Distress and SAD
January 25th, 2007 by Aaron
About a week ago I got a rather nasty bout of food poisoning. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences, but it did illuminate a few interesting points about my social anxiety.
First, the choices I make about how to deal with my anxious feelings are often made when I am at my most desperate. Second, there are real and serious benefits to having established some distance on my social anxiety.
When I made it past the worst part, but was still feeling weak and unable to eat much, I had to go out to meet a few obligations. And I found that my normal anxieties had been ratcheted up to amazing levels. I wanted nothing more than to go home and hide. And it wasn’t like I wanted to go home and hide until I felt better. I wanted to make a full retreat. I wanted to scale back my life, hermit myself up somewhere. I honestly felt like it was the only way I was ever going to be able to live comfortably.
So if I try to make decisions when distressed I wind up with these exaggerated thoughts. But such moments, when I am desperate to ease my discomfort, are when I am most likely to make such decisions.
It was a temporary and heightened distress, but perhaps it takes an extreme moment like being sick and seeing my anxious thoughts spin far out of control to see the interplay of desperation and decision-making. And this is where the second point comes in.
While I was having these anxious, vaguely delirious, food-poisoning-influenced thoughts, I was able to step back and think to myself, “Wow. Being sick is really messing with my anxiety.” It didn’t necessarily get rid of the feelings, but it did keep them in perspective. It prevented me from bailing on my obligations.
This feels like a positive development. A little over a year ago I didn’t even have the phrase social anxiety disorder and would not have been able to see so clearly what was happening to me.
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4 Responses to “Distress and SAD”
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T Chan wrote on 01/27/07 at 9:24 am :
Hi, I found this post interesting because over the holiday period I also had a nasty bout of sickness that put me out for about ten days. I don’t get stomach bugs very often, and what was interesting was that this was the first illness for years where I didn’t feel overly anxious.
What I noticed was that so much of feeling ill was just like anxiety in that it seems to consist of sitting or lying down repeatedly telling oneself how terribly awful you feel.
When I used to get anxiety and sickness at the same time, it was worse because the anxious thoughts were doing much the same as the “i’m ill” thoughts: telling me that I would vomit in public and pass out, need hospitalization etc.
Understanding these out of control thought processes, and exacting some control over them, is so important for a peaceful, confident life!
Aaron wrote on 01/29/07 at 10:31 pm :
Thanks for the comment. I think you put it well. Thoughts around being sick are a lot like the thoughts around anxiety. You stew on how awful you feel, reminding yourself over and over just how bad you have it.
I’m glad to hear you were able to avoid the trap recently. And hope you’re feeling well. As unhappy as I felt when I was sick recently, that small bit of distance allowed me a little control, which made a big difference.
mico wrote on 01/31/07 at 3:00 pm :
Very true about acting in moments of desperation. There’s an old quote from somewhere, but don’t ask me where, or even what it is, ha, but it did say something along the lines of ‘you move forward not when you crave success, but when the fear is too great to stay where you are’.
It was probably far more profound and uplifting than my attempts at paraphrasing something I can’t remember, but what can you do?
Anyways, just been checking out your blog and it’s looking good. Feel free to check into mine should you so wish to do so.
Keep it up fellow blogman.
Aaron wrote on 02/1/07 at 2:06 pm :
Thanks for the note of encouragment. However perfectly qouted or not, I definately understand where that is coming from and it feels true.
I dug your “about me” blurb. I’ll definately be checking out your blog.