First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety—A Personal Journey Through Anxiety and Self-Discovery

by Sarah Wilson

Ingrid, my publisher, just added this comment: “My doctor calls it positive, neurotic behavior: you do it compulsively because you are neurotic but the net benefit is positive. In my case it’s swimming.” Positive neurotic behavior! I love that there’s such a thing.

Also, for many of us it can feel unnatural to be on drugs for something so correlated with our character, our very selves. It can feel like we’re cheating, no matter how many times we tell ourselves that anxiety sufferers taking meds is no different to diabetics taking insulin. The sensation for me at various junctures has been one of numbness. And of muting myself. My real self. Of course I draw parallels to the 1950s “silencing” of female outrage (or “hysteria”) with Mother’s Little Helpers (tranquilizers).

Here’s my (possibly) contentious idea: It’s because we’re going in the wrong direction. We’re grasping outward for satisfaction, sense of purpose, and for a solution to our unease. When we really need to be going inward, where the comfort lies. Wrong way! Go back!

There is never a perfect decision. They become perfect when we make them.

Without space, it’s like watching a movie three feet from the cinema screen. We can’t see the whole picture. And we lose ourselves in the noise and the fuzzy pixilation. When we have space we have a chance at having a better anxious journey.

The standard solution is to consume—food, possessions, partners, gurus. If our self-worth is suffering, we’re told to buy a new moisturizer. Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, writes, “We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.”

The radical encouragement of the practice is to sit with the most disagreeable of states for as long as they last. Sooner or later, they exhaust themselves of energy.”