Tag: friends

Being Anxious

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

I had a friend with clinically recognized anxiety problems. She had no room for me to be anxious.

crudely-drawn image of two people talking; narrator says: “Sometimes I just get really stressed”; woman with anxiety diagnosis replies “People like us with no kids don’t know REAL stress!”
crudely-drawn image of two people talking; narrator says: “I’m really overwhelmed by work right now”; woman with anxiety diagnosis replies “What, with your four-hour work day and schedule you set yourself?”; parenthetical note adds “My work day is only that short sometimes”
crudely-drawn image of two people talking; narrator says: “It makes me so uncomfortable any time maintenance has to come into my apartment”; woman with anxiety diagnosis replies “FFF!! THEY don’t care about anything! They just wanna do the job and get out as quick as possible!”
crudely-drawn image of two people talking; narrator says: “I hate having to ask for help in a store”; woman with anxiety diagnosis asks “Why?”; narrator says: “Talking to salespeople is just—stressful.”; woman with anxiety diagnosis says “Why? It’s what they’re there for”

I knew that much of my stress was out of proportion to the events around me . . . but that was part of the point, and she never let me get there.

(added 17 Jl 2022)

When two friends both have problems, they should both be heard. There is a way to do this with respect.

This is bad:

two people sit in recliners; the first says “ANXIETY explain explain” and the second says “Great, but MY <anxiety>—explain explain”

This is fine:

in the top half, two people sit in recliners; the first says “ANXIETY explain explain explain” and the second says nothing at all; in the lower half, a caption reads “And on another day” and two people sit in recliners; the first says nothing and the second one says “(anxiety) explain explain explain”

But what I got was:

in the top half, two people sit in recliners; the first says “ANXIETY explain explain explain” and the second says nothing at all; in the lower half, a caption reads “And on another day” and two people sit in recliners; the second one says “(anxiety) expl—” but this is overlapped by a word balloon from the first person saying “DISMISSAL”