Are You There, Anxiety? It's Me, Jeffrey
“This is the only advice I can offer. Each
time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: am
I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a
thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly
every case, that you are fine. Life rolls on. No one cares. Very few things—apart
from death and crime—have real, irreversible stakes, and when something with real
stakes happens, humiliation is the least of your worries.”
It’s often hard for me to believe that it took me eighteen years to realize that I’ve literally always been anxious. It may have manifested in strange, indirect ways growing up, but it was always there. I only began to realize the extent to which I have anxiety when the growing responsibilities of adulthood blew the lid off of my inner obsession with being perfect.
I’ve always taken things very seriously. Even now, as an adult, there are very few things—if anything—that I’m directly involved with that I don’t take seriously. I guess I’ve always had an “all or nothing” type of work ethic and personality. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to give it my all. And it took me years to learn that my work ethic combined with my need for perfection very quickly turned “giving it my all” into “giving all of myself” to something. For the better part of the first two decades of my life, it was school.
Since I’ve always taken things very seriously, you can easily guess that this personality trait (or curse) first manifested itself in school. In kindergarten, my teacher practically wrote my parents a novel about how during a group assignment I quickly abandoned my group members when I didn’t like what they were doing and sought out to do the project on my own, without even asking if doing it on my own was an option. My teacher thought it was the most independent and strikingly dedicated thing a kindergarten student had ever done. It would become the focal point and stepping stone for both my parents and my future elementary school teachers when describing how Jeffrey works best. It wasn’t that I necessarily enjoyed schoolwork or going to school all that much, but the message spread to children that schoolwork and getting it done is the most important thing about our identity stuck with me quickly and strongly. In first grade, I received my school’s Award of Recognition for Work Ethic at our end-of-year assembly, in front of the entire school. In first grade. What the hell kind of first grader receives a work ethic award? Again, my parents and teachers took it as a sign of maturity and ability to handle responsibility, and I remember being proud of myself. There was obviously no way for me to know, at least at that time, the ways in which my work ethic and need for perfection would begin to plague me as I grew up.
By the time I reached high school, failure was a common occurrence. I wasn’t the only one who struggled with math and failed multiple terms and was on the verge of attending summer school. Somehow, by high school, there is a somewhat comforting feeling of knowing either you are not the only one who is terrible at this, or there is someone who is doing worse than you. These were the ways that I had convinced myself that failure, in some instances, was okay. Besides, by that point, I was already being told that it was fine if math or science was not my strong suit because graduation was already being talked about and that meant getting to pursue whatever you thought you were good at for the rest of your life. But it was difficult for me to separate what my parents and teachers perceived as being perfect and my own obsession with it. For the longest time, they felt like one and the same. Throughout elementary school, high school, and even college, I had never once thought that not being perfect would be okay. I merely found ways to justify my failures and then internalize the pressure to do better next time, but the pressure didn’t come from anyone but myself. I’m a perfectionist. Sure, my mother cared about my schoolwork and my grades just as much as I did for most of those years, but there was always an inner voice that everything had to be perfect, or something bad would happen. What was that bad thing? Back then, I probably would’ve told you not getting a good grade on the test, project, or assignment, or worse, failing. For students who are raised with the mentality of avoiding failure at all costs merely because one must do well, failure becomes the root of everything wrong in the world. We don’t teach kids that failure is natural or universal, and it’s going to be okay. It’s better to teach them to work hard and do their best, with best obviously meaning the highest grade possible. It makes kids become obsessed with good grades, being perfect, and creates an immense amount of pressure that often isn’t visible until it’s too late.
My need for perfection did stretch beyond school, but since being a student (and a good one, at that) had been my sole identity for essentially my entire life, it was the central spot where it felt like being perfect really mattered. When I started college, studying English literature and really enjoying almost every part of school for the first time ever, I officially lost control. I chalked up my feelings of fear and unease to simply a rough transition from high school, but it quickly became more than that. I was anxious in a way that I no longer knew how to handle, which isn’t saying much since I was never very good at handling such feelings. New milestones and responsibilities, such as getting my driver’s license and new pressure to have a part-time job while in school, only mounted and suddenly becoming an “adult” was no longer something that was supposed to be liberating and fun. Simple tasks and assignments for school were now pushing me right over the edge. I was crying all the time. I didn’t wait long to try to express my seemingly newfound feelings of anxiety to my mom, honestly trying to explain that I didn’t know how to handle myself on my own anymore. She immediately suggested we “find someone for me to talk to,” meaning a therapist, but since she happened to be tied up from a work injury at the time and I wasn’t about to find one myself since I had no idea which way was up in this new thing called adulthood, the plan fell to a standstill for a few months and I continued struggling. By that summer, I was having random panic attacks and really starting to scare myself, so we finally found me a psychologist.
