Good Anxiety?

I woke up this morning with a familiar feeling of dread. I felt overwhelmed and completely inadequate in just about every area of my life. I was obviously an incompetent, lazy idiot, and as soon as the truth was discovered about me everyone would see how I was failing miserably in my job, marriage, parenting, finances, health, family, and blog. Kendall and Leah were still sleeping so I’m sure no one heard me audibly moaning or saw me rocking back and forth with my eyes clamped shut, imagining my future as the homeless man at the Western Avenue entrance of the Santa Monica Freeway, begging people to let me wash their windshields with my filthy rags for a small donation before the click of the green arrow sends them speeding by. Old friends on their way to work would recognize me through my scraggly beard and avert their eyes as they rolled down their windows two inches and passed some crumpled up dollar bills to me in exchange for not talking to them. In the midst of these painful fantasies, I opened one eye, saw that it was time to wake Leah up for school, and bounded into her room, Mr. Cheerful Happy Dad. The funny thing is, I wasn’t faking it, and I’ve had an extremely productive, pleasant day ever since. Do I have undiagnosed bipolar disorder? Or am I just wired in a way that requires that I sometimes go very low before I can bounce back up?

I’ve been looking at a lot of my negative patterns lately and realizing that my response to them is often more painful than the pattern itself. There were times when I could have easily spent the entire day hating myself for the ten minutes of agonizing self-deprecation I put myself through this morning. Which makes me wonder, which is more damaging—my neuroses or my endless judgment of my neuroses? So, as I discussed in one of my earliest posts about Sad Jessica Lange, I’m working hard to just accept my dysfunction as it is. Not indulge it, promote it, or like it, just accept it without always feeling like I need to be on the attack.

When I was in college I used to always despise myself for waiting until the last possible minute to write a paper or finish a project. The feeling of panic and anxiety as the deadline neared certainly wasn’t pleasant, and I was forced to pull many a miserable all-nighter as I reviled my procrastination tendencies and vowed never to let it happen again (until the following assignment, that is). But looking back there was something about that adrenaline rush that I guess I really did like or need, and those papers and projects almost always came out really well. There are plenty of things I do that I’d like to change but I don’t think despising myself for them is the strategy that will produce the best results. Accepting the fact that I needed to writhe in self-hatred for a few minutes this morning is ultimately far more healing than hating myself for hating myself!

I’ve been trying to listen to all the voices in my head lately and suspend judgment. What really works for me is to pretend that my screaming inner child is my daughter instead of me. This catapults me out of bitter recrimination and plops me smack into parental comforting mode. Many of my bitter attack thoughts start with “You have no right to feel ______.” (Fill in the blank with any so-called negative emotion—sad, depressed, lonely, scared, miserable, anxious, etc.) And then, in my newfound moments of awareness, my parental self pops in to say “Yes you do, go right ahead and feel that. Everything’s going to be okay.” Ah, what relief. What is with the Cult of Happiness in this country anyway? Sometimes when someone chirps “Have a nice day!” at me, I want to respond, “Why the hell should I? Maybe the best thing for me today would be to have a truly shitty day, maybe that would produce the growth that I need right now!” To borrow from the title of a deliciously awful movie from 1968 in which Mary Tyler Moore and George Peppard are hippies who get infected by a mood-altering virus, “What’s so bad about feeling bad?”

Comments

[Lisa]

Oh, Danny, I am reminded of Charlie Brown -- and The Book Report (from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, the original, not the revival!).
CHARLIE BROWN:
If I start writing now
When I'm not really rested
It could upset my thinking
Which is no good at all.
I'll get a fresh start tomorrow
And it's not due till Wednesday
So I'll have all of Tuesday
Unless something should happen.
Why does this always happen,
I should be outside playing
Getting fresh air and sunshine,
I work best under pressure,
And there'll be lots of pressure
If I wait till tomorrow
I should start writing now.
But I if I start writing now
When I'm not really rested
It could upset my thinking
Which is
Not good at all.

[Tamar]

Sometimes "feeling bad" is comforting because that's all I know. It's a habit, style, like a big security blanket. In my family one of the predominant styles is that suffering is honorable. So it always starts with the feeling (and the words): "What a terrible day that was," or "do you know what so and so did to me?" and goes on from there - everyone "tsk tsking" and shaking their heads but really endorsing more of the same - as if there is no other way to do it.

I really don't know that many people where joy is a habitual style. I mean, genuine and authentic joy from the guts!

Plus, Danny, while I hate it that you suffer so much, your "angst" is what makes you one of the most interesting, humorous, intelligent, creative, compassionate, empathic, curious, generous, and loving people, who I have had the best luck to meet and get to know.

[david]

I used to have those mornings. But I never had those parenting skills with them. I think that's a great approach to take, because you're supposed to identify and separate yourself from those feelings, and that's exactly what you're doing.

And I so deeply agree that the recriminations are worse than the feelings that cause them. Wonder why we're built that way...

It also reminds me of that song from "Avenue Q," "It Sucks to Be Me," which is what everyone is thinking -- and feeling -- inside. As you and I know, however, the fact that others may be feeling that isn't really such a great comfort. Other than to know that we have company, dysfunctional though it may be.

I gave that little voice inside me a name. And I can see his face. And he's pathetic. So sometimes I win now.

Think I'll go post about it.
Thanks.
David

[helenka]

When did your dream change from the African-American barbershop to the off-ramp?
I always thought a bench at Venice Beach might be my final hang out. By then I will have reverted to a full on Yiddish accent and I’ll go and just sit there between the pimps and dealers shvitsn in my support hose. There’s room on the bench for you too (if you grow tried of the freeway the way you did of the barbershop).

[deborah]

Danny,
You would not be a homeless person for long because you'd be so funny that everyone would put lots of change in your cup and you'd have enough money to at least move into a shelter where you could put on a show every night-- so do not despair. Your description of yourself on the street is amazingly amusing. Anyway, I think you are exactly right that watching ourselves be neurotic and hating ourselves for it is probably worse than the neurosis itself. Yesterday, having physical therapy on my knee (I was lying down on a table with electrodes strapped to my knee so I couldn't move) I started to have a total freakout. They were electric stim'ing my knee and I felt abused, abandoned, bereft, tortured, and disintegrating. I felt sheer panic. And no one around me even noticed --what would it take I thought to really make a stir -- screaming? Howling? And then I got up from the table and said thank you very much for the torture session and did the rest of my chores and was pretty all right.

If there's anything worse than our own self observation of our neuroses though, I would suggest that it's having a spouse to watch. And what is it about first thing in the morning and last thing at night? Those are the times when the dread and self-recrimination just accumulate like toxins in the blood. When I climb into bed at night and whimper just a little, quietly to myself, kind of an uh, uh, uh, occassionally with a mmmmm added (I know that if I cry MommyMommyMommy I'll probably get locked up) my husband says, "What's the matter with you?" Stop carrying on! Don't be so melodramatic. Go to sleep." and that's even worse than my self-judgment although maybe it's better because then I can just get direct all my anger at him for being so insensitive and that distracts me from hating myself.

Anyway, great blog.