first, we make the beast beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety

by Sarah Wilson

No, we are the sky, and anxiety and depression are but clouds that pass through us.

And, yep, we’re the ones who send out random texts suggesting we all catch up for dinner next week. We’re also the ones who cancel at the last minute. And who simply do not pick up the phone for days (weeks?) when it gets too much.

I’d add that, in such instances, we’d love everyone (someone?) to see that we absolutely do not have our shit together. And to come and tell us they’ve got this one. Even for five minutes.

He said that trying to sleep by attempting to eliminate negative thoughts upon hitting the pillow, or trying not to panic about how you haven’t slept in three days, or whatever mind control you’ve been told to try, only succeeds in triggering an internal monitoring process that watches to see if you’re succeeding. Which keeps you awake.

Insomnia is a cry from our core to spend reflective time with ourselves. As British philosopher Alain de Botton puts it, ‘It’s an inarticulate, maddening but ultimately healthy plea released by our core self that we confront the issues we’ve put off for too long. Insomnia isn’t really to do with not being able to sleep; it’s about not having given ourselves a chance to think.’

It’s like we’re searching for a Something Else that makes us feel … what? Like we’ve landed, I suppose. And that things are all good on this patch.

You want to find something, but you don’t know what to search for. In everyone there’s a continuous desire and expectation; deep inside, you still expect something better to happen. That is why you check your email many times a day.

‘Gratitude can have such a powerful impact on your life because it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle. Your brain only has so much power to focus its attention. It cannot easily focus on both positive and negative stimuli.’ Literally, you can’t be grateful and anxious at the same time.

And if you’re high-functioning in your anxiety, there are not many men (or women) out there who will actually take the kite string off you in the first place. And I do wonder if it’s grossly unfair to ever expect them to be able to.

all my rushing, competing, frenzied thoughts are either a) plans or b) contingencies for what could happen.

The more banal the supposed trigger, the guiltier and more self-indulgent and pathetic we feel, thus adding to the anxious spiral.