just thought I was strange, and generally kept to myself about it. When, on occasion, I would talk to a close friend or…
Stage 1: Three of your friends are in therapy and your cousin is starting to see results from CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy.) Every day on your way to work you listen to the podcast where that comedian interviews other comedians about their mental illnesses, then sneak into the office via the rear entrance and try to splash the puffy redness off your face in the basement bathroom. Maybe it’s time to consider some counselling or…
