When I started my psychotherapy practice in 1990, I decided to specialize in Anxiety Disorders. I did this for a couple of reasons. One, the anxious person was usually a cooperative and willing client. They came on time, paid their bills, paid attention, were polite and respectful, made progress, rarely got angry. Often my job was to make them less cooperative and willing, not with me necessarily, but with the world in general. Anxious people are generally people pleasers and have a very tenuous relationship with the word “NO” and a repulsion toward anger and confrontation. In essence, they were the anti-narcissists, or as my therapist often called me, counter-narcissistic. The second reason, as you’ve probably surmised, was that I myself, was the victim of an anxious mind and suffered from panic attacks throughout my late 20’s and early 30’s. Anxiety was something I understood personally and intimately. I even invented a name for my anxious persona; Mildred. Mildred spent hours worrying about her health, the end of the world, whether or not people approved of her or if she had offended someone inadvertently. She rarely got dressed, preferring to stay in her bathrobe, never leaving the house. She smoked constantly and ate comfort food by the bag full. Of course, I didn’t act like Mildred, or look like her. No, I went about my highly functional life pretending to be absolutely OK. In fact, more than OK. And everyone bought it. Inside, however, I was miserable and terrified. I finally came out to the man I eventually married (who thought I was perfect) and risked losing him. But I couldn’t enter a relationship with such a terrible, shameful secret. Things turned out OK for me. I married the man, went into therapy and became a therapist myself. Now, 30 years later, I can only say, whew! and thank God for a good therapist and a loving boyfriend who never expected me to be perfect in the first place (my mistaken assumption). What I learned during my recovery process, was that the world, in fact, was scary. In those days, we had Star Wars (and I’m not talking the movie) the cold war, AIDS with no cure or even treatment, nuclear proliferation, Iran/Contra and a “greed is good” mentality. What I also learned was that fear of those things always harkened back to something in my personal life. My anxiety was existential, political, social and personal. More often than not, fear of what was going on in the world was just a symptom of what was going on inside of me. It wasn’t until I was able to manage my relationships, my emotions, my self-esteem and my behaviors that I could begin to manage the outside world and stop being afraid of it – at least to the point of utter distraction and panic.
