It's Not That Deep

“ It’s really fucking hard to tolerate uncertainty, disruption, and change in all aspects of one’s life at once when you don’t even know who you are and who you are supposed to be. And when SO much is going on, it’s too big to fear. Fear is specific. It is outward in the fact of a threat. When you fear something you have the opportunity to move away from it. Anxiety is different. With anxiety, you don’t know what the fuck to do, because it’s all internal. There is no specific threat. ” —Faith G. Harper, This is Your Brain on Anxiety: What Happens and What Helps A few months ago, I read Rosie O’Donnell’s 2007 memoir Celebrity Detox , which peaked my interest after finishing Ladies Who Punch —an inside look of the daytime talk show The View . Celebrity Detox was published a few months after the end of Rosie’s infamously troubled one-season run as the moderator of The View and discusses how, after the end of her own daytime talk show in 2002, she began a four-year break from the spotl...

“ We all have a bag. We all pack differently. Some of us are traveling light. Some of us are secret hoarders who’ve never parted with a memory in our lives. I think we are all called to figure out how to carry our bag to the best of our ability, how to unpack it, and how to face the mess. I think part of growing up is learning how to sit down on the floor with all your things and figuring out what to take with you and what to leave behind. ” —Hannah Brencher I’ve often found myself asking this question, especially in regard to the games my mind has played on me and the tricks my anxiety likes to pull. When all is said and done, and we accept that it’s time to let some things go, was it even real? Am I even real? Who am I without my anxiety? I’ve only recently learned that part of the reason why I’ve had such difficulty letting go of my anxieties is because they have made up a great deal of who I am. I’ve learned that I have always resorted to rituals and compulsions to make th...