The 10 plagues of anxiety (and why overthinking might be our real tradition)
Today, as I was clocking in for my shift at the shpilkes factory, I realized what a burden it must be for you reading about my anxiety so often. With so many of you telling me you also worry all the time, about everything and nothing, it seems constant overthinking might actually be the norm.
Anxiety plagues so many of us. In just a few days we will be doing a whole shtick on plagues at our Passover seders.
Well, locusts, frogs and vermin: Step aside! This year we have the 10 plagues of anxiety. It’s so much more entertaining when you dismiss the slaying of the first born.
Anxiety is never gone. It sometimes sits at a low simmer, like a good homemade soup. Low simmering anxiety is my version of relaxing.
Ever watch someone eat corn on the cob incorrectly? I can’t shake the nightmare of this scenario. Mother Nature set up corn on the cob for us in perfect little rows, begging to be eaten either horizontally or vertically. It makes sense to chomp left to right or right to left. Or you could do circles in order, rolling the cob forwards or backwards. Mission accomplished. Only a monster would eat the kernels in random order, all willy nilly, and expect to be successful. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
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If at first you don’t succeed, ask yourself why you are so stupid. Then ask yourself again a few days later, preferably in the middle of the night. Let it wake you up in a cold sweat. Why count sheep when you can count worst case scenarios? If at first you don’t succeed, ask yourself if you’ve ever been good at anything. Ever.
So, cute story. I was activated the other night, really panicking, trying to share about my triggers and hold space for normalizing my journey when my husband said:
“Relax. Don’t worry about it.”
And it was then that I realized those were two options I hadn’t even considered.
When you panic so hard that you can’t breathe, it’s like you’re having an allergic reaction to something. You’re probably just allergic to yourself. Sadly, Benadryl can’t fix that. You’ll need something stronger.
I don’t want “farmisht” to be my baseline feeling. I’d much rather be one of those confident, assertive people, but I just don’t know. I don’t want to offend anyone. I mean, are you guys OK with that?
I’m making myself sound really high-strung. I’m not. I can be spontaneous — as long as you let me know in advance that we are going to be spontaneous later. Then I can totally do it. I’m also capable of going with the flow, as long as I have all the details ahead of time.
If you think second-guessing yourself is a bad thing, I’ve got news for you. For the anxious folk, it would be a pleasure. We wish we could second-guess ourselves. We usually eighth-, ninth- and 10th-guess ourselves, even for the simplest of decisions.
Even my sitcom heroine, the great Natalie Green played by the even greater Mindy Cohn, was plagued with tsuris. In a “Facts of Life” episode from 1982, Mrs. Garrett asks, “Natalie, how is your studying going?” Natalie replies, “My studying has come to a halt, but my nervous breakdown is progressing nicely.”
Twelve-year-old me had never felt so seen. Here was the only character on TV who remotely looked like me, the chubby and funny sidekick, making jokes about her mental health.
Finally, I ask you, is overthinking really that bad? What if everyone else is actually underthinking? If we could have ever made shpilkis the norm, it would have been enough.
Dayenu.
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