The Endgame

Newsletter #52 - Anxiety

Toronto, January 14, 2024

Anxiety

Wikipedia tells us that anxiety “is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events.”

Ordinary anxiety is ubiquitous and natural. Its unnatural cousins are a different kettle of fish and a horrible lot—depression, dread, panic, suicidal ideation, serious mental disorders, fear (fear is a bit different—it is pragmatic and specific, a response to a real threat rather than one that is anticipated), etc. Ordinary anxiety may be ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean it is without consequences. It can lead to unpleasant physiological symptoms—headaches, nausea, constipation, muscular tension, tremors.

I doubt if there is one reader of this newsletter who has not experienced ordinary anxiety. It’s a regular caller in most people’s lives. It certainly knocks on my door from time-to-time. Some say that anxiety can be appropriate and is useful in certain situations. Anxiety, they say, keeps you on your toes. It can be a warning sign, they argue, or a motivator. But I say that’s not true. Anxiety (unlike fear) is only negative. There is nothing good or useful about it. It does not prepare you to deal effectively with an anticipated bad event (which may never happen). Performance on an exam, for example, does not improve if you have “test anxiety.” Test anxiety won’t get you a good grade. You may be on your toes, but you’ll fail the exam.

What is to be done if you suffer from anxiety and it’s getting in the way? There’s a diverse anti-anxiety industry plying its wares, offering solutions—medication, cognitive-behavioural therapy, relaxation techniques, mindfulness practices, and the rest. What to try, if anything? Or do you just accept, reluctantly, that anxiety is part of life?

In 2019, carting along my usual scepticism, I enrolled in Toronto’s University Health Network Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program. What did I have to lose? Once a week, for eight weeks, I attended a two-and-a-half hour group session led by a senior psychiatrist. An additional intensive session was six hours long.  No phones or watched were allowed in the room. The program was free. There were about twenty participants, several with neurological issues, some from the organ transplant centre next door. I found the whole thing interesting and helpful. Curiosity overcame my scepticism. At the end I received a certificate suitable for framing, and then pretty much forgot about the whole thing.

You’d think that the pandemic, which arrived not long after I got my certificate, would have made me anxious and driven me back to mindfulness as a remedy, but it didn’t. I don’t know why. Perhaps it was because pandemic anxiety somehow seemed collective and not personal, and thus more bearable. Misery loves company. Paradoxically, there was group camaraderie in widely-shared personal isolation.

It was quite different when I recently had a minor medical crisis. There’s nothing more personal than a health problem. It rattled me. My surgeon told me, pre-op, to relax. Okay, doctor, I’ll work on that. I dug out some mindfulness tapes that I’d downloaded in 2019. The first tape led you through something known as a body scan meditation. This involves slowly contemplating your body, bit by bit, “for pain, tension, or anything out of the ordinary.” It takes about 30 minutes. Was this an appropriate technique in my circumstances? After all, my body (part of it) was the very thing I was worried about. The narrator spoke slowly and had a sonorous voice. I fell asleep before the tape ended. That wasn’t a bad outcome.

Overcoming anxiety is a constant struggle. The hell of it is that the very attempt to do so can itself induce anxiety. A cruel jest of the gods. Where are those damn tapes?