By the time I started attending therapy regularly, I felt like I was improving, just by opening up on certain things I had internalized for so long. But I was nowhere near ready to face the reality of my anxiety and most of its causes, and it would be another few years before that all came to a head. In college, I was in therapy, acknowledging I had anxiety, trying to deduce the causes, and overall just trying to “get better.” I had never once thought that a) I’ve basically been like this my whole life and shit is just hitting the fan now or b) I’m probably going to be like this for the remainder of my life. These were personal epiphanies I had not yet reached or even considered. Since being a student had still been my only identity and I didn’t understand why virtually everyone in my life was now expecting more from me (e.g. a part-time job or something else to care about besides school), I felt hesitant to grow up. I didn’t want to. I felt like I had retained a childlike understanding of the world while everyone around me continued on, and for the longest time, I was okay with that. But at the same time, it created an immense amount of anxiety since, for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was satisfying the definition of “what I should be doing,” which at this point was being in school with a part-time job. My attempts to find a part-time job during my first year of college were unsuccessful, resulting in me being jobless for most of that period, which not only increased the pressure and anxiety (since people never stopped asking about it, or making me feel bad about myself) but also caused me to give more of myself to school than ever before, because it felt like that was all I had. If I didn’t give all of myself to school—especially now that I’m at a level where I’m studying what I enjoy—what else did I have? I still had a mentality that told me succeeding in school was the only thing that mattered. If I wasn’t satisfying expectations of me at that time and the definition of “what I should be doing,” who was I? I didn’t understand why I needed to make money or start saving or why any of this new pressure was being put onto me when I didn’t ask for it. But when I wasn’t giving too much of myself to my schoolwork and obsessing over the perfection of my work and my grades to the point of it becoming unhealthy, I didn’t feel alive. I felt like a child left behind. I fell into what can only be described as my very first depressive episode. I felt like not a girl but not yet a woman—a song I listened to an embarrassing amount of times during this period.
Things felt like they got better the following summer. I found a part-time job, I started writing somewhat professionally for the first time, and I decided to take an extra semester to finish college before starting university. For the first time in my entire life, it felt like the pressure was off. I was lured into a false sense of ease and good mental health for a few months all because I felt like, for the first time ever, I didn’t have to worry about being perfect. I was only taking two classes, and I only worked two nights a week. I could start dedicating myself to other things that matter…but I had no idea how to do that. I still felt like a child. I was a child, maybe not in age, but in mind and in spirit. I still had no real perception of money and how easily it could be made or spent. Despite having the same rough idea of who I wanted to be in my head for years, I had no motivation, drive, or sense of urgency in the least to figure it out. Not to mention that just because I had gone from a full load of classes to basically none at all didn’t mean I had resolved the anxieties caused by my need for perfection or newfound tendency to give unhealthy amounts of myself to schoolwork.
In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes, “I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.” I’ve never been able to fully put my finger on it, but I’ve never been someone who was dying to grow up and then satisfy the cliché of realizing being a grown-up is no fun at all and wishing to be young again. Not once can I recall thinking as a child that I wanted to grow up faster. I remember seeing the desire in others and portrayed in books and movies, since to a child it somehow feels like exciting things only happen to grown-ups and not to them. But I just never possessed that desire. I liked and thrived in the blissful innocence of childhood much more than anyone else I knew, which is why I suppose I never developed a real yearning to grow up. Blissfully innocent childhood also matched up perfectly with my introversion, something the adult world still fails to take seriously. So when I was nineteen and suddenly faced with this enormous pressure of a future I didn’t ask for but would have to somehow face just like everyone else, I honestly could not picture what life looked like beyond the nineteenth pole. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Either way, thinking about it or worse, being asked about it, tended to completely push me over the edge. Still does. We’re working on it.
