Since childhood, my life has been indelibly influenced by two diseases – depression and cancer. I have never had cancer myself, and only once have I experienced prolonged depression. Mostly whatever understanding of depression I have comes from my education as a psychologist and more profoundly from my role as a daughter, sister several times over, cousins, niece, close friends, and wife of someone who does suffer ongoing bouts of depression. But I do have first hand experience of a painfully debilitating neurotic anxiety.
When I have to meet new people in a social situation, I become intensely nervous. The reason I am so clear that it is neurotic is because it is totally, utterly irrational. I can break into a cold sweat simply as a result of a casual exchange about the weather at the supermarket check out. My heart rate is elevated for hours before and late into the night after a party during which I have to make small talk with people whom I’ve never met or don’t know well. It is positively excruciating for me to walk into a doctor’s office for a consultation, and my anxiety has been so intense during the few job interviews I have had to endure that I cannot believe I was actually given and held qualified professional positions throughout my adult life. Even a casual exchange with a neighbour over the fence can leave me with a feeling of awkwardness and the impulse to flee.
It’s not that I usually can’t think of anything to say, that I don’t enjoy people or find them interesting, nor do I think they don’t like me. By and large, enough people like me well enough to give me more than the minimum number of friends I want or need. In fact, by and large, people often think I am unusually confident and self-assured and do not suspect that, given my talkativeness, I am so ill at ease.
I am confident and self-assured in academic situations, during serious debates, and with my friends and family. But in the ordinary, unimportant exchanges of normal life, I am intensely ill at ease. I think part of this is the result of growing up in a large family and close-knit Catholic community where I always knew everybody and they knew me. But I think part of it is simply bio-chemical.
I strongly suspect this kind of anxiety is not uncommon, and that many people suffer from it. I do not think I am unique. But unlike some, I’ve never found that alcohol or marijuana made things any easier for me. Like people with depression, I think I simply must live with this painful consciousness, knowing it is irrational and unrealistic, but none the less painful. I enjoy people far too much and even go out of my way to seek them out to say that I am autistic. But I have a streak of shyness and awkwardness with strangers that I expect will be with me forever.
That, I guess, makes me doubly lucky to have a husband whom I still enjoy so much, and brothers, sisters, and friends who make me feel that I am somehow special.
And who don’t make me nervous.
“Like people with depression, I think I simply must live with this painful consciousness, knowing it is irrational and unrealistic, but none the less painful… But I have a streak of shyness and awkwardness with strangers that I expect will be with me forever.”
-I’m shy and unwilling to approach strangers, yet I will openly engage in a conversation – just not as the one who starts it. And also knowing that I shouldn’t be living with depression because it limits my enthusiastic side to life, my emotions still hold a place for me to feel that depression belongs to me and I must live with because of how I’ve lived for such a long time.
Comment by Mike — June 14, 2008 @ 1:02 am |