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• Do your friends really like you, or are they just being nice out of pity?
• Did you leave the stove on?
• Really, did you leave it on?
• Hey, so this climate change thing looks pretty scary, huh? Probably not a good thing to leave your progeny to suffer through.
• On an unrelated note, when was your last period again?
• Fuck, now you’re gonna have to go to the drug store, pick up some tests and holy shit what are the abortion cutoffs in your state, again?
• What if you have to find an in-network provider for an appointment, call them, and face the possibility that they’re not taking new patients?
• Oh, that’s an itchy scalp, isn’t it? Better spend the next 30 minutes recording a zoomed in video as you look through each hair section and check for lice.
• Can humans get fleas?
• What if you have to fumigate? You can’t afford that.
• Your car’s sounding weird, don’t you think? What if it just had a catastrophic malfunction on the highway and you die in a horrific crash?
• I mean, at least then you won’t have to worry about the appointments, might be a relief.
I mean this in the best way, fuck you for making me think about each of these in detail just as I was going to bed.
Didn’t have to read it.
I’m intentionally steering my eyes away from all the suggestions here, lol.
Bro my brain has been fucking me my whole life, get in line
“Am I breathing right?”
tends to help get things going.
If it doesn’t work, and you actually calm your breathing instead, try prefacing it with an “Oh no!”, and if that doesn’t work still, try framing it in the negative, with more urgent alarm…
“Oh no! Is my breathing wrong?!”
Then you can really get underway with anxiety, moving on to things like “something bad is going to happen”.
With a little practice, you can build up to full blown panic attacks in no time.
Don’t bother. You haven’t got what it takes.
If you’re younger, I find worrying about the climate is a good entry into the hobby. It’s a looming threat that affects everyone, definitely a Big Deal, yet it’s a slow burn. Super accessible for novices and experts alike.
Nah, climate worries are competitive ranked anxiety. You can even get a degree in it and a job where you get up in the morning, have climate anxiety for 8 hours and then go home.
That’s true, it had a high skill ceiling, but there are a lot of casual worriers getting into it. Honestly great for the genre.
I find that; since you have so little control over it. It has real staying power even for the casual worrier. You can dip into it between other worries, and all that has happened since you last picked it up is that it got worse.
It’s very flexible because this anxiety will be effective when level 1 and when it will be level 10 it can be super effective and also time consuming which makes even more anxiety
There’s the added bonus that it wouldn’t even be too hard to implement measures to alleviate it, we just don’t because some people simply don’t want to. I think it greatly adds to the tension and desperation.
I’ll go out on a limb with this one. I really think that anxiety is related to anger. There’s anger from sadness and there’s anger from feeling powerless. Feeling powerless doesn’t necessarily stem from physical aspects; it can be from self restraint and compliance.
I don’t. I don’t think there’s a direct line from helplessness to anger. I think it’s just fear of things you cannot control, being overwhelmed with the logistics that accompany a response to any and every possible disaster or inconvenience, and a lifelong weariness built on your own constant vigilance against anything that might marginally worsen your stability and comfort. It’s worry. Constant worry, and your own forecasted model of whatever consequences await should you stop worrying.
If you personally experience anger as a coping mechanism to difficult feelings, I think there’s an emotional regulation issue you need to address and work on. If you’re angry because you feel powerless, it’s probably because you feel more comfortable being angry and use it to avoid the discomfort of feeling small, and that’s your way of reclaiming power. That’s not anxiety, that’s a frightening quality for others to have to deal with, and your pattern of thought shows a willingness to offload the blame for your aggression on external factors. Anyway, I hope you find a way to deal with that, if that’s how you process anxiety.
I’ll have to think about what you wrote, thank you, it might actually help me. Working as a government contractor (not the shit kind you see on tv) was nothing compared to working in education. I’m probably angry at myself because I couldn’t do anything when my students came to me for help.
She told me that he touched her in the wrong place; bringing it up and being changed to a different group pissed me off.
I failed as an educator. You can look at other posts I’ve made, education is hell.
