I try very hard not to get too bogged down in the misery of Anxiety & Depression. I don’t mean I try to keep them at an arm’s length. I mean I do. Obviously. Because they’re not fun. You don’t hear anyone singing “Ain’t no Party like an Anxiety and Depression Party”. What I mean is, I do not, under any circumstances want people feeling sad for me that I have this thing. A lot of people have told me they think I’m ‘brave’ for being so open about it. But I’m not brave. I don’t feel brave for stating a fact. I’m just pragmatic. I don’t write these to show everyone how brave I am, and how dreadfully hard it is to be me. It’s not. Being Me is pretty easy when all is said and done. It’s an awareness issue, and an acceptance issue. It’s so that “sufferers” reading it know they are not alone, and so that people who just can’t understand it can maybe get a tiny glimpse into what it feels like.
Also, here’s the thing: However draining it can be, it’s part of who I am, and in this age of “be your authentic self” (don’t get me started on that), I have accepted that, and am trying to own it, rather than run from it.
“How can you defend something that makes you feel so awful?” I hear those of you who have read the title of the post ask yourself… Well…. (and you’ll have to bear with me through this…) let me tell you a little bit about Catastrophic Thinking. Or Catastrophizing.
This delightful little quirk goes hand in hand with various anxiety disorders. It is pretty much what it says on the tin. And it happens to me. A lot. Or it did. Do I have it under control now? No. Is it better than it was? It is. Imagine it is a crazy-ass furious pit bull terrier which you’ve been poking in the eye with a stick. Sometimes that pit bull is on a sturdy leather lead, being handled by a calm person with incredible strength. Sometimes he’s on one of those retractable leads being handled by a small child who keeps squealing. Sometimes he is OFF the lead and running riot. I feel like the majority of the time these days I have a strong, calm handler in control of my catastrophizing. But it has, in the past, been off the lead.
Bizarrely, on a blog about anxiety and acting, most of my catastrophic thinking involves the fates of people I love, rather than work. Not all, but most of it does.
To illustrate how mind bending Catastrophic Thinking is, I feel I should say something about myself, which I don’t often say, because normally when I talk about myself it’s for comedic purposes, and a complete neurotic is much funnier than someone who is calm and collected. But here goes: I am a very rational, level headed person. I’m excitable, and bubbly (when I’m not whinging about the injustices in the world), but when I have to deal with stressful situations I find myself in, I don’t panic. I go into “fix-it-and-deal-with-it” mode. This was something I just sort of took for granted and never thought of as a strength, until one day one of my oldest and best friends who was very heavily pregnant told me that she had put my name down as the person to contact if she went into labour, and her partner wasn’t reachable. “Why?” I asked. (Charming, right? Not “thank you for putting me in such a privileged position.” Bloody ingrate.) “Because you deal with stressful situations better than anyone I know. And that’s the sort of person I’ll need with me.” To this day, I think that is one the best things anyone has ever said to me. As it turned out, her partner WAS reachable so I didn’t ever have to prove myself worthy. Thank fuck. I can’t imagine that’s a test I would have passed.
ANYWAY. That’s enough bragging about how brilliantly I deal with crisis situations, I just wanted you to get the picture… I’m not a flaky person. Now… back to how I deal with things that haven’t happened.
I am not going to tell you about my worst experience catastrophizing, because I don’t want to be sectioned. Suffice to say that it ended when The Husband called me, having found 72 missed calls on his phone. In the space of an hour. And that didn’t include the calls I’d made to the hotel where he was staying in New York. And no. It wasn’t 9/11, that would have been a justifiable concern.
It used to be The Brother that was the focus of these “episodes”. Ever since I was little I would have nightmares about horrendous things happening to him. I remember waking up in a hysterical state when I was about 6 years old from a nightmare where our house was burning down, and I couldn’t get to him to save him. These were nightmares I was still having all the way through university, they got more gruesome and more vivid. And it wasn’t just dreams. It was waking thoughts. If he had anything the matter with him, I would end up 100% certain that he had weeks to live. One time he had a mole that appeared, and for several months The Husband (or The Boyfriend as he was then) spent hour upon hour with me sobbing into his chest at the thought of a life coping with the grief of the loss. The mole was eventually removed, and tested. 100% fine.
My mum and dad never tell me about medical tests they have done until after the event. Sometimes not even then, because I have them dead and buried before they’ve had the “all clear” call from the doctor.
If my phone rings and I see it’s Mum & Dad, my first thought is ALWAYS, “oh, shit, someone has died” {Hilarious Aside – I had typed the “d” of that last “died” when the phone rang and it was my dad’s mobile… which he never calls from…. So, which… well, you can guess…. I think my heart rate is just about back to normal}
If my parents or my mother in law don’t answer the phone when I (or The Husband) call, I can’t stop envisaging accidents until they return said call.
If The Husband doesn’t respond to a text message within a few hours I start checking news sites. I don’t go into constant phoning mode, because I know that this thought pattern I’m spiralling into is irrational…. So I then just go into constant “refreshing News sites” mode. Totally rational. Obviously. Fortunately for my blood pressure, I don’t text that much, unless there’s a specific question that needs answering.
This list goes on and on and on….
And then this…. As a result of the examples above… and this is NOT an exaggeration (I wish it were)… Every time I say goodbye to somebody that I love there is a voice in my head that tells me “This might be the last time you ever see them.” And it’s not whispering. It’s not always shouting. But it’s been doing it’s vocal workouts – that voice is well-projected and full bodied.
“HOW IS THIS ‘IN DEFENCE’, YOU LUNATIC?!?!!? You sound like one of those people in a relationship with an asshole who just keeps making excuses for them!”
I’ll tell you why – it is exhausting. Yes. (Also quite a good source of comedy because, to be fair, it is ridiculous). But because of that constant reminder that life is fragile, and with everything happening in the world right now… shit stuff happened to good people all the time… I can honestly say that I never take anyone in my life for granted. And that, I don’t think is a bad thing. And would I be as grateful as I am for all the moments with all those people if I wasn’t constantly thinking that last night may be the last night I ever spend on the sofa with The Husband, or that the phone call from my dad’s mobile mid-blog might be the last time I ever hear his voice, or that ANY number of those little everyday interactions that seem meaningless, but that make up ‘Life’ may in some way turn into one of the most meaningful events in my life? I mean… maybe. But maybe not.
So please…. Particularly, if you are someone who knows me, and cares about me, or maybe doesn’t particularly care about me, but has fun with me… Please don’t look at me with sad eyes and think that I’m brave.
Just remind yourself, that if it wasn’t for my Anxiety, I may well be a right c*nt.
And if you already think I am…. Well just IMAGINE how much worse I could be.
This post was originally published as ‘The Anxious Actor”
My Name is Not Debbie 
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