It’s been two weeks since my last post. Between work, work, and more work, my creative side has remained fairly dormant – in the limited free time I do have, I spend my time binge-watching Netflix and Hulu, largely because it prevents me from needing to face my own life.

I did want to pop on here today to briefly share an astounding concept that was recently brought to my attention (*ahem*, approximately three minute ago). But first, I’m going to share a quick background anecdote.

Last summer, a woman I care for very deeply was laying on her back with me in the middle of my living room, watching me fight my way through a panic attack that had gone on for over four hours. She rolled over onto her side, facing me, and said, “Emily – anxiety isn’t a bad thing. It’s just misplaced excitement for what’s to come.”

Fast forward six months later – I’m waking up to panic every morning. I’m struggling to sleep because I can’t get my mind to go quiet. My eating is fluctuating between extreme calorie counting and binge eating. There’s a change looming over me at work that has dragged on for three weeks with no resolution and it feels like it’s slowly killing me.

As I sit here, looking outside at the snow and ice covered landscape (we’re in a Level 2, no recommended outdoor travel if possible), I keep reminding myself of the “misplaced anxiety” ideology. Maybe I’m just excited. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I haven’t stuck to my anxiety bucket list, so maybe it’s my fault that every little thing is making me anxious. Maybe I need to be medicated – so on and so fourth. It’s exhausting.

But then! I decided to visit an app I’d downloaded in one of my night-long binge efforts to do anything and everything other than sleep, called “Woebot”. This little bugger is AI meant to assist with therapy, specifically in the form of CBT. You create an account and have little mini conversations that have pre-written responses – it recommends that you give mood feedback and surrounding activity detail at least daily for 14 days so the AI can build associations between certain activities and time of day that may cause your mood swings.

This morning – I’m trapped inside, literally and metaphorically. My brain is screaming at me about all the things that I’ve screwed up, that I won’t be able to accomplish; it’s telling me that this work opportunity is misplaced and the folks considering me are only doing it because they’re desperate. I’m angrily typing in stupid responses to this app, when suddenly it asks, “Can I just check, is there any way that this anxiety might be serving you in some way?”

Holy. Shit. Never in my almost 28 years on this planet have I ever considered my anxiety to be a productive thing. Yeah, I’ve had fleeting thoughts about how I’m good in crisis because my body and brain are always in crisis-mode, but never have I been succinctly asked if my anxiety serves any sort of pragmatic purpose. If I had to answer with brevity, I’d say anxiety makes me better at things because I’m intrinsically motivated to do well – even if that motivation is disguised as fear.

So then, my mind blown, I feel myself snap out of my depressed funk. I get out of my chair, go rinse the dishes in the sink that have been driving me nuts, and make myself a cup of coffee while I mull over the next question: “If you were to give your anxiety a voice, take a minute to think about what exactly that voice would be saying to you.”

Oof. This one’s easy. I already did that a few paragraphs back – think of something nasty, and my brain has probably whispered it to me in the last 24 hours. Turns out, these are called negative automatic thoughts and are identifiable by their first-person nature.

I write down a few thoughts, select one to focus on, and am asked, “Does your thought assume that things will turn out badly?” I respond with confirmation, and the little shit goes and blows my mind again. “This distortion…” let’s stop there. DISTORTION. This was as meaningful to me as the first time I realized that anxiety is a mental illness, not a characteristic. Holy crap, my thoughts are being DISTORTED by an ILLNESS. +2 lil’ Woebot. It goes on to say, “The truth is we can’t tell the future but to you it feels like this outcome has *already* occurred.” Well, you’re not wrong, AI friend. This is what ties this whole thing back to the lovely woman from earlier in this story – misplaced excitement is equivalent to feeling that the worst case scenario in your head has already happened.

All of this being said, I’m obviously not solved, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about CBT and coping mechanisms etc. and never have I had just a few sentences resonate so deeply with my struggles. Anxiety isn’t always a bad thing. Anxiety is half-excitement. Anxiety motivates me to do well. Anxiety makes me stand out, in a good way, from my peers. Anxiety makes me empathetic. Anxiety has forced me to be courageous in the face of every day life. Anxiety keeps me in my head like a snowstorm, but even the worst of the snow melts after awhile – anxiety doesn’t need to be my defining factor, nor my motivation, if I can figure out how to separate the “good” from the “bad”.

Until next time.