I’ve got some friends in education and I definitely don’t envy them at all. I’m sorry you had to go through that. Good people, I think, feel it is their duty and sometimes even their purpose to protect children. I feel that imperative too, and can empathize with how upsetting it is to know there’s a harmed child you cannot help. There’s evil, despicable people everywhere and I personally cannot fathom how they live with themselves doing what they do. The sad reality is they often are protected from the consequences of their actions, and I definitely know that righteous anger and that desire for some extrajudicial punishment for people like that.
Maybe you couldn’t save her. But you tried. Maybe you’ll have another kid and won’t be able to save them either. But you just keep trying, doing your best, and you hope that one day you’ll be able to save at least one. It only takes one to know you were somebody’s angel, and that there was a reason for you to be where you were when you were. Give yourself some grace, friend.
Thank you.
Do you think you are good enough to be anxious?
I genuinely want to see what gatekeeping anxiety looks like
Pretty sure it’s supposed to be like an imposter syndrome thing which, as someone with medically treated anxiety, can happen very easily.
What so special about gatekeeping anxiety? Wouldn’t most anxieties be gatekeeping?
Because everyone’s anxiety is different to each individual. How I deal with mine is different to how you deal with yours. Our own individual experiences direct how we deal with, and what is the anxiety we all suffer from.
My joke was more about the idea of parents or workers saying things like “You have no idea what ‘tired’ is until you’ve X, Y, or Z”.
I’d love to see how gatekeeping anxiety would look like.
"Oh you’re worried about climate change? Please. You don’t know what it’s like to worry. I was worried about the cold war where nukes could fall on us at any time. We had to do drills in class hiding under desks. Kids your age don’t know what anxiety is! "
Ahhh. Fond memories. They were simpler times. “Duck and cover!” and under our desks we’d go.
That was some fun anxiety fodder… The adults taking care of us were telling us being under our desks would save us from a nuclear blast.
“Okay boomer, and how many school shooter drills did you run?”
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“Is that a fart, or a shart?”
Did you lock the door?
But did you tho?
Ah, the classics
(wait, did I lock the door?)
Yes, but you left the oven on.
Wait did i bring all i needed for today?
Aaaaah! I was just getting past that one, starting to convince myself of my adaptability to work around anything I forget to bring. How easily that one is rekindled. That’s a biggie.
Ha ha, nice try. I know I locked it because I checked three times and each time said out loud, “it’s definitely locked”. I might just check one more time though…
Every time I discover I didn’t, I add another check.
I don’t know if “Did you lock the door?” is beginner anxiety. Seems more a delicacy of hyper vigilance anxiety from PTSD; more higher tier stuff. Like starting on a sip of the strong stuff.
If you aren’t stressed, then you’re forgetting something important and only falling behind. Better drink some coffee, smoke a cigarette and pace around until you realize what you should be stressing over
“What if I run out of money and have some kind of emergency?” is a pretty common one
You can start with climate change and work your way to all the other shit stemming from it
I was gonna go with “Do people really like me or only pretend to like me?” but you went right to pro-tier.
My body feels fractionally different, am I dying?
The unstoppable passing of time
And it’s happening right now! Everywhere!
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Maybe all my friends secretly hate me and think I’m super annoying.
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Could that weird cramping feeling be the first signs of cancer?
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Did I make sure my door fully latched? What if it blows open in the wind, my cat gets out, and some car runs over them?
What if all my friends secretly hate me, find me super annoying, and are all just waiting for the right moment to tell me?
It’s great 'cause all social interactions become a minfield!
What if worrying about this causes you to be super-annoying?
What was that sting pain on my chest?? Is it a early sign of an heart attack???
Get out of my brain.
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From the US? The Yellowstone super caldera is over due for a massive eruption. From the west coast? “The big one” is also well over due. Enjoy.
Good things to have in the starter pack but you gotta throw in the “latest and greatest” Super El Niño.
From Africa? A lake full of trapped carbon dioxide might be about to flow downhill and suffocate an entire city.
From earth? Just look around, you’ll find enough