When I started university, shit truly hit the fan. Everything I didn’t want to face suddenly became unavoidable. Old anxiety rituals I used to ruthlessly commit myself to, all in the name of dedicating the essential parts of myself to school, no longer worked, and I felt lost. Not to mention the overall culture shock of being in school full-time with a part-time job for the very first time—despite being twenty years old—through me for the biggest loop. I didn’t understand why what I was doing wasn’t working. I didn’t understand why the level of dedication and commitment I was putting into things—both school and work—was no longer making me fulfilled but leaving me drained and heavily depressed. I was also light years away from learning and accepting the concept of “it’s okay to not be okay.” Several months and therapy sessions later, I finally figured out that I had been giving too much of myself to things (namely school, but other things, too) and I had to learn how to spread myself somewhat evenly for the sake of my sanity. For me, thus far, that has been what learning to navigate adulthood is all about. Trying my hardest to know when to take a break, say no, or step away. Humans aren’t robots and we have to learn our limits at some point or another. It sounds so stupidly simple, but it took me a long time to learn.
My need for perfection and control has always spread beyond school, though. I struggle to remember a time where I didn’t need something to be perfect just because. It didn’t come from a place of a parent or adult instilling the incessant need for perfection in me. It truly came from nobody else but me. Looking back, I’ve always held myself to impeccably high standards. It had to be perfect for me and me only, because what I think is the only thing that matters. Several people have told me it’s admirable that I think that way, but I also understand why it’s plagued me. I’ve always known I was a perfectionist. I always knew I related way too much to Monica Geller or Claire Dunphy, but I just never thought it was or would ever get out of hand. I was wrong. It got out of hand long ago, and only since becoming an adult have I had to learn the hard way that life is not perfect and never will be. It’s healthy to strive for good grades but the world isn’t going to end if you end up with a bad one. No one cares if you sounded like an idiot making that phone call. No one cares about that awkward interaction for more than thirty seconds afterward. Life goes on. No one cares. If there’s one thing I’ve really had to teach and repeat to myself over and over again the past few years, it’s that truly no one cares and it’s really not that deep.
“But failing is universal. It’s a language almost everybody understands. Without slipups and mistakes and doing the wrong things because the right ones still seem so scary, we’d never figure out who we are. Plus, failure’s never permanent. It’s part of the process, not what defines it.”
—Anne T. Donahue, Nobody Cares
Follow It's Not That Deep on Instagram — @areyouthereanxiety — and listen to my playlist of mental health songs on Spotify and Apple Music
—Lindy West, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman
It’s often hard for me to believe that it took me eighteen years to realize that I’ve literally always been anxious. It may have manifested in strange, indirect ways growing up, but it was always there. I only began to realize the extent to which I have anxiety when the growing responsibilities of adulthood blew the lid off of my inner obsession with being perfect.
I’ve always taken things very seriously. Even now, as an adult, there are very few things—if anything—that I’m directly involved with that I don’t take seriously. I guess I’ve always had an “all or nothing” type of work ethic and personality. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to give it my all. And it took me years to learn that my work ethic combined with my need for perfection very quickly turned “giving it my all” into “giving all of myself” to something. For the better part of the first two decades of my life, it was school.
Since I’ve always taken things very seriously, you can easily guess that this personality trait (or curse) first manifested itself in school. In kindergarten, my teacher practically wrote my parents a novel about how during a group assignment I quickly abandoned my group members when I didn’t like what they were doing and sought out to do the project on my own, without even asking if doing it on my own was an option. My teacher thought it was the most independent and strikingly dedicated thing a kindergarten student had ever done. It would become the focal point and stepping stone for both my parents and my future elementary school teachers when describing how Jeffrey works best. It wasn’t that I necessarily enjoyed schoolwork or going to school all that much, but the message spread to children that schoolwork and getting it done is the most important thing about our identity stuck with me quickly and strongly. In first grade, I received my school’s Award of Recognition for Work Ethic at our end-of-year assembly, in front of the entire school. In first grade. What the hell kind of first grader receives a work ethic award? Again, my parents and teachers took it as a sign of maturity and ability to handle responsibility, and I remember being proud of myself. There was obviously no way for me to know, at least at that time, the ways in which my work ethic and need for perfection would begin to plague me as I grew up.
