Going Mental: Anxiety in the Background

Issue Eight

Mar 09, 2021

Do you like the tone and pace of these newsletters?

To be honest, I find the upbeat tempo to be rather cathartic, even if it sort of plays a game of opposites with the subject matter. Is that fake of me? I don’t know. Do I care? I do not.

To confirm, we’re going to move Going Mental to once per week, and that once per week will be Sunday mornings. Based on an investigation that included exactly one Google search, that’s apparently the best time to send out newsletters. So Sunday mornings it will be.

Let’s go mental.

In the Media

I liked this issue’s article (and I really hope you read it; it’s quite short) for a number of reasons: it was written by a Globe and Mail reader and not a regular columnist, it’s about anxiety, the author is in his 60s, it includes a similar observation to one I make in my book. With that in mind, this issue’s excerpt will come from the last chapter of So Old A Pain: Depression in Fragments.

The thought, the passage, is this: “I equate [anxiety] to an app on my phone that’s running in the background, slowly draining the battery.”

I imagine that background app to also be thinking constantly, running a program of its own, and interfering with the phone’s general operation—sometimes even causing it to stall or reset. The stall I equate to a panic attack, the reset to a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, you can read the excerpt in the section below.

Like I said off the top, I like that the article’s author isn’t a professional writer. He’s a reader, and he’s contributing to a daily section in The Globe and Mail reserved for a reader’s article. The benefit for us is that he has no public persona to cultivate, no long-term narrative with which to be familiar in order to know where he’s coming from.

His name is Brad. He’s married. He’s in his 60s. He’s battled anxiety for 45 years. That’s a lot. His age is also important in that one of the more familiar mental health stigmas is that it’s somehow a “young person’s problem.” Poppycock. (That’s probably what Brad would say. He’s really old.)

It’s also notable that Brad likens panic attacks to heart palpitations. “Those who’ve experienced panic attacks,” he writes, “which mimic heart conditions, know that often you’re convinced you’re going to die. With every twinge, cramp or spasm, panic ensues.”

I’m sure a lot of you know exactly what he means. He also writes about COVID-19 as having created a new “baseline” for what he’d consider mentally healthy. I’m sure a lot of you can identify with that as well.

Anyway, do read the article. I’ve given you more of a summary than I’d have preferred off the top, and to make up for it I’ve included some links near the bottom of this newsletter. Read them. There will be a test.

Kidding. Kidding? Kidding.

Excerpt—So Old a Pain: Depression in Fragments

Good energy frightens me. At the very least I am wary of it, suspicious, distrustful of the vitality, the productivity, worried that it is yet another trick, a false dawn, a ruse that will convince me and satisfy others before abandoning me in an instant, or during the night’s sleep, grinding its teeth and sneering before blowing out the candle. It is a dread that runs constantly in the background, like an application on a mobile phone, invisible, yet spending the battery’s power and sapping energy. There is no purely good energy because of that application, one I didn’t install, I wasn’t consulted, and yet I can’t close it, can’t restart, the best I can do is not think about it, about the good energy, and prepare as best I can for the application to reveal itself as a virus, I am my own pet virus, to be glad for just a moment that the energy is good, and then to prepare for the virus, the pouring in and cold and sweating and spreading, the sickness, so old a pain.

Video

Mindful

I know what you’re thinking.

“That was a really good excerpt!”

I know, right? I’m extremely talented. (I hope you understand that my tongue is firmly in cheek.)

I had a pretty brutal weekend. Kind of like Brad’s experience in the drive thru. (You’ll know what I mean if you read the article.) Twenty years ago I’d have been scared to death, but this time, like so many times, I was able to simply lay low and ride it out. Not ideal, you end up missing so much. You scare and hurt other people, too.

None of this is easy, but that’s why we’re going through it together.

Thanks again for your generosity through the Buy Me a Coffee link. Also, please follow Going Mental on Instagram @GoingMental.

Remember, the next newsletter will arrive Sunday morning. I hope your time between now and then is peaceful and healthy.