By the time I reached high school, failure was a common occurrence. I wasn’t the only one who struggled with math and failed multiple terms and was on the verge of attending summer school. Somehow, by high school, there is a somewhat comforting feeling of knowing either you are not the only one who is terrible at this, or there is someone who is doing worse than you. These were the ways that I had convinced myself that failure, in some instances, was okay. Besides, by that point, I was already being told that it was fine if math or science was not my strong suit because graduation was already being talked about and that meant getting to pursue whatever you thought you were good at for the rest of your life. But it was difficult for me to separate what my parents and teachers perceived as being perfect and my own obsession with it. For the longest time, they felt like one and the same. Throughout elementary school, high school, and even college, I had never once thought that not being perfect would be okay. I merely found ways to justify my failures and then internalize the pressure to do better next time, but the pressure didn’t come from anyone but myself. I’m a perfectionist. Sure, my mother cared about my schoolwork and my grades just as much as I did for most of those years, but there was always an inner voice that everything had to be perfect, or something bad would happen. What was that bad thing? Back then, I probably would’ve told you not getting a good grade on the test, project, or assignment, or worse, failing. For students who are raised with the mentality of avoiding failure at all costs merely because one must do well, failure becomes the root of everything wrong in the world. We don’t teach kids that failure is natural or universal, and it’s going to be okay. It’s better to teach them to work hard and do their best, with best obviously meaning the highest grade possible. It makes kids become obsessed with good grades, being perfect, and creates an immense amount of pressure that often isn’t visible until it’s too late.
My need for perfection did stretch beyond school, but since being a student (and a good one, at that) had been my sole identity for essentially my entire life, it was the central spot where it felt like being perfect really mattered. When I started college, studying English literature and really enjoying almost every part of school for the first time ever, I officially lost control. I chalked up my feelings of fear and unease to simply a rough transition from high school, but it quickly became more than that. I was anxious in a way that I no longer knew how to handle, which isn’t saying much since I was never very good at handling such feelings. New milestones and responsibilities, such as getting my driver’s license and new pressure to have a part-time job while in school, only mounted and suddenly becoming an “adult” was no longer something that was supposed to be liberating and fun. Simple tasks and assignments for school were now pushing me right over the edge. I was crying all the time. I didn’t wait long to try to express my seemingly newfound feelings of anxiety to my mom, honestly trying to explain that I didn’t know how to handle myself on my own anymore. She immediately suggested we “find someone for me to talk to,” meaning a therapist, but since she happened to be tied up from a work injury at the time and I wasn’t about to find one myself since I had no idea which way was up in this new thing called adulthood, the plan fell to a standstill for a few months and I continued struggling. By that summer, I was having random panic attacks and really starting to scare myself, so we finally found me a psychologist.
By the time I started attending therapy regularly, I felt like I was improving, just by opening up on certain things I had internalized for so long. But I was nowhere near ready to face the reality of my anxiety and most of its causes, and it would be another few years before that all came to a head. In college, I was in therapy, acknowledging I had anxiety, trying to deduce the causes, and overall just trying to “get better.” I had never once thought that a) I’ve basically been like this my whole life and shit is just hitting the fan now or b) I’m probably going to be like this for the remainder of my life. These were personal epiphanies I had not yet reached or even considered. Since being a student had still been my only identity and I didn’t understand why virtually everyone in my life was now expecting more from me (e.g. a part-time job or something else to care about besides school), I felt hesitant to grow up. I didn’t want to. I felt like I had retained a childlike understanding of the world while everyone around me continued on, and for the longest time, I was okay with that. But at the same time, it created an immense amount of anxiety since, for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was satisfying the definition of “what I should be doing,” which at this point was being in school with a part-time job. My attempts to find a part-time job during my first year of college were unsuccessful, resulting in me being jobless for most of that period, which not only increased the pressure and anxiety (since people never stopped asking about it, or making me feel bad about myself) but also caused me to give more of myself to school than ever before, because it felt like that was all I had. If I didn’t give all of myself to school—especially now that I’m at a level where I’m studying what I enjoy—what else did I have? I still had a mentality that told me succeeding in school was the only thing that mattered. If I wasn’t satisfying expectations of me at that time and the definition of “what I should be doing,” who was I? I didn’t understand why I needed to make money or start saving or why any of this new pressure was being put onto me when I didn’t ask for it. But when I wasn’t giving too much of myself to my schoolwork and obsessing over the perfection of my work and my grades to the point of it becoming unhealthy, I didn’t feel alive. I felt like a child left behind. I fell into what can only be described as my very first depressive episode. I felt like not a girl but not yet a woman—a song I listened to an embarrassing amount of times during this period.
Things felt like they got better the following summer. I found a part-time job, I started writing somewhat professionally for the first time, and I decided to take an extra semester to finish college before starting university. For the first time in my entire life, it felt like the pressure was off. I was lured into a false sense of ease and good mental health for a few months all because I felt like, for the first time ever, I didn’t have to worry about being perfect. I was only taking two classes, and I only worked two nights a week. I could start dedicating myself to other things that matter…but I had no idea how to do that. I still felt like a child. I was a child, maybe not in age, but in mind and in spirit. I still had no real perception of money and how easily it could be made or spent. Despite having the same rough idea of who I wanted to be in my head for years, I had no motivation, drive, or sense of urgency in the least to figure it out. Not to mention that just because I had gone from a full load of classes to basically none at all didn’t mean I had resolved the anxieties caused by my need for perfection or newfound tendency to give unhealthy amounts of myself to schoolwork.
In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath writes, “I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.” I’ve never been able to fully put my finger on it, but I’ve never been someone who was dying to grow up and then satisfy the cliché of realizing being a grown-up is no fun at all and wishing to be young again. Not once can I recall thinking as a child that I wanted to grow up faster. I remember seeing the desire in others and portrayed in books and movies, since to a child it somehow feels like exciting things only happen to grown-ups and not to them. But I just never possessed that desire. I liked and thrived in the blissful innocence of childhood much more than anyone else I knew, which is why I suppose I never developed a real yearning to grow up. Blissfully innocent childhood also matched up perfectly with my introversion, something the adult world still fails to take seriously. So when I was nineteen and suddenly faced with this enormous pressure of a future I didn’t ask for but would have to somehow face just like everyone else, I honestly could not picture what life looked like beyond the nineteenth pole. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. Either way, thinking about it or worse, being asked about it, tended to completely push me over the edge. Still does. We’re working on it.
When I started university, shit truly hit the fan. Everything I didn’t want to face suddenly became unavoidable. Old anxiety rituals I used to ruthlessly commit myself to, all in the name of dedicating the essential parts of myself to school, no longer worked, and I felt lost. Not to mention the overall culture shock of being in school full-time with a part-time job for the very first time—despite being twenty years old—through me for the biggest loop. I didn’t understand why what I was doing wasn’t working. I didn’t understand why the level of dedication and commitment I was putting into things—both school and work—was no longer making me fulfilled but leaving me drained and heavily depressed. I was also light years away from learning and accepting the concept of “it’s okay to not be okay.” Several months and therapy sessions later, I finally figured out that I had been giving too much of myself to things (namely school, but other things, too) and I had to learn how to spread myself somewhat evenly for the sake of my sanity. For me, thus far, that has been what learning to navigate adulthood is all about. Trying my hardest to know when to take a break, say no, or step away. Humans aren’t robots and we have to learn our limits at some point or another. It sounds so stupidly simple, but it took me a long time to learn.
My need for perfection and control has always spread beyond school, though. I struggle to remember a time where I didn’t need something to be perfect just because. It didn’t come from a place of a parent or adult instilling the incessant need for perfection in me. It truly came from nobody else but me. Looking back, I’ve always held myself to impeccably high standards. It had to be perfect for me and me only, because what I think is the only thing that matters. Several people have told me it’s admirable that I think that way, but I also understand why it’s plagued me. I’ve always known I was a perfectionist. I always knew I related way too much to Monica Geller or Claire Dunphy, but I just never thought it was or would ever get out of hand. I was wrong. It got out of hand long ago, and only since becoming an adult have I had to learn the hard way that life is not perfect and never will be. It’s healthy to strive for good grades but the world isn’t going to end if you end up with a bad one. No one cares if you sounded like an idiot making that phone call. No one cares about that awkward interaction for more than thirty seconds afterward. Life goes on. No one cares. If there’s one thing I’ve really had to teach and repeat to myself over and over again the past few years, it’s that truly no one cares and it’s really not that deep.
“But failing is universal. It’s a language almost everybody understands. Without slipups and mistakes and doing the wrong things because the right ones still seem so scary, we’d never figure out who we are. Plus, failure’s never permanent. It’s part of the process, not what defines it.”
—Anne T. Donahue, Nobody Cares
Follow It's Not That Deep on Instagram — @areyouthereanxiety — and listen to my playlist of mental health songs on Spotify and Apple Music
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